Discussing Other, Alternate Timelines

Folks, the last several weeks have been extremely challenging. I am unable to say why, as what’s going on mostly does not pertain to me…let’s just say it’s a family health crisis and be done with it.

Anyway, I knew I should write a blog, but about what?

I could write about sports — the Milwaukee Bucks made a coaching change, mid-season, which is quite unusual — but that didn’t seem right.

I could write about politics — some of what I’m seeing from people like Rep. Elise Stefanik of NY (R) is extremely disquieting. (Rep. Stefanik seems to have the attitude of “Vice President or Bust” and is doing her best to ingratiate herself with former POTUS Donald Trump despite her past voting record, which shows at one point she was a moderate.) But again, that didn’t seem right…though I do admire Nikki Haley’s pluck in refusing to get out of the Republican primary, mind you. (She’s right that only two states have spoken. There are 48 states and a number of US territories, plus the US emigres abroad, that have yet to vote and thus indicate a preference.) While Haley is almost certainly not going to win the Republican nomination, any more than Bernie Sanders was going to win the Democratic nomination in 2016, Haley can highlight important issues to voters and ultimately make a positive policy difference (if nothing else).

And while that was a long digression about politics, that’s not what I want to talk about today. I am a SF&F writer, no matter how little-known, and thus I think about a lot of stuff most other folks don’t. I’ve done this for a long time, mind you; my Elfy books, which feature alternate universes (where the Elfs lived — don’t call ’em “Elves” as that’s a swear word to them– and the Elfys were created, among other races), were not the first time I’ve ever thought about alternate universes. I may have thought about them even sooner than age fourteen, which is when I read Philip K. Dick’s classic MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which features an alternate universe where the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II.

I’m not the only one to think about this, of course. There are other writers who’ve discussed this in various ways, such as Doris Lessing and the more recent book THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE by Annalee Newitz. But my own ruminations lead me to how my own, personal timeline could’ve been changed by the following events:

2004: Instead of dying after four heart attacks, Michael has one heart attack and survives with brain and body intact. He does cardiac rehab, which I fully support him doing, and we get another ten-twenty years together rather than two. More books of different types result, and at least some of Michael’s artwork survives. (In this timeline, I have one piece of Michael’s artwork. That’s it. It was a brief drawing of what the uniforms looked like in his Atlantean Union universe.)

But even if Michael had still died in 2004, I had another possible better timeline with which to work, as follows:

2011: Instead of dying of a massive stroke, my good friend Jeff Wilson lives despite the heart virus that nearly killed him. He does cardiac rehab and anything else they suggest; after six or eight months of treatment, he’s allowed to leave the rehab hospital (really a nursing home). During this time, we start to date, long-distance…maybe I even manage to visit him in Fort Collins while he’s in the hospital, as it’s under the threshold of altitude that I can tolerate. (Jeff knew I get high-altitude sickness at about 7000 feet and it gets worse the higher up I go.) Books and stories follow, and whether we ever progressed beyond a very solid friendship or not, things would’ve been much better all the way around for both of us.

And even if Jeff had still died in 2011, I had yet another possible, better timeline to work with, as follows:

2014: A good friend, someone I had no idea that was interested in me, makes a play and I respond. (This happened in real life, though not in 2014.) Things progress. Books and stories follow. The relationship is serious enough to perhaps lead to marriage, and despite some major difficulties, we manage to overcome them and forge a life together.

Of course, that timeline didn’t happen either. So how about this one?

2020: Covid-19 does not happen. Millions of people do not die. (If this was lab-grown in China or anywhere else, it does not escape the lab.) People are not shut in for weeks, months, or years; there is no such thing as public-shaming over mask-wearing (I believe masks can help, especially if you, yourself, are ill and don’t know it; you won’t give it to someone else that way. But shaming people is wrong.) There’s no such thing as kicking people off public trails because of fears that they might get Covid…one of the dumbest things I ever heard, yet it happened to a good friend of mine in 2020. (I wish that hadn’t happened to him, too. As we found out later, Covid is not likely to spread outside with the same frequency as it’s going to spread inside with the greater density of people to work with.)

And as we all know, unfortunately that timeline didn’t happen either.

I’ve avoided some of the obvious ones, mind you. (Some folks may be asking, “Why not go back to 2000 and have Gore win instead of W.? Why not go back to 2016 and have your choice, Hillary Clinton, win instead of Trump?” Or even this: “Why didn’t you eliminate the war in Ukraine?”) I think many others have gone over those possibilities, and I wanted to make you think more about smaller, more personal decisions rather than stuff like that. (Well, with the exception of Covid, of course, though Covid caused more small-scale upheaval than just about anything in the past fifty years in my own not-so-humble opinion.)

So, what other timelines could you have had? What other timelines do you wish you would’ve had? (I know I wish Michael would’ve lived. Everyone who’s ever read this blog or known me in any way whatsoever should know that’s been my most fervent wish.) And is it still possible to create a better timeline in the future than the one we fear may happen? (I hope so, otherwise I’d not do anything, much less write this blog.)