Like Reality Unless Noted: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 21:
== Anime ==
* In its first episode, ''[[Code Geass]]'' claims that [[The Empire|Brittania]] invaded Japan in order to get access to its vast natural resources. Some viewers called foul on this, since in the real world Japan is a fairly resource-poor nation. It takes several episodes before viewers discover that 1) the world of ''Code Geass'' is an alternate history set in our equivalent of 1962, rather than a future version of our own Earth, and 2) the resource Brittania wants from Japan is "sakuradite," a fictional mineral that can be used as an isothermic superconductor or energy source rivaling nuclear power, and [[Philosopher's Stone|its discovery in the middle ages]] caused technology to develop along a very different path.
* The setting of any given [[Super Robot]] is Like Reality Except That One Phlebotinum, from ''[[Mazinger Z]]'' to ''[[GaoGaiGar]]'' to ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]''. The few settings that aren't that tend to be some sort of adventure or journey (''Combat Mecha Xabungle'', the first half of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]''). [[Real Robot
** [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann|TTGL]] is hinted to be in the near future. The near ''evolutionary'' future. When the map of the world is seen very briefly in one episode, it looks like a future map of the world where the continents have shifted a bit.
Line 40:
** {{spoiler|Subverted when it turns out Arbre is NOT our Earth and the novel is set in a parallel universe.}}
* Toyed with briefly in Robert Harris' ''[[Fatherland]]'', set in an alternate 60s in a Nazi-ruled Europe. There are a couple of mentions of a President Kennedy (who one naturally assumes to be [[John F. Kennedy]]), but his unlikely characterisation and issues with the timeline are allowed to build up before a minor [[Reveal]] that it's actually ''Joseph'' Kennedy, his father.
* In [[Stephen King]]'s novel, ''[[The Long Walk]]'', the setting [[Alternate History|appears to be]] America in the 1980s, except for a few blink-and-you'll-miss-it details dropped in the narrative, namely that the "German air-blitz of the American East Coast during the last days of World War II", and the existence of April
* A. Sapkowski wrote in his essay ''Pirog'' that critics once attacked him for the "anachronism" of placing batiste panties on an ex-[[Everything's Better with Princesses|princess]] he mentioned in [[The Witcher|one of his novels]]. And added that once that tempest in a teacup subsided, one young author still reacted with cold haughtyness, [[Shown Their Work|showing his research on such a subject]] in his heroine's disrobement
* Inverted in ''[[The Restaurant At the End of The Universe]]'', one of the books in [[Running Gag|increasingly inaccurately named]] ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' [[Trilogy Creep|trilogy]]. An incident is described in which a reader of the ''Guide'' (which more-or-less purports to be a sort of encyclopedia) sued the publishers over one of the more outrageous bits of inaccuracy contained within the guide. The publishers stand by the disclaimer that when reality contradicts what is written in the ''Guide'', then it is ''reality'' that is in error. To defend their case, they hired a lawyer who argued that what was written was more beautiful than the "correct" version and truth is beauty.
* The ''[[Thursday Next]]'' series plays fast and loose with this. Because it's set in an [[Alternate History]] (later becoming an Alternate Present Day), some things happened while others didn't, and vice versa. The problem is that some of the events and books that were "changed" are so obscure, especially to non-Britons, that many readers will have no clue which is which half the time.
** Some are obvious, of course, such as the presence of the People's Republic of Wales and cheese being a controlled substance with prices in the hundreds. Also the cloned neanderthals and other extinct species.
** Interestingly though, it seems that as the series progresses, it moves slowly into our reality. For example, Neanderthals can't breed so will soon all be extinct again, and time travel no longer exists. However, there is mentioned in one of the books an "alternate universe" that has been discovered, which sounds just like ours, implying that the whole series is actually set in a different universe anyway and nothing to do with us.
* Used explicitly in [[Jack Chalker]] 's "Wonderland Gambit" trilogy, which is about alternate histories created within some gargantuan virtual reality game. To save computational space, all elements of reality not explicitly changed by the premise are Like Reality Unless
| |||