You’re not going to believe this, but even after the drama of the last chapter, John and Joy have patched things up again. Well, this isn’t entirely true, but Rummel is trying to lead the readers to think so, blissfully unaware of the fact that this was barely a plot twist to begin with, and using it more than once is just stupid. But of the twenty pages of the book that remain, the majority of them are dealing with this “conflict” that should have been resolved in one page. Every paragraph of this book is a disappointment.
Apparently their fight scared Joy enough to stop her street killings… which kind of goes against all her previous characterization, as she is not only a psychopath but also fearless, and doesn’t give a hoot about what John thinks. And John, despite knowing exactly what kind of person he has been living with, desires to record (what he thinks is) a positive portrayal of Joy for posterity.
As I come to this part of our history and the years that went by after I discovered Joy’s street murders, I feel a special need to update our success. Not for my sake. For hers. She would’ve wanted this said, and I envision the happiness on her face and the kiss she would’ve sent to her mother along with something like, “Look Mom, we did it!” (page 316)
It truly eludes me how anybody could possibly still like Joy after everything she’s done, but since John is a murderer himself, I suppose we shouldn’t expect a properly oriented moral compass from him either.
The time period jumps again, to 1933, and we learn that the Tor Import & Export Company has become the third-largest of its kind in the world. We never learn the identities of the first two. In any case, managing a business of that size is too much for our leads to handle, so what do they do? Give the whole operation to Hands, Dolphy and Sal, of course! I don’t think that those three would be able to handle everything any better than John and Joy alone, which makes me think that our protagonists do not actually care about their so-called “friends” or the state of their company. They are somehow able to function without a board of directors, which John oh-so helpfully informs us means that he and Joy can run the whole business as a dictatorship. Indeed, giving all the top jobs to the three squatters who stumbled upon their hideout1 while neglecting any employees with real credentials is reminiscent of the earliest European monarchs declaring the descendants of those who initially fought for them the nobility, or of communist governments granting privileges to their party’s original members and denying anybody else the chance at upward movement. And as far as Rummel is concerned, John and Joy don’t really have any ordinary employees, because they’re “normal” and not super rich like his protagonists and their friends.
Just so we’re reminded that John is a Stu, he’s worth two billion dollars in 1933 money.2 Oh hi, Sue-dometer, it’s nice to hear from you again.
For some reason, the lack of wars in their timeline also causes nationalism to become less mainstream. If the world is truly becoming more peaceful, and organizations akin to real life’s European Union are forming, then that probably would lower nationalism’s appeal, but Rummel has overlooked that this would be counterbalanced by the fact that nobody in the new universe knows of the horrors of Nazism, which were largely caused by fervent nationalism, meaning that there should still be some very vocal opposition to globalization.3 (Hell, in real life many organizations in the United States are convinced that the United Nations is a nefarious plot to eliminate US sovereignty. Without the Nazis around to scare them straight, the Europeans should be just as parochial and backwards.) I wouldn’t mind the peaceful democratization and liberalization if Rummel would just show it, rather than telling the readers about it after the fact from a distance while his characters just sit back and do nothing!
On the other hand, I suppose I should be happy that Rummel is anti-war and outright states that governments, even democracies, will use war in order to instill a sense of fear in the populace, in order to seize more power than they would be allowed otherwise. He is sternly against this, which is more than I can say for many of our current politicians, of either party.
What is truly interesting is that Rummel thinks that a peaceful and democratic planet would have more sovereign states, not fewer. John claims that the lack of wars in the new universe mean that governments are now open to the possibility of recognizing independence movements, even going so far as supposing that Alaska, Hawaii, and California secede from the United States! Even if one ignores the fact that Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Californians have no desire to secede from the Union, the Civil War more or less established that secession is tantamount to treason. This is completely pointless, and seems to be libertarianism gone horribly wrong.4
But the US is not the only state to be willingly balkanized. The United Kingdom for some reason allows every constituent country other than England to declare independence (which makes me think that Rummel is one of those Americans who think that the UK is or ought to be only England, and generally makes every other American look like an ignorant buffoon when interacting with Britons) and Quebec is now independent from Canada. That last one is the only one even remotely likely.5
Of course, the biggest problem with the above is that decolonization wasn’t even considered until the Second World War made Britain and France unable to afford their overseas possessions. They would never give up a colony willingly, let alone all of them. Have our Sues ended racism as well?6
By 1936, we could travel to most places in the world by air. Lacking the great impetus of World War I, airline companies still saw the profit in developing passenger airline service. (page 317)
So much for John’s earlier Wangsting about how he’ll never fly on a plane again after arriving in the past. He and Joy are only in their fifties.
Apparently Francisco Franco still exists in the new universe and still wants to take over Spain, but John stops him in two paragraphs. Boring. Meanwhile, Joy is monitoring India to make sure that a revolt doesn’t happen,7 but cooler heads prevail, so she doesn’t have to do anything, and heads back home. John says that this is an unfortunate occurrence. THIS IS FORESHADOWING.
Of course, the two of them have sex at the airport.
