Even in the best case scenario, we cannot avoid it. No surprise that modern science fiction has taken on a darker flavor recently. To imagine a 21st century without melting ice caps one must rewrite substantial portions of the previous fifty years. If the 2016 election represents the shallow end of the significance pool, the deep end contains climate change: a transformation brought about by human actions decades in the making, frequently stoppable but never stopped, inexorably moving forward into disaster territory. By reifying the alternative, one can temporarily escape the feelings of anxiety that exude from an event that has clear consequences but no clear meaning. The tangibility of a Clinton victory has led some Clinton supporters to imagine it must live somewhere the phrase “ darkest timeline” was coined both to acknowledge feelings of despair and to offer mental refuge in the dim fantasy that somewhere, in a neighboring reality, things must have gone differently. When we perceive an event to be nothing more than chance, the alternative can feel as close as the other side of a coin.įor many Americans, the most arbitrary event in recent history was Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, which could have gone differently if fewer than 100,000 voters across three states-less than one percent of one percent of voters-had just stayed home.

It’s easier to fantasize about the latter, and the fantasies that last longest stem from the historical events that feel the most tenuous. Everything happens for a reason, of course, but when humans look back on history, they tend to sort events into the inevitable and the arbitrary.

William gibson agency review