Monday, 22 August 2022

Inter-Timeline References

Alternative timelines can refer to each other in oblique ways.

Poul Anderson
In "Eutopia," a traveller between divergent histories hates the filth, waste, ugliness, restrictions, hypocrisy and insanity of "America" in what we, the readers, recognize as our timeline.

SM Stirling
In George Orwell's 1984, the United Kingdom has been re-named "Airstrip One." In Stirling's Daggers In Darkness, the UK is nicknamed "Airbase One" but Stirling's characters cannot be referring to 1984 because they are in 1922 (b) whereas that novel was published in 1949 (a). The connections are in the mind of the omniscient author.


Neil Gaiman
When a reality storm strands travellers from different worlds in the Inn of the Worlds' End, one guest remarks that a "reality storm" sounds like something from Star Trek. She is from our world - or one like it.

2 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Also, there's a structural/strategic similarity -- if Britain is a forward position of an alliance of "oceanic" powers, facing a hostile bloc dominating Eurasia from the Atlantic to Siberia, then its sort of logical to call it "Airbase"-something.

The 1984 universe is dominated by three blocs with similar ideologies, and so is the Black Chamber universe -- though it's -different- ideologies. Orwell's world was one where a sort Stalino-fascism-nihilism in three different flavors rules; the Black Chamber universe is one where three different flavors of integralist nationalism combined with technocratic modernism (in its early 20th-century form) run things.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

An interesting comparison.