Fans of science fiction have long become accustomed to the concept of Parallel Universes. This is the concept of multiple realities existing simultaneously, in “parallel” to each other but never interacting. But to craft such a science fiction story the parallels must, at least momentarily, be allowed to intersect, transporting the hero or heroine along with the reader into a different, yet equally valid world. Such a parallel universe is often portrayed as operating by different laws, either of physics or society. And given such different postulates, a writer can then let his story be carried away by the logic of such new rules into a novel blend of artful science.
And yet Parallel Universes do exist. They exist here on our very planet. They are created by the constraints of time and resources of our news media.
There were five billion new stories today. Several thousand of them were documented and recorded in a manner suitable for distribution. And yet, tonight’s Ch.9 News will chose to air only a dozen or so. In fact, Ch. 3, 7 and 13 along with 33 will be distributing the very same stories. Tomorrow’s newspapers will highlight these same news items while, being blessed by somewhat more of the space-time continuum, they will add a couple of dozen low-cost, low-effort filler pieces.
Most Canadians and Americans receive the continuous stream of Current History, (News) in exactly this manner. And yet parallel Current Histories do exist! For a small minority, in this age of the Internet, it is possible to click Alt-Shift and change language, alphabet and keyboard layout and enter such a Parallel Universe of Current History. For the rest of us, we only become aware of the existence of such Parallel Universes on the rare occasion that they intersect with our own.
And yet, intersect they do! Those are the times when events of overwhelming importance seem to come out of the blue. Reporters scramble to airports, dictionaries in hand hoping the next day to present logically, what they themselves know nothing of. Thus the omnipresent “human interest” spin on all such events.
There were many such intersections of Parallel Universes. A few examples are:
August 19-25, 1991, a coup and counter coup in the USSR, followed by the dismemberment of an empire that had held the world hostage to the fear of nuclear holocaust for forty years.
September 11, 2001, the issues of the Middle East come to roost in New York.
November 2004, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, a country few could even find on a map.
August 8, 2008, Russia invades Georgia.
Each time, the consumer of pre-selected pre-digested news, asked indignantly, – how come we didn’t know more? Yet each of these events unfolded according to the rules of a Parallel Universe of which we were unaware.
As I write this, there are headlines in Ukrainian papers that are far below the event horizon for western news media. Medvedev, Russia’s President, in a public letter and video to Yushchenko, Ukraine’s President, undiplomatically lectured him on the correct interpretation of the Holodomor genocide-by-famine, on Ukraine’s attempts at NATO membership, on language policy, on arms trade with Georgia and on the preferred results of upcoming presidential elections. Coming on the anniversary of Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, these threats are far from empty.
Hence my book. Yaroslaw’s Treasure is a novel that introduces the reader to the Ukrainian Parallel Universe in all of its historic intricacy, but in the palatable format of a thriller. In my book, the fall of Kyiv to Batu Khan’s Horde in 1240 and the Orange Revolution of 2004 are historically and spatially intertwined and bound together by the logic of this Parallel Universe. As one of a generation of Ukrainian immigrants that managed to live their life in two Parallel Universes, I knew that I had to tell the story.
