At least, you’ll have an idea of what’s going on in your new dimension
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Go to an alternate dimension
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Immediately look for a history book
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Find one
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It’s in French
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Most people wouldn’t even know they are in a different dimension. If you aren’t well versed in the history of your home, then you’re just learning new historical facts.
“Huh, I didn’t know Hitler and Einstein were married. Weird.”
“Weird, I could have sworn the Nazis lost WWII”
If you end up in an actual alternate dimension: read the future book.
Yeah fuck food or clean water, let’s read
See, this is why the history book is important. Yeah in your dimension they have sex with the food and have to physically scrub the water clean, but here in our dimension for the most part people eat the food and just make sure the water is clean by boiling.
I think their Wikipedia might be better than a history book at this point
assuming they have an internet…
An history book and common sense can help you get a place to stay.
Gray’s Sports Almanac
First thing you do is find a public library. If the concept of a public library exists in this reality, you’re likely not completely fucked.
If there is no public library, and no one has ever heard of one, you are DEFINITELY fucked.
I always thought the library near where I grew up would be a near ideal environment during a zombie apocalypse. It was a repository of knowledge and entertainment, of course; it was in a fairly small city, meaning that while there might be more zombies than in the countryside, there wouldn’t be as many as in a large city - but there would be resources nearby; there was an armory nearby; there was only one relatively-easily-fortified entrance (to my knowledge); and it had a fully enclosed courtyard which, while it ended up being kind of depressing in real life, could give you a garden in a theoretical apocalypse.
The first and last were most of what I considered when I was a kid.
what if all they have are libraries, the concept of one not being public is alien to them
Librarism is such a fun utopian ideal. Need a computer? Go check on out. Need a shovel, go check one out. Etc etc
but instead of selling a couple of shovels for a whole community, what if we discourage sharing so everyone who ever needs one has to buy one.
So inefficient but profitable
Then you’ve won the dimensional jackpot and you should immediately start trying to thwart any misguided attempts from folks in your original dimension to “rescue” you.
you’d probably have to find several by different tyoes of people, to make sure you aren’t reading a biased account :p
The idea traveling to a other demension and reading something that is dramatically different there your dimensions history only to later find out, no, that guy was just a moron, and now you look like one too, is very funny to me.
I’m imagining our intrepid hero coming off a bender and to the conclusion that they’re in a different dimension. In their efforts to educate themselves about their new world they unwittingly fall fully for conspiracy YouTube videos; what a magical and strange world they’ve found themselves in.
Exactly, depending on the world/kingdom/government you’d find yourself in, the local history books may be propaganda.
Hot take, but the propagandized version would likely be better, since your goal is to find out the present day conditions rather than actual history. What a government wants its citizens to think (and more importantly, how it expects them to behave) is probably more important than finding out actual details of history that early in your stay.
Even so, you may not have the real truth, but you’ll know what you need to navigate the society you are currently in.
Perhaps even written by Victoria.
If your only goal is to find out the current culture of the place you’re currently in, the biased one would likely be better.
Reading history books is the right thing to do, in every dimension you are
Don’t forget to bring a towel.
Checks to see if it’s titled Bearinstein Bears or Barenstain Bears
Or Berenstain, like in this dimension.
“Al, I need to leap again.”
Can I come, too? There has to be one where Trump isn’t president.
Not sure how many people in this dimension have read one.
(Obvious comment is obvious)
I can think of 77 Million who haven’t.
I’m sure they’ve read the Bill Cooper collected works.
how you gon read alternate dimension language?
How do you read anything in a dimension where oral tradition rules and writing isn’t even a thing.
That it’s an alternate dimension doesn’t mean that the language isn’t semiinteligible
First things first: sex robot.
Like looking at a git log when you clone a new repo.
You should read Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein. This is basically the main theme
funny that Heinlein is mentioned. dude was a libertarian Nazi propagandist.
take all his works with a pound of salt.
Uh, curious where you got that from, especially since I don’t see how you can be both a Nazi and a libertarian. Did you misinterpret Starship Troopers to be straight endorsement of militant fascism?
I don’t see how you can be both a Nazi and a libertarian.
there’s a whole bunch of Ron Paul supporters that certainly turned out that way…
Did you misinterpret Starship Troopers to be straight endorsement of militant fascism?
yes!
Did you misinterpret Starship Troopers to be straight endorsement of militant fascism?
yes!
There’s your problem. Just because an author writes a book with a world building premise does not mean they fully endorse the world created. In Stranger in a Strange Land, which came out less than two years later, the main character creates a free love hippie movement. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a few years later, is about a revolution against authoritarian oppression.
If a person names as his three favorites of my books Stranger, Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers … then I believe that he has grokked what I meant. But if he likes one—but not the other two—I am certain that he has misunderstood me, he has picked out points—and misunderstood what he picked. If he picks 2 of 3, then there is hope, 1 of 3—no hope. All three books are on one subject: Freedom and Self-Responsibility.
Heinlein wrote thought experiments. He wrote about the relationship between people and the society they live in. To that end, he wrote about a number of different kinds of society, and how people related to them. Insofar as you could ascribe any particular political ideology to him based on his writings, he was broadly anti-authoritarian. Nothing remotely close to a Nazi.
That said, though, I’d caution that Heinlein was a complicated dude like the rest of us. He had problematic views. Virginia Heinlein was alsp pretty right wing even for the time, his friends complained about it.
