A Tableau of Crimes and Misfortunes

That, of course, is Voltaire, on history. One questions whether he had any right to say it, since he knew absolutely none, but by an absolute coincidence he happened, by and large, to be right. This is important for the writing of future history: progress is one of the most persistent and irrational of man's superstitions—also the only superstition that originated in the Middle Ages (much like the 19th century, they had the excuse of living in an era of massive technological and scientific advances), but the superstition forbids people from acknowledging that.

Anyway, it's important, when writing future history, to decide which of the many future predictions you're going to go with. Try to find the most likely, but don't worry too much about it: the first chapter of The Napoleon of Notting Hill is an important principle to keep in mind, vis-à-vis humans and their perennial sport of "cheat the prophet".

For instance, in my setting, I go with 2140 as the date of widespread travel in the Solar System. I get that from James Strong, who, however, specifically said that would be remarkably early, and that it wouldn't happen till 2210—but they hadn't proved Bose-Einstein condensates nor invented the plasma window when he said it, so I'm going to cut humanity a little slack. I give 2194 as the date of the invention of the space-fold drive, chosen because it's 200 years after Alcubierre first proposed his warp drive idea (even though the space-fold is in many ways quite different). Prior to 2194 I have human colonies in exactly two other star systems, one at Alpha Centauri and one at Barnard's Star—you can reach them in a reasonable amount of time with slowboats, if said slowboats are Daedalus-derived ICF ships (.12c cruising speed); in honor of the concept that gets them there, both colonies (the Barnard's Star one is a station built of Solar-System parts, since that system is probably low on natural materials) are named after ICF ship proposals that targeted their respective stars. To whit, the one at Alpha Centauri is Longshot, while the one at Barnard's is Daedalus. I'm not sure what the ship that went to Barnard's is named, but I know what the original colony ship at Alpha Centauri was called: it's a Chinese ship named "Heaven-splitting crimson whorl", i.e. Tianyuántupò Gongliánluóyán.

Inventing space-fold kicks off, just like in every setting, a leap into colonization—once it's a matter of months rather than centuries, and in-system travel has already become relatively widespread, there's no reason not to. Colonization will, of course, follow the patterns established in history, people escaping persecution, people wanting to set up persecution, people escaping prosecution, etc. All the planets colonized during that era are named mythological things, and the cities usually follow suit, i.e. and e.g. there's a planet named Demeter, and its capital is Inari City, after the Japanese god of grain.

First contact with the felinoids comes in 2282, and with the evangelical Heideggerians a few years later. The war the humans start, then lose, is in the 2330s (I don't have my timeline on me to pin it down more than that), and my first book takes place in 2342. First contact between humans and the gift-economy dromaeosaurs comes in 2345; the felinoids had already known the other non-human species for centuries.

But what about the crimes and misfortunes? Well, via negativa, I'll tell you two things that won't happen, at least not in the next two millennia: massive global flooding and overpopulation die-off. Even if there is any such thing as anthropogenic climate change—which is looking more debatable every day—not only is it a phenomenon with a time-scale on the order of a myriad years, it may not actually involve warming at all. Anthropogenic or not, it's actually looking like an ice age might be in the offing. As for overpopulation, we're under-utilizing our arable land by a factor of, depending on who you ask, 8 to 40—and absent some catastrophe, that number only gets better. There's a reason the main diet hazard in the developed world—for poor people!—is obesity, not starvation; the only places experiencing famine have command economies and corrupt governments. Why do you think North Koreans are less nourished now than in the Joseon Kingdom, when they had no trucks and had to plant by hand? Communism, that's why.

Personally I find positing future religious persecution a safe bet, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy rubbing it in the faces of the smug secularists whose "thinking" dominates SF. Aside from the persecution of Christians I've mentioned (centered on the Commonwealth and led by PMs named after Philip Pullman and Margaret Atwood), I also posit a second Holocaust. I've never seen that in anything—one suspects wishful thinking on the part of SF writers, or possibly just the delusion of "progress"—but the way modern geo-politics are going, it's not unlikely. Given the UN is unofficially-officially anti-Zionist, it's only a matter of time before someone tries to strike at Israel, but Israel proper is no pushover. Much more likely that some country, or coalition of countries, will do something nasty to their portion of the Jewish Diaspora, to "make a gesture" at Israel.

That, of course, and also a massive genocide in Africa due to overpopulation fears, are just the excuse the UN needs to seize more control, becoming a world government, albeit merely over a confederation of its member states. That's good and bad; the UN bureaucracy might be a bunch of desk-jockeying ideologues, but the UN's new power cuts down on wars—I only have two more in my history, after that point—and the demise of the "imperialist" global capitalist boogieman (which only existed because "we don't like losing out to America in trade" doesn't sound as noble) calms down a lot of cultural issues. That is, society can transition to somewhat saner and more moderate attitudes about sex, economics, speech, etc., than our current "anything goes" Russian roulette, without sixteen different kinds of academic screeching about "fascism".

That's an important issue, by the way—don't assume that policies you don't approve of wouldn't have good effects. I'd literally take arms against a UN world-state, but I'd be really surprised—if it got down to the business of governing, and wasn't just a retirement home for bilingual bureaucrats, the way it is now—if it couldn't improve life in a number of areas. Every system is a tradeoff; you fight certain systems because you don't want their particular one. Even the ones you don't want, though, still offer something, and not noticing that is what makes so many sci-fi dystopias such crap.