Next, John does some navel-gazing:
If only we could know the future. Not the documented future that time travelers still think of as history even while living in the past, but our future in a new universe we created and in which we were trapped. Had I known the special significance of that night, had I known what would follow, had I known . . . But we humans, time travelers or not, are locked in our own time-bound shell, open to our past, closed to our future. What tomorrow will bring for our personal lives, we never know. And thus, we may unknowingly drink our last champagne, see the sunset for the last time, hear Tchaikovsky for the last time, and make love for the last time. Unknowingly.
If I had only known.
And this brings me to what I find almost impossible to relate. (page 318)
And with yet another cryptic allusion that the readers are getting tired of, the chapter ends. There are only two chapters and an epilogue left. FINALLY!
Footnotes
1 Do not be mistaken, I actually like Hands, Dolphy and Sal. They’re some of the only truly likeable characters in the book, and it’s a shame that they only appear sporadically. It’s just that we never hear of them actually learning how to run a business.
2 And since the Great Depression magically never happened in this timeline, those 1933 dollars are worth a lot more than real-life 1933 dollars.
3 By which I mean peaceful internationalism and possibly world federalism, not what is generally considered the modern definition of globalization: that of corporations being practically above the law and exploiting Third World countries as much as they like with no comeuppance.
4 As far as I know, while libertarians believe in the right of any entity to secede from its state, their utopian fiction only does this to areas that actually want to do so, or in other words, not California.
5 Now, Rummel says that Northern Ireland, not Ireland, is now independent from the UK, which suggests that the rest of Ireland became independent at around the same time as in real life, without any intervention from the protagonists. I am really beginning to wonder about their criteria for intervening.
6 And now my Sue-dometer won’t shut up. Thanks a lot, Rummel.
7 But didn’t Rummel just establish that in the new universe racism no longer exists and people in the colonies are no longer being exploited?
Pryotra on 24 September 2013, 13:44 said:
…
No. You know, I’m not even British, and I can tell you, without doing any research, just how stupid that idea is. Though with the tsar just deciding to abdicate for no reason, it’s not the stupidest thing to go through Rummel’s little head.
But-but-but-but they’re DEMOCRATIC! And democracies never do ANYTHING bad. Ever.
I would like to know just how this happened, and how the weather changed because that other countries were more democratic.
Oh this book. Seriously, sometimes it’s badness is actually enjoyable.
Brendan Rizzo on 24 September 2013, 19:58 said:
How the weather changed? That’s simple. Butterfly effect. Shame Rummel only applies that elsewhere when it’s convenient for him.
Pryotra on 25 September 2013, 12:56 said:
Hm. I’m not sure that the Butterfly Effect could account for that. I mean, unless their actions have caused major changes in, for instance, the amount that factories produce or cars or such, I’m not seeing it.
At the very least, this should be mentioned.
Epke on 25 September 2013, 14:41 said:
This butterfly?
Hahahahahaa w-w-w-what? The UK didn’t keep those colonies because they were racist… they kept them because they earned boatloads of money.
Brendan Rizzo on 25 September 2013, 16:03 said:
Actually, weather is a chaotic system, so even an imperceptible change, such as John and Joy displacing some air by spontaneously appearing from the future, would magnify over time.
True… but since their choice of colony was always outside Europe, it was influenced by racism also.
Lone Wolf on 25 September 2013, 18:09 said:
To be exact, racism was, partially, the result of most British colonial conquests being non-European (Britain had some colonies in geographical Europe, but they were only a minor part of its Empire).
In any case, there’s no reason for Britain to let go of her colonies Just Because. At least, Rummel could have depicted John&Joy participating in the anti-colonial struggles, but I guess this was too leftist for him and too prone to depict the liberal democraties in a non-positive light.
Apep on 25 September 2013, 18:23 said:
re: Dust Bowl/Weather/Butterfly Effect
I was going to say something about how the sudden appearance of the “heroes” wouldn’t have done anything to prevent the massive over-farming of the Great Plains that caused the Dust Bowl, but upon further research, it appears that at least some of said over-farming was encouraged by higher food prices in the wake of the Russian Revolution and World War I. So, yeah, I guess John and Joy’s presence somehow magically preventing all that isn’t so impossible after all.
Also, Pryotra, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression weren’t really linked, beyond the former making the latter even worse.
Pryotra on 25 September 2013, 18:39 said:
I doubt that it would magnify so much that it would cause a drought not to exist. Besides, it could have also caused really, really nice weather in Russia, for all that we know. It’s just too convenient I guess. There are limits to things that Sues should be able to do.
It would have been a good idea for them to mention this.
While you’re right, I honestly think that given the fact that a lot of the factors to cause the Dust Bowl were still there, and even when there was less overfarming, another drought did happen around the fifties, the only difference was that by then they’d found water via underground stuff.
A Real Libertarian on 27 September 2013, 15:50 said:
And since the Great Depression magically never happened in this timeline, those 1933 dollars are worth a lot more than real-life 1933 dollars.
Actually they would be worth less. Without the massive deflation of the Great Depression the us Dollar would be worth less and less every year.
Brendan Rizzo on 27 September 2013, 21:45 said:
…Oh. Sorry about that.