Time Shift

A while back, I posted a poll about what sequels people would like to see. As of this writing the most popular result is Expanding Horizons with 6 votes.

Conspiracy - 4 votes
Horace's Curse - 4 votes
Virtuality - 3 votes
The Duel - 2 votes
NFP - 1 vote

The option “Other” also got five votes. And I realized belatedly that I neglected to include Storms on the list.

So I’ve been working on chapter five of Expanding Horizons. It’s a bit interesting. Chapter four was written back in 1999. The life for the typical American teenager was a bit different then. Very few had cell phones, and those phones were extremely primitive by today’s standards.

This turns out to be pretty important, since a lot of Expanding Horizon’s plot centers around Julia being able to communicate with Brent surreptitiously while keeping her real identity secret. When Julia wants to sneak him a picture of herself in EH4, she takes a picture with a Polaroid camera and slips it onto his windshield. Were she to attempt something similar today, she could simply take a picture of herself using her camera phone and send it to him.

Future plot twists rely on certain people being able to easily communicate in secret. In the original version, it gets pretty complicated and contrived at points. There’s certain information that simply can’t feasibly get from point A to point B unless people meet in person. At least that was the case in 1999.

But I was struggling with how to handle this. I decided I would just make the shift and move along as though everything were normal. Chapter four was written in 1999, but chapter 5 is being written in 2012. Each will reflect the technological norms of its times.

I don’t have to change a whole lot in the story. The tale of adolescent rivalry is an old one, and it tend to play out similarly no matter what decade it takes place in. The plan is the same, all that changes is the execution.