A "Timeline" for Andre's expansive
Multi-verse: pt 2 of 5
By Maureen S. O'Brien
NOTE: Due to the size of this document we have split it into 5 parts.
Index to Multi-verse part 01
- Forerunners, Star Lords, and Ancient Ones
- Circa Napoleonic Times
Index to Multi-verse part 02
Index to Multi-verse part 03
- The Big Blow-Up, Central Control and the Pre-Solar Queen Era
- The Second Atomic War
Index to Multi-verse part 04
- From The Solar Queen to the Dipple on Korwar
- From the Dipple on Korwar to the Second Galactic Empire
Index to Multi-verse part 05
- The Four Sectors War
- The Second Galactic Empire Begins!
AD 1957 - 1975: The Space Age Begins
October 4, 1957:
“Sputnik I” is launched. A month later, “Sputnik II”
(“The Time Traders”) 'Muttnik', is launched with a dog named Laika on board. The US answered the Soviets and a space race began. But in the Andreverse, there were two huge crashes on the Moon (probably caused by the fact that mechanical pilots or ones inferior to Armstrong were used) and a space station that didn't stay in orbit. After that, both the US and USSR stayed out of space for the next 25 years Spaceflight was largely discredited However, atomic energy seems to be more widely used than in our universe for all sorts of things. Also atom-jets that look like rockets are used by the military for speedy intercontinental flights.
Circa AD 1959?:
Infra-red photography is developed 20 years before (“Galactic Derelict”) takes place; its development is skewed towards using it to photograph the past. By (“Galactic Derelict”) time, the infra-red Vis-Tex machines' film was so sensitive that it could pick up objects removed from the area a week before.
Parallel world Vroom, circa AD 1960?:
(“Quest Crosstime”) 3 - 4 years after Blake Walker arrived on Vroom, he is sent on a routine crosstime run to a barren level to deliver supplies and check on the Rogan sisters for his superiors. There his danger sense flares. He meets Marfy Rogan and learns that her twin Marva has disappeared and the station scientists are hiding things. When Marva is taken to another level, he flees to Vroom with Marfy. Then the Wardsmen send Com Varlt, Pague Lo Sigue, Blake and Marfy to New Britain to search telepathically for Marva. They end up tangling with the radical Limiters who attempt to take over Vroom.
Vroom's economy depends on trade with parallel worlds; so much of it was blasted in the atomic wars that only a string of habitable oases remains. Vacations on empty levels are allowed to ordinary citizens.
New Britain (parallel world) tech: electric vehicles, lowflying 'wings', sonic barrier, light rods. The current Toltec Emperor is the boy Mayatzin.
Circa AD 1963?:
(“Witch World”) After seven years outside the law, and after getting into very deep trouble with the crime organization to which he belongs by crossing Hanson, Simon Tregarth is marked for death. Then Dr. Jorge Petronius, the contemporary Guardian of the Siege Perilous, offers Simon a way out - passage to the world most suitable to Simon through the gate of the Siege Perilous. Simon finds himself in the Witch World and passes out of this chronology. [A similarly powered Siege Perilous has appeared in the Marvel Universe, courtesy of Chris Claremont. But it made the X-Men lose their memories and their powers as well as transporting them to places suitable to their character. And did it ever occur to you that when Simon fights evil in the Witch World, he is symbolically fighting evil in his soul?]
Circa AD 1965?:
(“Fur Magic”) After his father is posted to Air Rescue in Vietnam, Cory Alder is sent to Idaho to spend the summer on his Nez Perce' foster-uncle's ranch. After he touches a medicine beaver skin by mistake, a Nez Perce' shaman sends him into a spirit dream where he is a beaver in an alternate world where only talking beasts live. He fights the Changer (Coyote) and wins back to the world. This book also mentions that the Changer is due to 'turn over the world' around the year 2000, so that's probably the year of the Big Blow-Up. I have reckoned by the Mayan calendar's "end of the world" for this part.
