Vietnam was unified on July 2, 1976, with the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Because one digressio leads to another, I want to note one of Aurelia’s stranger internal crossings. Although completed in 1976, the novel already contains the Vietnam argument that Lafferty later makes explicit in Part IV of In a Green Tree, “Incidents of Travel in Flatland.” It is an instance of Lafferty allegorizing history from within the postfiguration machinery of the novel

The Frenchman Jules Verne appeared with a blaze of novels that were all "voyages" (but all Science Fiction stories are ‘voyages’ in a sense): Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863); A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864); From The Earth To The Moon (1865); Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870); Around the World In Eighty Days (1874). Verne’s "voyage"novels were genial and pleasant and original. There was good comedy in them. As a comic writer, Verne was at least equal to

“All these things are possible. If you will worry about them, then I will cease doing it. I hate duplication.” “I will worry about them,” the bodyguard said. “It is my job to worry about them. Are you also going on a peripateticus, as Rex calls it, when Aurelia goes?” “Yes. Today. And that is all the questions that I will answer, Mr. Bodyguard.” “But I would like to know—” “Black lightning of which you felt only a sample, man! Black lightning to burn you to a cinder!” Cousin