Alaska was admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959. Alaska's United States Senate seats belong to class 2 and class 3. The state's current senators are Republicans Lisa Murkowski (serving since 2002) and Dan Sullivan (serving since 2015). A total of eight people have represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate. Ted Stevens was Alaska's longest serving U.S. senator, serving from 1968 to 2009.
They Shall Have Stars, the first volume in science fiction writer James Blish's Cities in Flight series, was published in 1950 and is set in a fictional 2013. A major character is Alaska Senator Bliss Wagoner, head of the Joint Congressional Committee on Space Flight, who is depicted as playing a crucial role in Humanity's spread into space. At the time of writing, Alaska was not yet a state and had no senators, but Blish correctly assumed that this would come about by 2013.
