Hey everybody. I know it’s been a while; for the last week or so I’ve been preoccupied with writing a story of my own1 so I haven’t really had the chance to continue this spork. But now that my other project is finally complete, I really have no excuse to put this off any longer. So let’s head right into it, shall we?
This chapter’s very first line reveals that John and Joy had considered officially getting married to one another. They never actually do this, but in hindsight, John says that this may have helped their mission somehow. I really don’t see how, since John is white and Joy is Asian and early 1900s San Francisco really really did not like Asians, or interracial marriage. What’s more, John’s speculations do not actually affect the plot in any way, so I wonder why they were included.
John tells us that for over the next few years he and Joy built up their Import and Export Company in the cities of Europe, and that the year was now 1911. If there is one thing I’ve noticed since the characters have arrived in the past, it’s that Rummel has a habit of skipping over entire years, even when his characters should be doing something important in all that time, such as, oh I don’t know, preventing a world war? Now they have only three years before the war breaks out, and they have done nothing to avert the crisis. Plenty of companies operated internationally back then, and would have found a war bad for their business, yet they were unable to prevent it from happening in real life. What makes John and Joy so special?2 And yet John says that it was still too early for them to intervene! When wouldn’t it be too early, the 28th of June, 1914?
We are told, but not shown, that they spent millions of dollars on an anti-war propaganda campaign. However, we are not shown any of their campaign, nor are we even told their target audience. After all, it was those in power who insisted on a war, so merely appealing to the people would do nada. Not to mention that, despite its riches, the Tor Import & Export Company is not a governmental organization. The governments of the European countries, particularly Germany and Russia, would have had them thrown out if they tried anything. The final nail in the coffin of this idea is the fact that television and the Internet did not exist in 1911; John and Joy would be limited to pamphlets, since I doubt that any foreign radio station would have permitted them to make broadcasts.
By the way, we never hear of what happens in Mexico or Japan for the rest of this book. Rummel and his characters really believe that they were totally successful on the first try and don’t even bother to check up on their interventions afterwards. For some reason, I have the feeling that Rummel did the same in regards to his draft of the story.
By now, John claims that his stock portfolio is too large for even the biggest brokerages to handle, being worth about 11 billion modern dollars. By now, I’m sure that his rivals would start to be suspicious, and lest we forget, in 1911 the Progressive movement was in full swing, and trusts were being broken up. There is a reason that nobody can become as rich as Rockefeller anymore. Of course, all this is just so that the protagonists can spend as much money as they want without needing to worry about funds. My Sue-dometer is not going to let me hear the end of this.
We now learn why Joy was using her laptop. She was looking up the stock market prices of real life and comparing them to the listed values in the paper. What have I been saying about the Internet not working in their time period? Apparently, it was not until late 1910 that the stock market in the new universe began to diverge from how it was in the old universe. The cause? Companies which do business in Mexico or Asia3 have begun to be affected by the lack of wars. This is the last time I will mention that the protagonists’ meddling should have made both Mexico and Korea less stable, because we will never hear of those places again after this.
As for Joy’s specific dialogue, it’s so magnificently bad that I feel I must quote it in its entirety:
“It’s happened, love. We finally are significantly influencing global events. We have created a New Universe. The correlation over all the New York exchange stocks is down from 100 to 96 percent.” (page 258)
Who has ever said, “It’s happened, love.”? I want to know.
John and Joy employ about 1300 people, which apparently makes theirs the largest firm of its kind in the western United States. Within five years, Dolphy, Hands and Sal have become their executives. We almost never see him, but Hands apparently did so well that he’s their Vice-President. Are John and Joy supposed to be co-Presidents, or is Joy Just the First Citizen? Surely there were some adults more qualified for these posts? Of course, it’s not like any of this matters, since John and Joy are the only characters who do anything of note.
Surprisingly enough, the cash that Tor’s groupies left behind almost backfires on them. At a company party, Hands asks John how come his stock portfolio contains more money than their company is listed as making.
Are you ready for this? Because I certainly am:
Oh noes, how will our heroes get out of this? Not to fear, J. Random Reader, as John says that he has inherited a large amount of money from European aristocrats. Hands actually believes this story, even though it’s ridiculous, and a crisis is averted.
Without any form of scene break, John then says that the three of them did not actually know that Joy lived with John. But wait a minute, didn’t Sal go out of his way to ensure that John and Joy got the same hotel room? They would have to have suspected something, or he would never have done that in the early 1900s. Rummel keeps forgetting how scandalous that would have been. The so-called heroes spend a page or two analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of getting married, before deciding that it’s unnecessary. Can we get back to the plot, please?
John notices that Joy has been feeling under the weather recently. Not enough to actually affect their mission, but we are told (not shown) that she is unusually tired. John is worried enough that he suggests taking her to a doctor, but Joy rebuffs that doctors in 1911 are so incompetent that they’d lobotomize her for the flu. I find that unlikely, since influenza was known to be the result of infection even back then. Not only that, but the first true lobotomy was not performed until 1935.
