As I’ve mentioned previously, one of my favorite writers during my teen years was Robert A. Heinlein. He really knew how to spin a spell-binding tale.

In addition to many standalone novels, such as The Puppet Masters, Door Into Summer, Double Star, Between Planets, and Red Planet (to name some of my favorites), and short stories such as “—All You Zombies—”, “By His Bootstraps”, and “And He Built a Crooked House” (among many others), he wrote a series of interconnected stories that were collectively called the Future History series, as they extended from 1939 (when he began writing seriously) to hundreds of years into the future.

The purpose of the series was to give himself a standard framework into which he could fit his stories without having to invent an entirely new background for each one.

While I enjoyed many of those stories, I thought his “predictions” as to what might happen in the future were pretty outlandish.

For one example, there was a return to slavery in some of the societies that sprang up when humanity began populating other planets. Well, that will never happen, thought I.

And he also predicted the rise of a religious dictatorship in the United States in the 21st century. I mean, how crazy is that?

Note: When you purchase something after clicking Amazon links in my posts, I may earn a small commission. As of this date, I have yet to earn anything. 😎