The Outlandish Companion

by Diana Gabaldon

  The Americans’ response to the book was, “Once she has Jamie, why would Claire even think of going back to Frank?” whereas the English editor’s response was, “But what about her nice husband back in 1946?!” The British editor felt that Claire didn’t spend quite enough time worrying about poor Frank, and might be perceived as coldhearted. Consequently, there are six additional paragraphs scattered through Cross Stitch (that aren’t in Outlander) in which Claire worries about Frank.

  Beyond small copy-editing changes, I did alter a bit of geographical description that was incorrect; the sort of readers who go through novels with a map in hand will have noticed (in Outlander) that I had Fort William misplaced by a number of miles, and that it is not really feasible to end up in Inverness while on the way to Oxfordshire, no matter how you mean to travel.

  The British editor also asked me to excise the brief scene that concludes the chapter titled “Raiders in the Rocks,” feeling that this was perhaps slightly too graphic for their intended audience. I was not quite sure why that particular scene struck her as more graphic than a number of others in the book, but it was not—as most of the others were—integral to the plot or thematically connected to other parts of the book. Removing it would do no damage to the book as a whole, so I agreed to cut it out.2, 3

  Beyond such minor cosmetic differences, though, the U.S. and U.K. editions are the same, and the texts of the U.S. and U.K. editions of all the other books are completely identical, as the U.K. publisher now prints directly from the U.S. text.

  1See Appendix VI for a list of foreign editions and publishers.

  2There was one other small change; an alteration of one line in a later scene, so that—as the English editor put it— “it looks like they’re having normal sex.”

  3What with one thing and another, I was never sent the galley-proofs for Cross Stitch (normally, this is the last chance an author has to check for errors, specify small inclusions, or alter the text in any way). I was therefore shocked and dismayed, upon receiving the printed book, to find that the editor had replaced terms such as skein dhu with “sock knife,” and that someone had—for reasons unknown—massacred the small comic “hedgehog” scene in Chapter 23.

  THE GABALDON THEORY OF TIME TRAVEL

  t’s all Claire Beauchamp’s fault. If she hadn’t refused to shut up and talk like an eighteenth-century woman, these would have been perfectly straightforward historical novels. As it was, though, being too lazy to wrestle with her natural inclinations through a whole book, I found myself instead obliged first, to allow her to be modern (not that I had much of a choice; she’s remarkably stubborn), secondly, to figure out how she got there, and thirdly, to conclude what happened then.>>

  The stone circles helpfully presented themselves in the course of my research into Scottish geography and settings, so I had a mechanism for the time travel. The actual mechanics and implications of the process, though, required a little time to be worked out—whoever erected the stone circles having not thought to chisel instructions on them.

  Since Claire herself had no notion how time travel worked—and was unfortunately deprived of Geilie Duncan’s company in Cranesmuir before being able to compare notes—the explication of the process has been slow and halting, developing through the various books, as further bits of information come to light, and as those capable of travel begin to discuss the subject.

  A couple of things are obvious: 1) the stone circles mark places of passage, and 2) the ability to pass through time is evidently genetic.

  Now, we don’t yet know whether the stone circles are only markers, meant as ancient warnings of a place of mysterious disappearance, or whether the stones themselves play some active role in the “opening” of a door through the layers of time. I incline to the first idea, myself, but it remains an open question.

  So far as the ability being genetic, it’s apparent that not everyone can travel through the stones.1 Of those who can, we know that two (Brianna and Roger) are descended directly from two others (Claire and Geillis Duncan). This suggests that the gene for time travel is dominant; i.e., only one parent need have the gene, and only one copy of the gene need be present in a person in order for the trait to be expressed. It’s like the ability to roll one’s tongue into a cylinder; if you don’t have the gene for this trait, you simply can’t do it at all. If you do, it’s perfectly easy and natural.

  Genes that control traits of this sort normally occur in alleles, or pairs, one allele being derived from each parent. Each parent, however, will have two alleles—one from each of that parent’s parents. This means that, for instance, if a person (Brianna Fraser, for example) is descended from a traveler and a nontraveler, then she will have only one time travel gene—but that gene is sufficient to allow the trait to be expressed; that is, to allow her to pass through time-gates. However, it also means that she possesses one travel gene, and one nontravel gene. She will pass only one of the alleles on to her offspring, and which one is given to a specific child is purely a matter of random assortment.

  If the child’s other parent (Roger MacKenzie, for instance) is also a time traveler who is heterozygous for the traveling gene (that is, has one travel gene and one non-travel gene), then we have the following possibilities:

  In other words, on average, if Brianna and Roger have four children, three of them will be time-travelers, and one of them won’t. If they have one child (Jeremiah, for instance), the odds are three out of four that he will be able to travel—but there’s a one-in-four chance that he can’t.

  However, if Jeremiah’s father is not a time traveler (Stephen Bonnet, for instance), then the assortment is as follows:

  Which in turn means that Jeremiah may still be able to travel, but the odds are only one-in-two, or fifty/fifty.

