Fantasy History (cont.)

Restoration

In an altered version of history that maintains contact with recently past reality, Philip Winsor’s Restoration is a fantasia encapsulating, in the author’s own words, “outstanding and discordant elements of the last century, the graces and attainments of the period blended with its hideousnesses and incongruities.” Restoration captures a “deep hearkening to an earlier world, protected and extremely beautiful in many aspects,” embodied in people who are “dominated by the urge to cling to the glowing and glorifying past and who have been damaged and even destroyed by the effort.” In a matrix of tightly worked tension, a studied cast of characters develops from real-life examples, “some who were admirable because they tried to make new lives for themselves and left the past behind, others who seemed pitiful and trivial because their lives were dedicated to reclaiming a long dead past.”

Into Exile

The nexus of fantasy and reality in Winsor’s Into Exile is such that the reader never senses a departure from the real present, near future, or recent past. The central speculation concerns American policy towards the fictional Caribbean island nation of Vierwinden. Like Bulgakov’s satanic ball, there are some instances of historical crossover, where the fantasy is supplied from genuine but unrelated historical events. Cold War spy recruitment is grafted onto the protagonist’s Harvard scene and the development of the character of the “Guy.” A malign void, he is a would-be apparatchik seeking cover from conventional surroundings while facilitating a secret subversive movement – a techno-fascist amalgam suggestive of a Ben-Carson-meets-Sovereign-Citizens scenario – aimed at penetrating the intellectual core of national existence. The Guy’s dogged determination can be attributed to his enormous satisfaction in the rewards, thus a desire to fill the void.

Dom, the protagonist of Into Exile, is suspicious of those who appear to have, or aspire to, an excess of power. He emerges from adolescent introspection to engage in deep-rooted questioning of the condition of society. His character and development are described in detail through his own voice. The controversies and questions confronted by Dom bear an uncanny resemblance to the recent disclosures of Edward Snowden – and with similar effect as Dom eventually passes into self-imposed exile. The shift to an altered history focusing on imaginary Vierwinden is justified by the high relief that this lends to the characters, and ultimately by the articulation of a universal message, which is one of admonition regarding social complacency and its natural outcome: authoritarian subversion.

Into Exile is not simply “fantasy history” emanating from current reality. It is a fantasy frozen in time, for the reality in question is delimited, even if a sense of the “roughly present or near future” pervades. Rather than the open-ended technological world of Edward Snowden, it resembles the early period of widespread internet communication, an age which conceivably closed with the World Trade Center devastation. The focus is also slightly different: not just surveillance, but suppression of freedom of speech is at issue in a society where authoritarian subversion is advanced. Yet Dom, the Snowden-like protagonist, risks all to “get the message out.” Only late in the game does he find a fellow traveler able to advance this cause materially.