Circa AD 1967?:
(“Operation Time Search”) A secret US government project called Operation Atlantis attempts to travel between universes at an old Indian mound in Ohio. Unfortunately, photographer Ray Osborne blunders through it into the past of an alternate universe where two world powers, Atlantis and Mu, fight for the world with science and psi. The project attempts to find and draw him back to their 'window' with a mind-seeker beam, but Osborne has become too much a part of that universe and cannot return. The project is suspended for fear the same thing would always happen, as Mu and Atlantis pop back up from the sea. Later, the cross-universe experiments apparently led to time travel.
Also in that year:
(“Steel Magic”) Sara, Greg, and Eric Lowry are staying at Tern Manor with their Uncle Mac while their father is in Japan on special duty with their mother. Tern Manor was built by the rich Mr. Brosius, and they are drawn through a castle-shaped folly he built and into the land of Avalon. There they meet Huon of the Horn, the Lady Claramonde, Arthur Pendragon, and Merlin Ambrosius. They go on separate quests to retrieve Excalibur, the Horn, and Merlin's Ring, and thus win back the three lost lands of Avalon from the forces of the Dark.
Circa AD 1968:
(“Octagon Magic”) Lorrie Mallard, a Canadian, is sent to stay with her Aunt Margaret in the US while her grandmother recovers from an operation in England. She sees the same boys who bully her tormenting a cat, rescues it, and escapes into the yard of Octagon House. The cat's owners, Miss Charlotta Ashmeade and Hallie, invite her to come over; they mend her antique china doll when the neighbor girl breaks it. She learns many things there; but she also finds that through a dollhouse replica of the house, the past and present can mix. When a thruway comes to demolish the house, Miss Ashmeade, Hallie, and the other inhabitants of the house shut themselves into the pocket universe of the dollhouse, which is given to Lorrie to keep until she has a house of her own for them to live in. [Miss Ashmeade's magic is similar to that of Miss Ruthevan in ("Through the Needle's Eye"), but much brighter in intention.]
Before the end of the Vietnam war:
(“Lavender-Green Magic”) Three siblings are sent to live with relatives in Massachusetts. There they go through a hedge maze into the Pilgrim\colonial past and meet an herbalist\witch who helps them. They have various adventures there that ensure their town's survival in the present.
Parallel world circa AD 1970:
(“Sea Siege”) 25 years after Hiroshima, Griffith Gunston wants to go to the Air Force Academy and learn to fly jets. [Atom-jets?] But he is still stuck on the Caribbean island of San Isadore with his father's scientific team when the first big atomic war occurs. Then they learn that the mysterious disappearances of ships and subs and destruction of coastal cities which helped touch off the war were caused by hostile kraken, 'sea serpents', octopi and other mutant sea creatures. They manage to survive storms and the sea's attack, rescue the survivors of a Russian sub, find safe ways to fish and travel in this new world, plan to find ways to communicate with the kraken, and hope someday to find out what happened on the mainland. [In this world, the US is part of the "Western Confederation", not the "Western Alliance\Conference". Atomic generators and floodlights are available, though high-tech.]
(“The Stars Are Ours!”) Somewhere around this time in the mainline Andreverse, scientists and techneers frustrated by security regulations which approached a form of 'peonage' created a secret underground movement. They eventually formed "Free Scientist" teams, high-tech mercenaries who impartially sold their services to any industry or government that offered.
Parallel world AD 1971:
(“The Long Night of Waiting”) Lizzy and Matthew Mendal find their way out of the Folk's world and back to Earth. There they meet Lesley, Rick and Alex, who show them the modern world. They are appalled to see developers preparing to build an apartment house right over the gate. Lizzy and Matt do spells they learned beyond the gate to prevent the developers from doing this (to prevent all those people slipping by accident into the Folk's world). Then Lesley, Rick and Alex are made carriers of the Folk's world into theirs, so that eventually their world and the Folk's will be become one again and the rule of iron will end. [If this was attempted in the mainline Andreverse, obviously the Folk's plan must have been thwarted.]
Circa AD 1972:
(“Dragon Magic”) Each of four boys who are teased about their ethnicity go into an old house and assemble a dragon jigsaw puzzle. When they do, each has a vision of a legend from his ancestral culture connected with dragons. At the end, they are better able to appreciate their heritage, and thus able to respect each other enough to be friends.