  On the other hand, we only know Brianna’s genotype for sure; Roger could have received a traveling gene from both parents. If he did, then his genotype is TT, and all the children born to him and Brianna will be able to travel.

  On the third hand, we don’t know for sure that Stephen Bonnet isn’t a traveler. After all, a person wouldn’t find that out until he or she happened to walk through a circle of standing stones—and only at the right time of the year. We can assume from Geilie Duncan’s research that this doesn’t happen all that often—though it does happen.

  Geillis Duncan seems to have done a lot of research, and probably knew more than anyone about the ways and means of time travel. Unfortunately, she’s dead,2 so unless she wrote down more of her findings somewhere else along the way, we’re just going to have to try to work things out by deduction and experiment.

  We must also bear in mind that Geillis Duncan may not always have been right in her own deductions, either; for instance, she was originally convinced that a blood sacrifice was required in order to open the time-passage. We know this is not correct, since Claire passed through without any such assistance.

  Geillis also thought—presumably on the basis of ancient writings she later discovered3—that gemstones offered a means both of controlling the process of time travel (opening passages at times other than the sun feasts and fire feasts, for example) and protecting the traveler. She appears to have been closer the mark in this assumption, since Roger was in fact protected in his journey—first by the garnets on his mother’s locket, and then by the diamond given to him by Fiona Graham.

  The grimoire that Fiona found and gave to Roger contained Geilie’s hypothesis that the time-passages were located at spots where the “ley lines” (lines of magnetic force that pass through the earth’s crust) come close enough together that they are drawn into vortices, forming passages that join the layers of time. Evidently the time-passages may indeed be subject to some influence of magnetic force, since they stand widest open on the sun feasts and fire feasts—the times of year when the gravitational pull of the sun is most pronounced with respect to the earth’s lines of magnetic force.

  Still, these are only hypotheses; the true effect
of gemstones remains to be seen.

  This is as much as we presently know, concerning the mechanism of time travel. Beyond the simple fact of the phenomenon, though, we can observe and deduce various things concerning its effects. In other words, how, when, and why one time-travels is one thing; but what happens to the time-traveler—and to time—on the other side?

  Presentism

  LACK OF PERSPECTIVE in literature (or in readers) often causes a contemporary condition I’ve heard referred to as “presentism”; that is, a disposition to judge all literature by the narrow standards of present time and present culture. This leads to peculiar phenomena such as the denunciation of classic novels such as Huckleberry Finn, on grounds that they deal with issues such as slavery, women’s civil rights, etc., in a way not consistent with the present-day notion of political correctness. In essence, this attitude is based on a failure to acknowledge that any time other than the present has actually existed; since that underlying assumption is clearly mistaken, the resultant attitude—that it is reasonable to judge historical times and characters by modern standards—can’t possibly be taken seriously. At least by me.

  PARADOX, PREDESTINATION, AND FREE CHOICE

  There are always two choices facing a writer who deals with time travel, whether these are addressed specifically or not: one, the time travel paradox (that is, can the past be changed, and if so, how is the future affected?), and two, the choice between predestination and free choice.

  These questions are of course linked through the underlying notions of linearity and causality—naturally, if one declines to accept the hypothesis that time is linear, but one does accept causality (and it is, I think, impossible to write a story in which the notion of causality does not exist. “Experimental fiction,” yes—story, no), then paradox not only becomes possible, but must almost certainly become a major focus of the story.

  If one accepts the hypothesis that history (that is, the events of the past) can be changed, then one allows the philosophy of free choice on the part of characters. If one rejects the hypothesis that history can be changed, then one is forced to accept the notion of predestination.

  If the past can’t be changed by the actions of time-travelers, then this implies the necessity for predestination (or post-destination, as the case may be)—that is, the basic idea that events are “fated” to occur and thus are outside the abilities of an individual to affect.

  Accepting this notion implies that there is some large order to the universe, much greater in scope than human action. As a philosophical or religious point of view, this is appealing to many people; we would like to think that somebody is in charge who knows what he’s doing.

  On the other hand, the notion of predestination doesn’t do much for either our sense of self-esteem or our sense of possibility—and both are important to the notion of story (we identify with characters, and we keep asking, “And then what happens?”). It leads to a feeling of “Why bother?” that is counterproductive both to endeavor and to absorption in the story. I’ll tell you; predestination can work in fiction, but it’s much less attractive than the notion of free choice.

  The acceptability of a story to a given reader depends primarily on the suspension of disbelief: the reader’s acceptance of the reality created by the author, even when this reality runs counter to the reader’s own experience. An author has a greater chance of achieving this suspension of disbelief if he or she can keep as much of the story as possible within the reader’s frame of reference, altering only those elements that must be changed to achieve the desired reality.