Then there is this cryptic line. For some reason, all lines that conclude a chapter must be cryptic:
If only I had known what I do now. I would have preferred a lobotomy. (page 261)
And with John showing a remarkable disregard for the mental health of his partner, the chapter ends.
The chapters are getting short again. The next one has a newspaper excerpt, though, so I’ll leave it for the next time.
Footnotes
1 As much as I want feedback, I won’t link it unless you ask.
2 I know, Sue-dometer. I know.
3 Note that the text says “do business in”, not “are based in”. This is an important distinction, because apparently capitalism only exists in America and Western Europe.
LoneWolf on 12 April 2013, 12:12 said:
The governments of the European countries, particularly Germany and Russia, would have had them thrown out if they tried anything.
Well, they could do some generic pacifist Leo Tolstoy-style propaganda. Russian authorities didn’t shut him up, after all. Neither Russia, nor Germany would have bothered with “war is bad blahblahblah” pamphlets, they had bigger troubles at that point. And I assume that this was exactly what they were printing, because, like you say,
we are not shown any of their campaign, nor are we even told their target audience.
swenson on 12 April 2013, 12:35 said:
In all fairness, she could have stored historical information offline to compare with later. I still want to know how they’re powering the thing, though… and making sure it doesn’t get broken (no replacement parts) or seen by anyone else (there were no microchips or flat displays or, you know, ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS in that day) or have the battery/power converter start to die, or whatever.
I feel like this is probably part of the Democratic Peace Theory. Only REAL democracies don’t go to war with each other, and only REAL capitalists don’t either.
I was going to complain about why this is even in there, if they’re just going to reject the idea, but then I read this:
Oh boy. Not this trope again. Of course she’s pregnant.
I’ve never been pregnant, but I have to think that at least some women have the possibility of pregnancy cross their mind at some point if they’re feeling weird and they’ve been sleeping with someone. And why is morning sickness or missed periods always the only signs of pregnancy in novels?
(If she turns out to not really be pregnant, I will give this book a gold star for subverting expectations. And then immediately remove it for all the other stupidity.)
Brendan Rizzo on 13 April 2013, 10:26 said:
She’s not pregnant. It has already been established that both have been sterilized.
swenson on 13 April 2013, 10:40 said:
Really? Wow. Was I ever wrong. He was using all the usual symptoms of novel pregnancy. So… what, she has cancer?
BlackStar on 13 April 2013, 12:17 said:
Maybe she lied about being sterilized in order to have John’s baby and thus be able to manipulate him emotionally through the child! ……Seriously, though, I agree with swenson. If she’s not pregnant, it’s going to be more of a shock because a woman being “unusually tired” in a novel means she’s pregnant 99% of the time.
Apep on 13 April 2013, 16:22 said:
Oh boy. Now that we’re getting to WWI, I can finally sink my teeth into this.
Bull. Shit. If anything, 1911 is too late to intervene – by this point, international tension has been building for decades. Anyone even remotely aware of international politics knew that a war was coming. Otto von Bismarck, master of international politics, even said that the war would be caused by “some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” Then there’s the naval arms race, particularly between the UK and Germany, the Bosnian crisis, the First and Second Moroccan Crises (the second of which out ‘heroes’ could be dealing with right now), along with a whole slew of other factors. Hell, we could even go as far back as 1839, when Belgium’s neutrality was promised. Europe was a powder keg ready to explode – the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand just happened to set it off.
If you really wanted to prevent WWI, I’d start in 1870 and change things so that France wins the Franco-Prussian war, stalling German unification. But then France would remain the principle continental power, so that might not solve much.
Rummel, this stuff is complicated – which you’d know if you bothered to do more than cursory research. Idiot.
They should also probably be worrying about union problems and strikes. But of course they don’t, because all their employees are good little idealized Americans who don’t truck with that obviously Communist nonsense.
Again, bull. Shit. This would imply that John is probably related to said European aristocrats, thus raising the question of just why the heck he’s living in California instead of, say, London, or Paris, or Berlin – you know, the big bustling cities of Europe. Also why he’s involved in business in the first place – the aristocracy didn’t make money by working, they made money by owning things and having other people do the work. Which is why so many of them went broke and had to marry into rich families not of the aristocracy.
This might be scandalous, but not them sleeping together. At least so long as it remained a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” secret. It’s probably be more scandalous that Joy is one of the company heads, what with being both A) a woman, and B) not white.
I’m not sure which is worse – the annoying padding or the infuriating and illogical plot. It’s like debating whether it’s better to freeze to death or be burned alive.
Tim on 6 May 2013, 15:38 said:
Incidentally, this part isn’t categorised.
swenson on 6 May 2013, 17:06 said:
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.