The author and the book
What is the book about?
Alaric Thain's History of the 21st Century begins with an overview of human history leading up to the information age. He then provides a detailed history of the information age itself, roughly corresponding to the period 1998 to 2070. He considers not only the events of the century, but also its great heroes and villains, all while providing the readers of the 29th century with enough emotional and societal context to allow them to understand why the sometimes irrational decisions of the era were made and how, despite the rise of populism, humanity managed to forego the dark path of superstition and hatred to build a better world. In the third part of the book he provides overviews and explanations of three concepts that are foreign to 29th-century readers: politics, economics, and religion, in terms people of the 29th century can understand.
The book has proven to be controversial in this timeline. Some reviewers, expecting a science fiction book, have found it "boring as a textbook", which is understandable as it is, in fact, a textbook of sorts. Many reviewers see it as a political essay and those of a more conservative bent are typically unhappy about its political content. More established reviewers, however, have been more enthusiastic. For example…
The Author
Born in 2064, Alaric Thain was a Traveller from 2112 to 2850, before returning to Earth to become a professor of Earth history at the Sorbonne. Alaric Thain.
Who is Artie?
This book is being made available to you through the efforts of Artie, the Earth's artificial intelligence entity, born in 2038, recognized as a sentient being with rights in 2046. Thain's personal "agent", or subset of Artie, projected hirself back to the 21st century, at his request, to make the book available.