The River Twice (Edge to Center, book 1) by Brenda W. Clough

[james_davis_nicoll]

The River Twice (Edge to Center, book 1) by Brenda W. Clough

Comments

[ba_munronoe]

Do I gather the Evil Uncle keeps showing up? There's historical inertia and then there's 1970 with both Nixon and a dinosaur-ruled south America. [1]

Does Jalanesia have any real world origin, perhaps an abridged Indonesia, or is it as fictitious as Tomainia? (I suppose it could be the result of still further time travelers...)

[1] Was that originally your metaphor? If so, pardon me for mangling it.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Bingo isn't really evil, just in possession of facts about his mother Calla is not.

[daidoji_gisei]

I want it on the record that I would be all over a novel set in the 70s that had both Nixon and a South America ruled by dinosaurs. Plausibly is overrated.

[ba_munronoe]

Well, as a one-off, it's OK. It's when you keep rolling the dice and they keep on coming up ski-jump noses...

[scott_sanford]

This intrigues me, and I am frustrated that I can think of few plausible ways for Tricky Dick and dinosaurs to come into dramatic conflict.

[dsrtao]

First you have to get them on the same stage, and then conflict is easy. Let's do the first part.

Either these dinos were extremely isolated over geologically implausible timeperiods (see Warren Fahy's Fragment for an island take on that) or they set up self-repairing hibernation facilities and only recently emerged. Let's go with the second. [If you want isolation from humanity, I think the other viable alternative is to make them spacefaring descendants who got off the planet around the time of the asteroid strike (which, hey, might have been a war move) in which case they have been busy colonizing other solar systems and are now so ridiculously advanced that they aren't going to bother taking over South America as such. Ken MacLeod and Ryk Spoor come to mind.]

Now, timing to get them to deal with Nixon -- I think you need a rapid invasion scenario late in LBJ's term, with Nixon campaigning on a promise to stop screwing with Indochina and turn attention properly to the dinos.

[daidoji_gisei]

"Only Nixon could go to Argentina."

[ba_munronoe]

"or they set up self-repairing hibernation facilities and only recently emerged."

That's the plot for "Dr. Who and the Silurians", isn't it?

[dsrtao]

Yup. Awakened by energy from a nuclear power plant, so add that to the list of unexpected side effects.

[petrea_mitchell]

In our timeline, dinosaur descendants remained the apex predators in South America until a few million years ago. (Some still survive to this day.) A few rolls of the evolutionary or climatological dice coming out differently might be enough for them to survive long enough to bother Nixon.