From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: (urth) PEACE INDEXICON timeline
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 15:58:00 -0500

Robert B. writes:

>I was going by the timeline in the Peace Indexicon, where under the Golden
>Year, six events are listed, including the following: "Charlie Turner, the
>dog man, arrives unexpectedly."

Ah, now I understand the confusion! The timeline you were looking at was the
one mantis made based on the _Liberty_ magazine clue and included in the
_prototype_ for the _Peace Indexicon_. The timeline that appeared in the
final printing of _Peace Indexicon_ was considerably revised, reflecting
further thought and refinement, and some terminology changed. The online
version of the timeline at http://www.siriusfiction.com/ is fundamentally
the same as the print version.

>But how can this be? Den's stroke is years in the future--long after he has
>sex with Sherry Gold. It's clearly impossible--and yet there it is, right
on
>the page before us. Possible solutions include: 1) post-stroke Den is
>looking back to the encounter and re-imagining it from the perspective of
>his current present, complete with revisionist dialogue; 2) Den, adrift in
a
>maze of memories, is conflating events, as confused or disoriented as
anyone
>who's suffered a stroke, or in the twilight of their life has vivid
>recollections of their childhood, but can't remember what they had to eat
>yesterday.

I opt for solution #1. There are other examples of anachronistic dialogue.

-Roy


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