Jazzbeau
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Thian Low
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Thomas Gilman
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Sean Gallagher
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Rosina
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Lois Matelan If you accept Angela's explanation, the past and the future are equally mutable. Changing reality can alter both the past and the future to accommodate the change. We do not know when or whether the bomb sent by Oldmanter explodes, but if it did, it destroyed people living at that time, which might have been related to "causing" Oldmanter's reality to come into existence. We know that Angela's initial reality (Oldmanter's) is an unpleasant and unfree world, and we begin to understand that it bears an uncanny resemblance to the "Utopia" described by Persimmon. However, Anterworld comes into being originally(??) from the mind of Henry Lytten, but then becomes more real when Emily becomes part of it and then even "realer" once Rosie visits it. To put it a slightly different way, your question doesn't make sense within the bounds of the story, because the mutable nature of past AND future means that the classic paradoxes of time travel are avoided, despite the fact that there are NOT many universes (at any given time.)
Martin Thomas
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Trish Weber
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J.J. Garza
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Claire I've been puzzling over this since I finished it last night.
We know the nuke didn't go off in 1962. Angela mentions Nixon getting in in 1976 being a good sign (whereas we know he actually did in 1969)

I don't think the nuke could have gone off between 2018 and 2222 because there is this huge depository of information and records from the past, almost all of which would be destroyed by a nuclear war.

I think oldmanter's transmission of the nuke must fail. Maybe it detonated then and there. We know transmission through the machine causes a huge power outage....maybe this leads to more uprisings and revolution and the dystopia collapses into nuclear war? Basically, Anterworld is real, because Rosalind and Emily make it there, the dystopia is real, and Angela and Rosie work really hard to make the 20th century stable (somehow... by hopping into the near future so it becomes real?)

Therefore the bomb must go off after 2022.

My head hurts!
Kate
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Michele The natives in Anterwold are exactly that: natives of Anterwold. They don't come from anywhere else. They came into being from Professor Lytten's notes and ideas, when Angela set up the universe in the basement.
Tony
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