SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?

[Alex Colter]

I recall  M&D c.35 which begins with a lovely section on History, and indeed
alternate Histories:

p350:

""What,-- seek the Truth and not tell it! Shameful."

"Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Hadn't we enough of that from
the old George?"

"Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd,
only in Interests that must ever prove base.
She is too innocent to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,--- who
need but touch her, and all her Credit is in
the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended
lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters,
Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide
her Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble
enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.
As Aesop was oblig'd to tell Fables,

                                   'So Jacobites must speak in children's
rhymes,
                                    As Preachers do in Parables, sometimes.'
Tox, *Pennsylvaniad,* Book Ten of course...""


While I am sure this relates to the subject matter, the explanation may well
require a Book of it's own
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