Two decades ago, I was a prolific producer of bad, bad, horrible science fiction *crap.* I had a few reasons for doing so that seemed good to me at the time; when the reasons for writing (publication was never a serious consideration) went away, so did the urge to write fiction. Since then, I’ve gone from an average output of a few pages a day to… well, I think I’ve written ten pages of fiction in twenty years. Amazing the effect incentive can have.
Anyway, a while back I posted some inane yammerings about problems I have with a particular form of time travel fantasy… where Our Hero finds his mind transferred back in time to his own younger body. Last night for no readily apparent reason I had a thought for a somewhat different take on the idea: instead of one person awakening to find that it is, say, 1986… *everybody* on the planet does.
Science fiction? No. Fantasy? Yes. Crap? Very likely.
But it seems there could be some interesting things to explore here If on, say, January 1, 2013, the entire planet wakes up to find it’s January 1, 1986, there will be some interesting outliers. For starters… what about people who had died between those times? Would John Q. Smith, who died on January 1, 2000, wake up on Jan 1 ’86 like any other day? Will he wake up brain dead? Will he wake up and find that he has been transported back from Oblivion/Heaven/Hell/Nirvana/Valhalla?
And with *billions* of people who have a knowledge of the future, there will be a mad dash to grab the wealth they know is coming. Ten million programming geeks will rush to re-create Facebook, despite the fact that the Internet of 1986 could not support it. People will awaken to find that not only are they young again, but they are no longer in prison for murdering that one woman… but they will also find that the widowed husband of that woman not only has his wife back (maybe?), but that he knows who the killer is, and is perfectly happy to hunt his ass down and kill him to prevent the murder. A young Osama bin Laden, if he’s not brain dead, will find himself of considerable interest.
Plus, survivors of genocides, civil wars, tyrannical crackdowns and such will be out for blood. Millions of people will invest large sums in the stock market, since they know the future… but the future is all different know, and millions of people will find their investments lost. Technologies that failed will not be pursued, or will be pursued differently, with unpredictable ends.
Will married couples still be married? Will people grieve for those born in, say, 1990 and who now won’t be born due to changed circumstances? Tens of millions of locks will stay locked because the combinations have been forgotten. Millions of crappy mindless jobs staffed by teenagers will find themselves un-done by the captains of industry who now inhabit those teenagers.
Oh, boy! Mayhem!
If you want to appropriate this idea… go for it. If this idea is not new – and I hardly expect that it’s original to me, I’m probably the latest in a long line of failed or unfailed “authors” to dream it up – I’d be interested in getting references.