Circa AD 1973:
(“Here Abide Monsters”) Nick Shaw, Linda Durant, and a Pekinese named Lung Hsin pass through a strange fog and into an alternate world where legendary monsters and the 'Gentry' are real. They find other humans, some of which have been there since the turn of the century, and fight with them against this hostile world. They then find that this land is called Avalon, but this is not the same Avalon as that inhabited by Huon and Arthur in (“Steel Magic”). They also find aliens, strangers to the land who are drawing off the power of Avalon. They help Avalon to fight off the aliens and win the freedom of Avalon while still remaining human.
Parallel universe circa AD 1974:
(“Knave of Dreams”) Ramsay Kimble, a part-Iroquois man, has strange dreams. His friend Greg Howell was part of the local university's Dream Project, which is experimenting with dream telepathy; he encourages Ramsay to write down his dreams. Then Ramsay is killed in a car accident caused by psi and drawn into the parallel universe of Ulad, a world where Indians set up their own kingdoms, to take the place of his twin, Prince Kaskar, who is controlled by the unscrupulous High Chancellor Ochall. When Ramsay dies, so will Kaskar, without any sign of foul play. However, he is rescued by the Duchess Thecla of Olyroun, a small independent country which the Empress wants joined to Ulad through marriage. He aids Olyroun against Ulad and Ochall.
Time Travel and the First Starships
Circa AD 1975:
Seven years before (“The Time Traders”): begins, the US rescued an agent from East Berlin. He was almost dead, but he lived long enough to tape-record information about the Soviets' time-travel experiment and the starship they had found. It was almost dismissed, but the scientists who analyzed his data thought it might be true.
The same year:
(“Wraiths of Time”) A rod of office is found in a strange Meroean site near Lake Chad by Dr. Lewis Brooke. He dies later - an 'accidental' death caused by meddling from an alternate universe where the Empire of Amun (descended from the Nubian kingdom of Meroe) rules Africa with great knowledge of science and psi.
Circa AD 1976:
(“Wraiths of Time”) A year after Dr. Lewis Brooke discovers the strange “Rod of Office”, an ankh emitting an unknown form of radiation is found and brought to a university for evaluation. Tallahassee Mitford, a young archaeologist, is pulled into the parallel universe when the Princess Ashake draws her and the two artifacts are brought together; she is unable to return.
In the same year:
(“Red Hart Magic”) When the parents of Chris Mallory and Nan Smith marry each other, they go to visit their 'Aunt Elizabeth'. Chris buys a model of the Red Hart, an English inn, and it gives both dreams of working together in adventures in the English past. In the present, they both face peer pressure and learn to fight it.
Circa AD 1978:
(“The Defiant Agents”) Tales began circulating about coyotes near the White Sands atomic testing grounds which had near- supernatural cunning. Zoologists investigated and found mutant coyotes with improved eyes, ears, noses and intelligence - coyotes which were no longer just animals. They brought back six cubs which were raised and bred to help humans. Their grandchildren were sent to Topaz. [This date is based on my estimate of the length of time it would take a coyote to be old enough to mate.]
Also in that year:
(“Quag Keep”) Certain Dungeons and Dragons players were brought to the world of Greyhawk by special figures made by a group of amoral cross-universe psychic travelers; they were put into the bodies of the actual people who had given them the idea for their characters. The purpose was to draw as many gamers into Greyhawk as possible, thus bringing Greyhawk and Earth (already close enough that Gary Gygax could psychically perceive and thus 'create' Greyhawk) very close together indeed – probably with the purpose of drawing power from the magic of one and the science of the other. The gaming group succeeded in throwing off the control of the evil travelers, journeyed to Quag Keep, and overthrew them; but they never returned to their own world, and what happened to their bodies is unknown.
Circa AD 1979:
Five years before (“The Time Traders”), the USSR comes out with its first rootless discovery.
Circa AD 1979?:
(“Snow Shadow”) Erica Jansen is invited to stay at the Austins' beautiful house, Northanger Abbey, but finds herself enmeshed in a web of greed, intrigue, revenge, and murder.
