An Interesting Thought for Today

[Paolo]

Saw this while reading today:

There is no such thing as fiction.

There is just non-fiction written in the wrong parallel universe.

Think about that the next time you read a story here!

[cutnbulls2ox (imported)]

Just imagine the huge stack of cut off dicks and balls racked up in that universe by the archive authors !

[fhunter]

Saw this while reading today:

There is no such thing as fiction.

There is just non-fiction written in the wrong parallel universe.

Think about that the next time you read a story here!

Now that is kinda scary thought.

PS. cutnbulls2ox - multiple universes. There are definitely multiple universes there.

[JesusA (imported)]

Saw this while reading today:

There is no such thing as fiction.

There is just non-fiction written in the wrong parallel universe.

Think about that the next time you read a story here!

Paolo sent the quotation to me in an email, with the added line that it was a scary thought that his Blue Creek stories could be true in a parallel universe.

Blue Creek is an alternative history. The story takes place somewhere in the American Midwest in a universe where the 1920s eugenics movement took hold. The story follows logically from laws that were actually on the books in some places, just not enforced so regularly as in Paolo’s version. Good records do not seem to have been kept in any state, but one journalist has tracked down records of 2,851 (minimum number) sterilizations of boys in Kansas between 1913 and 1961. It was boys castrated in Kansas who were the data base for Hamilton & Mestler’s work on life expectancy of eunuchs (1969).

The Virginia law providing for sterilization of the "unfit" was judged constitutional by the Supreme Court in the Buck v. Bell decision of 1927. The Virginia law was based very closely on Laughlin's Law, which figures heavily in Blue Creek. The decision has never been overturned, it just became unpopular, though gradually, over time. Several states passed eugenics laws based on Laughlin after Buck v. Bell showed it to be constitutional. It would not have taken much for Blue Creek to be real. A eugenics law based on Laughlin was still on the books in California until 2014, though it hadn't been used to sterilize anyone since 2010.

Laughlin’s Law (first published in Harry Laughlin’s book Eugenical Sterilization in the United States – 1922) was sponsored by the Eugenics Record Office of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It provided for the sterilization of “socially inadequate classes,” which included dependent persons, such as orphans. Type of sterilization was to be determined locally. The Virginia statue (Chapter 46B of the Code of Virginia § 1095h-m 1924) concluded with the statement: Nothing in this act shall be construed so as to prevent the medical or surgical treatment for sound therapeutic reasons of any person in this State, by a physician or surgeon licensed by this State, which treatment may incidentally involve the nullification or destruction of the reproductive functions.

Blue Creek is a world that almost was...