Grantville Gazette 46

Long Ago and Far Away

I write mysteries under the name Kris Nelscott. I’m currently working on the next.

These mysteries are set in an alien world, with unfamiliar technology, and inexplicable cultural attitudes. You’re thinking, She does that in her Retrieval Artist sf/mystery series. Why the pen name? What’s so different about these books?

What’s different is this: The Kris Nelscott novels, about black private detective Smokey Dalton, are set in Chicago 45 years ago.

I wrote the first novel in 1997, and my editor at the time called it “historical.” I was offended. I was alive in 1968, when the first novel was set. I was eight, but I was alive. The first novel takes place in the days surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, and I remember that day clearly. (I was trying on a bunny costume-not Playboy bunny. Easter Bunny bunny-and no one wanted to look at it. They were all staring at the TV.)

I had no idea how 1968 could be historical. It wasn’t that different from 1997. Yeah, in 1997, we worked on computers, but they weren’t that common for blue-collar folks. Some people could afford cell phones, but in reality, the differences weren’t extreme. Most people still smoked in restaurants, most cars could be fixed by a hands-on mechanic, and many of the chains that existed in 1968 still existed.

Not any more.

The book I’m currently writing, which will be out next year, takes place in January 1970. I spent most of this month digging in old newspapers like I always do, because I get great details from old newspapers.

And here’s the first major difference. In 1998, I had to go to Chicago to get my hands on the biggest black newspaper in the country, The Chicago Defender. (The first book, set in Memphis, didn’t use the Defender.) I spent my days either in the public library searching microfiche or in the Museum of Radio amp; Television, watching old video tapes, streamed through their library archive because they didn’t want patrons touching the materials.

Yeah, everything looked old, but not that old. Except the fashions. The fashions were horribly out of date.

Attitudes weren’t as out of date as we would have liked. People still used the N-word in regular conversation-and they didn’t call it “the N-word.”

Now, to dig through the Defender’s archive, I contacted my local library-via e-mail-and they gave me-via e-mail-the password to a library reference account so that I could view issues of The Defender at home. On my laptop. On my computer. On my television. On my iPad. The only thing I couldn’t do with those issues was copy and paste them or excerpt them without some electronic watermark.

I ordered all of my research books from various online sites, and had them shipped to me. I watched videos directly from the TV stations that made them, online, at home, in the comfort of my office. I could’ve watched them on my phone for heaven’s sake. When the stations didn’t have the archive footage I wanted, I went to the Museum of Radio amp; Television. Not just Chicago’s great archive, but also the ones in New York and Los Angeles. They let me search their archives as well.

I started my research Super Bowl weekend, and you know what the hype was like. Biggest This, Biggest That. Commercials! Commercials pre-aired on YouTube! Online Discussions! Local casinos, taking bets. Every bar and restaurant with a Super Bowl Party somewhere.

My 1970 research included Super Bowl IV, which took place a month earlier than it did in 2013, and had almost no hype. Yeah, it was a big football game, but it didn’t mean a lot in Chicago because Chicago wasn’t playing. So who cared about the Vikings or the Chiefs? Who cared about New Orleans-or the fact that the very first celebrity (Carol Channing) actually showed up for the half-time show. The show was a tribute to Mardi Gras, which Chicago did not celebrate.

In fact, the only thing recognizable about my 1970 research was, of all things, the fashion. Yep, it’s back. With the exception of the hair. Everyone says hair was big in the 1980s. They should look at the afro circa 1970. They really should.

I started a list on my Facebook page-phrases you wouldn’t understand (or meant something different) in 1970. One-hundred plus people participated, some I’ve never met in person. Heck “Facebook page” is a phrase no one would have understood in 1970. The phrase that started it all for me? “Tweeting The Grammys.” My brain is locked in 1970 at the moment, but I live in 2013. “Tweeting the Grammys” seemed really weird to me.

We are, as my husband said after I mentioned this, truly in a science fiction universe. The world is smaller-I’ve been corresponding with a friend in Bulgaria all day (that’s not a 1970s phrase either)-and more accessible. We carry more information on our phones than the nonfiction section in my local library has on its shelves.

I am writing this essay on a computer in Oregon. I’ll then e-mail the essay to my husband who is traveling in Idaho. He reads everything first. If he likes it, I’ll then e-mail it to Florida. Once accepted, the essay will get uploaded, and you folks will read it, from wherever you are.

Explain that to someone in 1970. They’ll call it science fiction, and it is.

Just like 1970 is history. It’s a lot easier for me to understand that I am not ten years old any more and ten is a long, long, long time ago than it was to look back at eight from the distance of my mid-thirties. It’s pretty clear that my past took place in a historical time period, because the world looks-and sounds-nothing like it did then.

Except for the platform shoes. And seriously, why would someone revive those things?

Of course, they’re reviving the TV shows too. And that’s about it.

Because really, there isn’t much about 1970 that’s better than 2013. 1970 was smelly (cigarettes, cigars, b. o.), violent (5,000 successful bombings in the US alone), and isolating. Women were second-class citizens. In some parts of the country, minorities weren’t considered citizens at all.

It’s a great place, in some ways a natural place, to set a mystery. But it sure isn’t a place I’d like to live in again.

I like my science fiction world.

I can’t imagine what another 45 years will bring.