We have seen that TFSmith's big plan for the ending of the story was a semi-mastubatory depiction of the United States dropping nuclear weapons on a fascist Britain. Was this his original intention when he started writing? Perhaps not. The foreword sees a quotation from 'Introduction to Historia Virtua: Counterfactuals and Alternatives, by Nels Fredericksen, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London,1997'. In the second version, this is changed to 'Introduction to Historia Virtua: Counterfactuals and Alternatives, by Nels Fredericksen, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh, 1997'.
Was this an error in the original? Did the accurate critiques of the story's spur TFSmith to imagine those who had the temerity to challenge the lamentable historical accuracy of what he considered to be his masterpiece dying in a nuclear holocaust, and subsequently to incorporate his furtive desires into the storyline? Or did the responses of those reading encourage him to believe that his audience slavered after depictions of British humiliation, misery and suffering as readily as he did? We may never know the truth.
However, if we judge by the locations in which books are published, North America appears to have undergone some sort of disaster of its own. Of the 26 alternate history books from which excerpts are given, no fewer than 14 are published in New York and 6 in Boston. Clearly, the rest of the continent is some sort of barren wasteland- or TFSmith is not a particularly imaginative man.
It's also somewhat interesting that a nuclear bombardment sufficing to reduce the island of Britain to "an irradiated, diseased wasteland" nevertheless manages to support a publishing house in Edinburgh. Presumably the Scots also revolted, and then very quickly dug a channel so that Edinburgh was not on the "island of Britain".
ReplyDelete