That same year:
(“Garan the Eternal”) A plane of the Verdane expedition, of which Gregory Farson is a part, goes off-course and sees a thick bluish haze off in the distance which rises from the ice-plain to the sky. They are too low on fuel to investigate. They note that the haze affects radio, creating strange static that sounds almost like someone speaking a foreign language.
Circa AD 1980:
(“Galactic Derilict”) Submarine frames are transferred whole through time to various outpost-times. This is the biggest transfer until the alien starship two years later.
In the same year:
(“Star Ka'at”) The Ka'ats send a mission to Earth to retrieve "kin" who had earlier colonized the planet; they foresee a disaster [probably nuclear war] and want their people well out of the way. Tiro and Mer make mental contact with Jim Evans and Elly Mae Brown. The children eventually see too much and must be taken back to the home planet. There they are reluctantly accepted as 'mind-kin' to Tiro and Mer. [This may take place closer to the Big Blow-up; until I am able to read this, I will assume it took place at its copyright date.]
AD 1982:
(“The Time Traders”) At this time, multiple offenders can be assigned to the new Rehabilitation Service for the 'treatment'. Ross Murdock is given a choice between that or 'volunteering' for a secret government project. Being sane, he volunteers and finds himself traveling up to the Arctic in an atom-jet (a low- flying rocket) to join Project Retrograde and explore the past. He is persuaded by another 'volunteer', Kurt Vogel, to escape together; but when he realizes Kurt is a spy for the USSR, Ross knocks Kurt out and drives their 'cat' back to the project base.
(“The Time Traders”) The project leaders then inform Ross that they had begun the project because, after a long stalemate, the USSR had suddenly begun using new technology within the past five years which had no traceable prior developments behind it. They were able to duplicate and use one piece of technology; the others they could not. When put together with a dying agent's recording from seven years earlier, they had concluded that the Soviets had contacted a past civilization more advanced than their own. Operation Retrograde was intended to find this source and either use it for the US or close it from everyone.
(“The Time Traders”) When Murdock finishes training, he travels with Gordon Ashe through time to approximately 2000 BC where they found a Soviet outpost and traveled further back in time to a wrecked alien starship from the civilization of the 'Baldies'. Later, they learned from tapes they captured that the Soviets had first excavated a small spaceship in Siberia. Since they already had the basic idea of time travel, and probably as a development of travel into parallel worlds, they went into the past to find other crashed starships. When the aliens found out, they tried to destroy the Soviets' time travel program because they wanted to prevent others from learning the secret of interstellar “FTL” travel. Of course, “FTL” is exactly what both the US and USSR projects decided to go after!
Circa AD 1983:
(“Galactic Derelict”) A few months after (“The Time Traders”), the action moves to Arizona in one of the few deserts which have not been turned into farmland with irrigation. Travis Fox can't remember when there wasn't a 'war scare' going on, but after a big explosion in the Baltics (the Baldies blowing up the Soviet time-travel project), new tension was felt and new fuel rationing begun, so that 'copters [apparently the pick-up truck of this time] were replaced by horses except in emergencies. Fox goes to visit the Canyon of the Hohokam and finds Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe there. He recognizes Ashe as one of his old prof's friends; Ashe tests him and finds out he's a "time-guesser". Fox knows of the existence of experimental time viewers like the infrared Vis-Tex, but is startled to learn that practical time travel has been established. A wrecked alien starship has been found 12,000 years ago in the canyon; and Fox is recruited to come with Ashe and Ross to retrieve it from the past. Unfortunately, when the starship is returned to their time, it sets off the starship's engine and previously set course - with Fox, Ross, Ashe, and a technician on board. They travel “FTL” to the ship's base, meeting scavenger creatures which are either the mutant descendants of the Baldie empire's people or their rats along the way. At the base, they meet sentient flying creatures which they believe to be descended from the Baldies' pets. They see many wonders of science and art in the ruins as well. Finally they manage to refuel the starship and go back to Earth.
