Saturday 10 September 2016

History And Dreams

What is real in one timeline is imagined or dreamed in another. We are doing it now by reading alternative history fiction - and some of us by writing it.

In Volume I of SM Stirling's Nantucket trilogy, the time travelers rescue Swindapa from the Aryan invaders. In Volume II, she has a nightmare that they didn't. Alston reflects:

"Presumably in the original history - if "original" meant anything - Swindapa had died among the Iraiina. Her whole people had vanished, overrun and swallowed up." (Against The Tide Of Years, p. 32)

Swindapa is of the generation whose lives are changed by the Event. Soon, subsequent generations will be different people born into a different history. Does Swindapa's nightmare remind us of anything? In Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, some women psychics have accurate visions of alternative timelines. Could Swindapa's dreams be a hint of that?

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I dunno, if anything, I thought Swindapa's dream reflected what I've read of how survivors of rape or other types of violent abuse often suffered: Post Traumatic Stress syndrome. Nothing like Yasmin's dreams.

Just another correction, Swindapa was not rescued from the Iraiina, she was a gift from the Iraiina chieftain to Marian Alston.

Sean