Saturday, November 10, 2012

Reality vs. Alternative

If you think the Strangers' World is too much like our own, take a brief look at this timeline. It's real - and most improbable from the SW point of view.

January 1 - Kurt Waldheim becomes Secretary General of the United Nations.
Impossible. There's no UN in the Strangers' World.

January 4 - The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced (price $395).
Nearly impossible. The advance of computer technologies is slow due to Arrested Development Factor.

January 9 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor.
Possible, unfortunately.

January 19 – The Libertarian enclave Minerva on a platform in the South Pacific, sponsored by the Phoenix Foundation, declares independence.
Why not?

January 20 – President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announces that Pakistan will immediately begin a nuclear weapons programme.
Absolutely impossible. Nuclear weapons are pure sci-fi.

January 24 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam; he had spent 28 years in the jungle.
Probably he was discovered in some British, Dutch or Australian territory. The U.S. stayed out of the Pacific War.

February 2 - A bomb explodes at the British Yacht Club in West Berlin, killing Irwin Beelitz, a German boat builder.
In the Strangers' World, the bomb should be planted by some anarchist or militant environmentalist group.

February 3 – February 13 – The 1972 Winter Olympics are held in Sapporo, Japan.
Absolutely impossible. Japan is boycotted by a vast majority of European, Asian and South American powers.

February 21 – The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
Sci-fi, again - no space flights yet. Arrested development, you know.

1 comment:

  1. Good day,
    I don't think that RMS Queen Elizabeth can be destroyed in Hong Kong. There's no need to sell Queen so early because there's no jets that kills the transatlantic ships in our history. Yes, she can be replaced by newer ship, but renovation in Hong Kong doesn't seem to be a possible alternative in the stranger's world for me.

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