Circa AD 1985:
(“The Defiant Agents”) The landing of the starship could not be hidden. [Publicly, it was probably explained as the first flight to Luna and credited to the stimulus of the Free Scientists, since the first successful flights to Luna, Mars and Venus are so credited in an excerpt from the “Encyclopedia Galactica” (“The Stars Are Ours!”). Or Free Scientist stimulus may have been needed because the powers were focused on a 'time race' and ignoring space.] Since the intelligence data collected by other governments would obviously disprove this, necessity dictated that the existence of the alien wrecks be revealed to them. The course tapes were shared by lot among several nations, including the USSR. [This was perhaps the forerunner of the later Survey auctions run by the Galactic Patrol.] Using the course tapes from the alien base and the “FTL” drive principles of the alien spaceship, the US begins to explore and colonize the stars. Unfortunately, they don't realize until it is almost too late that a sleeper agent in the program has transmitted the same information to the USSR. (By this time, there is a 'Star Laboratory' - perhaps the site known later as the 'Star Hall' - and the 'Western Conference Space Council' controls the project's budget and planning.)
(“The Defiant Agents”) So, in an attempt to prevent the Soviets from taking over a prospective colony planet, a crew of Apache colonists is hurriedly shipped to Topaz in what is called Operation Cochise. Unfortunately, it is agreed also that they should be treated with the Redax, a machine which reproduces ancient attitudes as well as ancient knowledge in its subjects. They also bring along mutant coyotes, descendants of coyotes who wandered into the atomic test areas at White Sands. Fox later names them Nalik'ideyu (Maiden Who Walks Ridges) and Naginlta (He Who Scouts Ahead).
(“The Defiant Agents”) Upon arrival, the pilots find that the USSR has left killer satellites in orbit to guard the planet. Thanks to an experimental feature of the ship, the colony ship survives, but a bad landing kills all the crew and 27 of the colonists. The coyotes promptly escape to the outside, but the colonists (thanks to the Redax) experience extreme mental problems. Travis Fox discovers that the Soviet colony is already present on Topaz; they were similarly Redax'd and believe themselves Mongols of the Golden Horde. A psi machine was used to control them, but they escaped its range. The Apaches and Mongols join together to defeat the Soviet forces and agree to guard the Forerunner ruins from either side until such time as all are wise enough to deal with them.
Circa AD 1986:
(“Key Out of Time”) When the colony ship does not return from Topaz, the colonists are presumed lost and Topaz is abandoned. Ross Murdock, guilt- ridden, almost leaves the project. He and Gordon Ashe insist upon joining the second group of colonists as they head for the planet Hawaika six months later. When they get there, they find that time and tectonics have so changed the place that it is unrecognizable from the maps found with the course tapes. Also, no intelligent beings live there, although they were supposed to be. So Ashe, Murdock, Karara Trehern and her dolphins search for a place in which a time probe would be useful. Unfortunately, they end up falling through the gate into the past of that world and change that past. They fear they have created an alternate universe by their actions, and prepare to live out their lives there. [The Hawaika colony survives, and is mentioned in later books (“The Zero Stone”)].
Slightly parallel world? that same year?:
(“Firehand”) When an entire alien civilization suddenly appears from nowhere in the middle of the Hawaika colony, the colonists figure out that it's the result of time agents at work. [And how you can shield your memories from time changes that happened upstream is not explained, but then it wasn't explained in the original books either.] They send a message to that effect on the transport ship, and the US sends back a team including Eveleen Riordan to rescue Ashe and Murdock. Karara and the dolphins had to stay, since Karara had written a history that told what happened, enabling the Corps to find their missing Time agents - and since a race of dolphins swam the waters of the new version of Hawaika.
(“Firehand”) Ashe, Murdock, and Riordan are then sent on a mission to the Dominion of the Sun-Star Virgin, a planet populated by the descendants of primitive Terrans snatched from Earth by a pre-Baldie star civilization (possibly the Star Lords). Terra (or at least the US) had begun trade negotiations with the Dominion; their technology was not as high as Terra's in some areas, but they had psi and a stardrive developed independently of the Baldies which could travel (slowly) to destinations without a journey tape. In the middle of negotiations, however, the Terrans found themselves standing on a burned-off world! The Baldies had destroyed the planet several hundred years ago, instead of (in the original way of things) being beaten off by the psi- gifted population.
