a fictional character becomes a public figure or celebrity - there are fictional US Presidents and Prime Ministers;
fictional events become headline news in their timeline - contemporary fiction can diverge into alternative history.
Poul Anderson's Trygve Yamamura novels are perhaps a "modest" alternative timeline in that the private investigator, Yamamura, does not hit the headlines or trespass into the public domain. In Susan Howatch's Church of England novels, there is hamburger chain called Burgys and Bishop Charles Ashworth replies to Bishop John Robinson's Honest To God with his A Modern History For Modern Man.
All of this suggests some interesting encounters and conversations in Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn between the universes.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And in the example I thought of, the spy novels of the late William F. Buckley, his fictional CIA agent Blackford Oakes sometimes meets historical persons. And there's a fictional Queen of Great Britain in Buckley's first Oakes novel, SAVING THE QUEEN.
Ad astra! Sean
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