Concurrent Reading, Historical Periods And Alternative Timelines

I am currently reading a 1930 political autobiography and a 1924 novel and rereading a 1971 futuristic sf novel. Thus, the concurrent reader contemplates a kaleidoscope of historical periods.

The Byworlder by Poul Anderson is futuristic speculation. Notionally, a sequence of historical events links 1971 when the book was published to the unspecified but later period when it is set. An exercise for an sf writer might be to reconstruct this sequence. Its outcomes are that:

technology has advanced;

social customs have changed;

global politics seem to be largely unchanged;

an extrasolar spaceship entered Earth orbit three years ago.

Trotsky's My Life covers the 1905 and 1917 revolutions in Russia. John Buchan's John Macnab reflects British, particularly Scottish, society of 1924, when "the war" was referred to as a recent event. Buchan also presents an alternative history in which a Harald Blacktooth not only existed but also was buried in Scotland bearing incontrovertible evidence that he had visited North America. When this news is published, Buchan's 1924 diverges from ours in this respect if not in any other. Our history boasts only a Harald Bluetooth.

Every work of fiction is set in an alternative timeline although usually the differences are too small to be noticed. Thus, Anderson's Trygve Yamamura lives in a world that is indistinguishable from ours except for certain slight differences:

Yamamura and his circle of acquaintances do not exist and the events that they experience do not occur in our timeline;

Anderson's Trygve Yamamura novels do not exist in Yamamura's timeline although, other things being equal, the rest of the Poul Anderson canon should exist there.

Sometimes the fictional text does exist in both worlds although, in such a case, the text, e.g., any of Dr Watson's narratives, is not fictional in the fictional world. The seemingly straightforward seques into the startlingly surreal.

Usually, Anderson's Time Patrol is unconcerned about the existence or nonexistence of particular individuals like Trygve Yamamura. However, a fictional narrative's divergence from our shared reality can become more public. Thus, the James Bond novels involve a celebrated British rocket, the Moonraker, a nuclear explosion in the North Sea and an open raid on Fort Knox, all in the 1950s. Surely Buchan's archaeological press releases and other announcements about Harald Blacktooth are in this category? A Time Patrolman who returned to the twentieth century to find such events going on would have problems. The Patrol protects a timeline that is indistinguishable from ours except that time travel occurs, the Patrol exists (in secret), its members, like Everard, live in places like New York and Sherlock Holmes was real.

Right now, of the three works currently being read, Buchan's account of Scottish life "after the war" is holding my attention more than either of the other two. However, we will shortly return to The Byworlder to learn more about the extrasolar alien.