Fixed Points in Time (an Oz perspective)

If the TARDIS had landed, instead of Dorothy’s house, would that have been worthy of writing? Would it have become a fixed point in time? (Image courtesy Rampaged Reality, via google image search)

I had a facebook conversation with a friend of mine the other day. He is also an Oz author. We were talking about the Great Book of Records and the role that it plays in our individual stories. Here is what I shared:

As one of the Keepers of Time said to Glinda:

“When an event is written, especially a powerful event that changes a life, it becomes fixed in time—it is remembered. We Timekeepers know these things. We know when fixed points become solid in the flow of time. These points of extreme pressure cause the particles or sands of time to become glass. These fixed points are looking glasses through which you can see and measure time. They do not change. They become entries in the Book of Records.”

–HH3: Emerald Spectacles, Chapter 13 “Fixed Points in Time”

Fans of Doctor Who will recognize the term “Fixed Points In Time.” Here is what the Tardis Data Core says:

Fixed points were events and/or individuals who had such long-standing impacts on the timeline that no one, not even Time Lords, dared interfere with their natural progression.

The only known way to actually create a fixed point in time was by writing events down after they had occurred. If someone read about events that were going to happen to them in the future then the events had to happen the way they had been written (or at least happen in a manner that would eventually lead to someone writing about them as they had been read) because a fixed point would be created. Time was still in flux as long as the reader had not read about his or her own future.

Time is an important part of the Hidden History of Oz stories – how the characters respond to time, how they look forward and back, and how time influences (or not) certain characters.

It’s all part of the amazing and thought-provoking imagination encapsulated (or “fixed”) in the Hidden History of Oz. If you haven’t taken a peek inside, pick up a book or two today.