AtDDtA1: Do Not Imagine

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Do not imagine,' Lindsay instructed, 'that in coming aboard
Inconvenience you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual.
There may not be mangrove swamps or lynch law up here, but we must
live with the constraints of the given world ....'" (AtD, Pt. I, p. 9)


Cf. ...

Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is
what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to
some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

-Thomas Pynchon

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594201202,00.html#

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/

This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his
introductory blurb proclaims the world of AtD as what the world might
be with a minor adjustment or two, this paragraph seems to indicate
that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not
intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a
world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints
he's already established.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25


counterfactual

Counterfactual history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_history

Counterfactual History: A User's Guide

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/109.3/bunzl.html

Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary Research Tool

http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/gesint/lehre/2002_2003/counterfact/lebow_ch2.pdf

Welcome to ... Uchronia, the Alternate History List

http://uchronia.net/