Monday, December 2, 2013

BIZARRE SCI-FI NOVEL POSITS WORLD WHERE NATIVES INHABITED AMERICA BEFORE EUROPEANS

The Onion | December 2, 2013

NEW YORK—In a riveting, if slightly far-fetched, work of alternate history that fans of science fiction are bound to enjoy, author Judith Nies’ novel Native American History: A Chronology Of The Vast Achievements Of A Culture And Their Links To World Events imagines a strange fictional world where, prior to its 15th-century colonization by Europeans, North America was actually inhabited by millions of indigenous peoples.

“Numerous Paleoamerican groups inhabited vast expanses of land along modern-day Canada and the United States as early as 1400 C.E., including what would later become the Navajo, Iroquois, Cherokee, and Ojibwe peoples,” reads an excerpt from Nies’ wildly bizarre science-fiction tale, positing a sweeping alternate reality in which vast tribes of “Native Americans”—each fleshed out with their own names, rich cultural backstories, and even strange foreign languages invented by the author—roamed the Americas for thousands of years before any European explorers set foot on the continent. “These indigenous populations eventually established successful dryland farming practices, allowing for the cultivation of crops in the arid midwest and corn-based agriculture from Mesoamerica. Other tribes, however, lived as nomads, utilizing hunting and gathering methods to survive off the likes of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope.”

Sources confirmed that science-fiction fans are sure to be especially thrilled by the shocking conclusion to Nies’ expansive sci-fi tale, in which settlers from Europe, upon reaching America, massacre and drastically marginalize these native inhabitants over the next several centuries.

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