Truth is Transported

             For whatever reason I have been trying very hard to find some sort of connection between Man in the High Castle and Kindred. Until tonight I was drawing an absolute blank (might have something to do with my brain being a bit scrambled, but I digress). The connection I found was that in both tales we see a transportation of modern ideals and beliefs through time and space. For instance, P.K. wants the reader to maintain their idea of what truly occurred in American history in order to make his general thesis more effective. Such examples include technology and apartheid in the post WWII world. It is because if our knowledge of what truly occurred when the Allies defeated the Axis powers that we see what Dick is trying to accomplish. I found this same technique in the writing of Butler in Kindred. Like Dick, Butler is attempting to use the reserves of knowledge in a modern character to serve as a antithesis for what is seen when transported to another era. The only difference between the two novels is that the beholder of knowledge in Dick's work is the reader whereas in Kindred this role is fulfilled by the main character Edana as she travels from 1976 to the early 19th century south. For instance, her ideas of racism and political correctness are mute in the world of bigotry that is the Pre-Antebellum South. By creating this dichotomy, both authors have effectively demonstrated how lucky the participants (readers of Man in the High Castle and Edana) truly are to live in the world that they live in. For the readers of Dick it is the difference of a result of a war and as for Edana in Kindred it is the difference of a couple hundred years.