Amend The Tale

"The Year of the Ransom."

Castelar proposes to change history:

"'I should begin by learning what did happen in Peru after I...left it,' Luis is saying. "Then I can plan how to amend the tale. Tell me.'" (p. 708)

That is so easy in fiction. Imagine: an author has written a well-known novel with a lesser known sequel; the sequel is out of print; the author's estate appoints a second well-known author to write another direct sequel to the well-known original novel but with a completely different plot and resolution. Both sequels exist. However, the earlier, out of print sequel is all but forgotten whereas the newly published sequel is widely read and accepted as such by current readers of the original novel. Any sf reader who learns of the earlier sequel can easily rationalize the contents of these two mutually incompatible texts as resulting from a split in time generating two divergent timelines. It sounds so easy. Luis Castelar will think that God sees history like that - and will also prefer to forget about the earlier sequel which he has "amended."