So It Turns Out I'm A Little Psychic

Okay so the title of this blog entry isn't entirely serious. But honestly, I don't know what to make of this dream I had? On 14 May, in my journal, I wrote about a weird but entertaining dream I'd had the night before. I've censored some names, but otherwise what I wrote was as follows:


 "Professor S------ assigned our class to a historical library research project. E----- and I were on a team together and S------ told us about a portal to an alternate universe she wanted us to research in - apparently the Alice in Wonderland elevator in the King Library, if you pressed the buttons right (iirc the 8th floor and then the 6th?) brought you to an alternate universe where America had lost the Revolutionary War and Britain had not freed the U.S. colonies. In the other universe, I had to exit the building and cross the street (a charming cobblestoned street) and the library was in a building that somewhat resembled the music concourse in SF Golden Gate Park. The cars driving by looked like cars from the 1910s-1930s and the fashions people were wearing were kind of a mix of Victorian, Edwardian, and 1920s-1940s, like a steampunk/dieselpunk crossover. I checked out three books about George Washington, who in this universe was remembered as a traitor and got hung by the British in 1781 to stamp out the Revolution. I remember when I brought them back to E----- it made me sad to read them. I suppose on some level I've grown attached to the man..."

An interesting dream, but after writing it down I didn't think much about it after that. Until 1 June that is. Because that is when I was listening to old episodes of the official Colonial Williamsburg podcast, and one of them mentioned a book called The Two Georges...

The novel takes place in the year 1996 in an alternate universe where the American Revolution failed - the title refers to a painting in the novel of George Washington surrendering to King George III.  I bought it on Amazon (it's out of print so I couldn't get it at the library) and I'm about halfway through it.

The weird thing about it? Other than the detail of how the war ended (Washington hanging or Washington surrendering), this novel which I had never heard of until June seems to take place in the exact same universe as that dream. The novel's North American Union (still part of the British Empire) has this kind of steampunk/dieselpunk technology and aesthetic, class differences are a much bigger deal than race differences (Richard Nixon is a used car salesman because he was born working class, not aristocratic, so could not become a leader), certain wars and other revolutions never happened - it's freaky.

Obviously, Dreyfuss and Turtledove somehow glimpsed into the same alternate universe I saw in my dream.

Okay, in all reality, I have no idea if it's just a crazy coincidence or not (I've told a few of my coworkers and they all agree it's really weird that this happened) but at the very least it got me to pick up a novel I wouldn't have touched otherwise.

~Nym~