(“Firehand”) So, the mission assigned to Ashe, Murdock, and Riordan was to go back 710 years to an area of the planet where the psi originally developed and prevent the local gene pool from being destroyed by a war begun by the most powerful of the local lords. Murdock finds himself in command of the mission as he convinced the locals that guerrilla warfare would allow them to survive, with Eveleen as his second and Ashe posing as a physician. He gets the name 'Firehand' because of the scars left on his hand from his method of resisting Baldie mind control in (“The Time Traders”). The Time agents spend 2-3 years on Dominion, with Murdock finding himself more and more comfortable with the role of leader instead of follower, picking up a new father figure in the local lord he serves, and discovering that he loves Eveleen. Finally their side wins; then they find and face the Baldies who turned out to be behind the whole war. They find that the Baldies (who are hundreds of years in the future of their civilization) are using copies of the Russian time grids they captured. Now they are in a war against the Baldies throughout time as well as space.
[It seems that until the Big Blow-Up, the Corps seems to be paralleling the development of the Bureau of Time Exploration and Manipulation. Also, there are hints in (“Firehand”) that international tension has decreased and colonization increased greatly. It is possible as the series continues that there will be no Big Blow-Up in this future; then again, the Blow-Up may just be later than I have proposed.]
Circa AD 1986:
(“Garan the Eternal”) The Kattack expedition is ordered by the Dictator to seek oil in the Antarctic. It reports seeing a thick bluish haze rising from the Antarctic plain to the sky.
Circa AD 1987:
(“Garan the Eternal”) During the Great War of 1985-88, Captain Garin Featherstone leads a bombing raid into Central Asia to destroy "a vast expeditionary army" gathering there. [This was probably a fighter\bomber action similar to the Doolittle Raid but much more destructive.]
In the same year:
(“The Gate of the Cat”) Kelsie McBlair, a veterinarian's assistant from Evart, Indiana, inherits a house in the Highlands of Scotland from her Great-Aunt Ellen, whom she has never met. When she attempts to tame a local wildcat, she is discouraged by the locals. When she finds Neil McAdams out hunting it, she fights him and falls with the wildcat through part of the stone circle on Ben Blair. It is a gate which takes them both to Escore and Witch World.
Circa AD 1989:
(“Garan the Eternal”) 6 months and 3 days after the signing of the Peace of Shanghai which ended the Great War of 1985-88, Captain Garin Featherstone, ex-fighter pilot for the United Democratic Forces, is hired by Gregory Farson to join an expedition into the Antarctic. Farson plans to penetrate the bluish haze seen by two previous expeditions. When they go through, Garin finds his mind examined and controlled by some alien intelligence. When he is free again, he finds that he has crashed in Tav, an artificially green part of Antarctica where the Folk, the Gibi, and the Eron (sentient lizards, bees, and squirrels) live and fight the Black Ones. The Ancient Ones, a people from the stars who carved out Tav, made the mists and created the sentient animals through genetic experimentation, have all left Tav or lie dormant, except for Thrala of the Light. Garin rescues Thrala from the Black Ones, halfbreed descendants of the Ancient Ones who live in the Caverns of Darkness in the far south of Tav. [The Ancient Ones are certainly Forerunners; but since they did not generally interfere they cannot be the Star Lords themselves.]
(“The Stars Are Ours!”) During the years between 1957 and the Big Burning, there were open landings on Luna, Mars, and Venus. Since they had little wealth and could not be colonized without great expense, interplanetary flights were few and far between, and only for research purposes.
[However, other interstellar colonies may secretly have been founded. The "Star Lords" who colonized Gorth and taught science to the Gorthians certainly had Terran names, a well- equipped fleet of ships, a reliable stardrive, knowledge of the making of gates to parallel worlds, and – what later spacegoers did not have - both total freedom to settle on already-settled worlds and total ignorance of the effect on Gorth's civilization which their meddling would have. Their long lifespan might be so only in comparison to the short- lived Gorthians. Gorth is mentioned in (“Moon of Three Rings”).]
Three space stations were constructed to refuel interplanetary ships and for astronomical and meteorological observation.
