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I sure pick the day to mess with American History

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

I’ve been using the wibbly wobbly web and associated Internet thingy for well over a decade now. In that time I’ve made friends all over the world including America. Funny thing is that today is the first time I can remember being wished happy thanksgiving. Its not just happened once though but several times.

Anyway when I wrote The Electron Jockey I was planning it as a one off so I didn’t think a lot about continuity, setting or well much other than the story itself. Then Tim at Astonishing Adventures Magazine! suggested I might write something else with the same characters so I knocked out The Steward, the Kriegsherr, his Femme Fatale & her Brother (tStKhFF&tB)which has been picked up for issue 2. Still not a lot to worry about – when a plane first came into use and a period of China’s history. Now I was starting to plan longer term so I found another hook in The Electron Jockey to hang Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle from and one at the end of tStKhFF&tB to hang another off that will also need to follow on from Mrs H.’s Knitting CircleDirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom.

But me being me I started to think if this is going to turn in to a strange series of short stories all hooked up in a vaguely serial form and with a common background I need to start keeping track of things. I need to fix the chronology a bit better than sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Now Mrs H.’s pushes the setting in to being alternate history because its premise and its title require two prominent historical figures to marry who didn’t. That doesn’t bother me too much. However it also means that these stories have to be post prohibition and I had a nice idea for a story featuring one of the characters in a prohibition era situation.

So my dilema is do I do unto US history what Hollywood has done to the rest of the worlds history for years or do I at least vaguely try and keep within some sort of reasonable chronology?

Trust me to do it on Thanksgiving. And to all my American friends have a happy thanksgiving.

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