“The History of the Future” occupies a special place in the works of R. E. Heinlein. Begun in the late 1930s with the story “Life Line” and subsequently continued with such classics as “The Man Who Sold the Moon”, “Green Hills of the Earth” and other works no less important for the writer, it covers a huge time span of the era of space exploration, as it seemed to Heinlein. In his “History of the Future”, heroic periods are replaced by times of dictatorships, the world turns into war only to turn into peace again – a lot of things happen on man’s path to the future. Only man is unchanged – seeking, fighting, winning, doubting, loving, humane.

“Stepsons of the Universe”, Heinlein’s famous novel, also included in his “History of the Future”, is not included in this edition, as it was published in the “World of Fantasy” series a little earlier in the volume of the same name.