  Consequently, it’s easier for a reader to accept a paradox-story—one involving circularity and predestination—if it is told only in personal terms, detached from any major historical events. Telling a time travel story in which major recognizable events are changed will disturb the reader’s suspension of disbelief by setting up cognitive dissonance between what the reader knows to have happened, and the created world he or she is trying to enter.

  This is why the most successful stories of this type most often involve either a resolution or a process in which the main character ends up as his or her own ancestor and/or descendant. [The two best-known classics of this type are Robert Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps, and David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself.]

  AN EXCEPTION HERE is a type of story that has recently become popular, called “alternative history.” In this sort of story, the reader is asked to accept as a beginning premise that some crucial event of history took place differently—the South won the American Civil War, Hitler won World War II, etc.—and the story proceeds on the basis of that assumption. This requires an upfront, conscious suspension of disbelief from the reader.

  For me, stories that involve free choice on the part of the protagonists are more interesting to write, and, I think, much more likely to be attractive to readers. In this particular time and culture, the idea that we do have individual power over our own destinies is not only widely accepted, but highly desirable (the fiction of other times and cultures naturally may—and does—reflect different notions of individual power).

  How to deal with these opposing choices, then? That’s a decision for an individual writer; for myself, I decided to have it both ways—to allow free choice, but not to change major historical events (ah, what it is to be a godlike Writer!). The Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel therefore depends on this central postulate:

  A time-traveler has free choice and individual power of action; however, he or she has no more power of action than is allowed by the traveler’s personal circumstances.

  A necessary corollary to this postulate does not deal with time travel at all, but only with the observed nature of historical events:

  Most notable historical events (those affecting large numbers of people and thus likely to be recorded) are the result of the collective actions of many people.

  There are exceptions to this corollary, of course: political assassination, which affects a great many people, but can be carried out by a single individual; scientific discovery, geographical exploration, commercial invention, etc. Still, the effects of events such as these depend in large part on the circumstances in which they take place; many scientific discoveries have been made—and lost—a number of times, before reaching general acceptance or social relevance.

  Thus, the notion that knowledge is power is not absolutely true—knowledge is power only to the extent that circumstances allow that knowledge to be used.

  That is, if a time-traveler arrives in a society where he or she is merely a normal citizen, then the traveler has relatively little power to affect social events. Madame X arrives in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution, for instance. If Madame X is in fact merely a time-traveler, and is not taking the place of an extant citizen, then she is not an aristocrat, has no connections among the powers of the revolution, and is thus in no position to affect the overall course of the revolution.

  Even if she should somehow gain access to the Petit Trianon, scrape acquaintance with the Queen, and hint that it would be injudicious to make remarks regarding cake… the French Revolution was a complex social phenomenon, emerging from the results of years—centuries!—of actions taken and not taken by hundreds and thousands of people. Madame X very likely cannot take any individual action that would succeed in preventing the revolution as a whole; that was a social event of such complexity that control of it is simply beyond the scope of any individual.

  Madame X does, however, retain the power that any individual of that time has; she can warn a friend that it would be wise to leave Paris, for instance. If he listens, she may indeed save his life—and thus change “history” (but not recorded history).

  Ergo, a time-traveler can exercise free choice, and can effect small-scale, personal changes in the past—such as advising a friend to plant potatoes, thus averting the consequences of an anticipated famine. However, because large social events are usually the effect of the cumulative actions of large
numbers of people, the time-traveler most likely cannot make a change in larger, well-documented historical events.

  Ergo, from a “story” point of view, we preserve the philosophical and fictional advantages of free choice, without incurring the cognitive dissonance associated with changing “history,” as perceived by the reader.

  NONSIMULTANEOUSNESS

  Two individuals cannot occupy the same physical space; two species cannot occupy the same ecological space, or niche. Ergo, it seems intuitively obvious that two entities cannot occupy the same temporal location. The trick here, of course, is that physical space and ecological niches exist outside the individual, while time exists inside the individual. Any moment in time—or any longer segment (a lifetime, for instance)—belongs only to an individual.

  Therefore, the implication of nonsimultaneousness is clear; two individuals can exist in different spaces at the same time, but an individual cannot exist simultaneously at more than one temporal location.

  This leads to one of the interesting basic questions of time travel—so, what if the individual does try to exist in more than one time? Is this possible?

  In terms of our physical frame of reference, no, it isn’t—but the nice thing about fiction is that one isn’t limited to the physical frame of reference, by any means. If one assumes nonetheless that it is possible for a person to exist in more than one temporal location simultaneously, we get entertaining complexities and possibilities, such as the Heinlein and Gerrold stories mentioned above suggest.

  These stories depend on an assumption of duality (or other pluralities) of time and space—that an individual is in fact a different individual from one moment of time to another (which is certainly true, in terms of physical and perhaps mental processes). Thus, under this hypothesis, a person is not really a discrete entity, but rather a contiguous chain of identities, all with a great deal of similarity but all slightly different, and (this is the basic assumption) that any of these identities can persist physically, if removed from the temporal chain that binds them together.