The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [205]
2) As I went on working, it was clear to me that at some point Claire would come back to the future, and I had decided that time moves linearly, no matter where you are in it—that is, if you leave from point A, and spend X amount of time living in the past before returning, you will return to A + X. I didn’t want to have to go into my future in order to write Claire’s future—that is, I didn’t want to be dealing with the problems both of historical and futuristic novels simultaneously.
3) The third reason turned out not to be of any particular importance, but in the beginning, when I was still playing with the time travel notion, I hypothesized that the time-passage in the stones might be “open” only in or near periods of social violence—warfare, particularly. That would mean time travelers would be likely to “fall in” during times of upheaval, and to travel between periods of violence, when their appearances and disappearances were less likely to be noticed.21
I later decided that it made more sense for the time-passages to be geomagnetic in nature, and thus they were affected by the ancient sun feasts (which are related to the gravitational field of the earth and its changing orientation to sun and moon). I therefore abandoned the connection with violence—but setting one end of Claires story near World War II did have something to do with that notion.
Q: Why does Roger not “hear” the stones in North Carolina, when he’s fleeing from the Indians and stumbles into the circle?
A: Wrong time of year. If the passage through the stones stands widest open on sun feasts and fire feasts, it is presumably more or less “closed” in the periods between. As Geillis/Gillian’s notes indicate, an attempted passage at the wrong time can be fatal.
Q: Why is there a date discrepancy between Outlander and Cross Stitch with regard to the disappearance of Geillis Duncan into the past?
A: The discrepancy in dates is a mistake—it’s a copy-editing error caused by differences between the British edition of the book, which begins in 1946, and the American one, which begins in 1945. The American book was already in galleys when we sold Outlander in the UK, and the publisher’s feeling was that since changing the initial date would have required sending the whole manuscript back to the copy editor, it was better to leave it. See “Errata” for a fuller explanation of the error.
Q: Why did you choose Scotland during the Jacobite period as the setting for your books?
A: Well, like almost everything else about these books, it was an accident. I was looking for a time in which to set a historical novel, because I thought that would be the easiest kind of book to write for practice. While pondering, I happened to see a rerun of an ancient Doctor Who episode on PBS—one in which the Doctor had a young Scottish sidekick, picked up in 1745. The sidekick was a cute little guy, about seventeen, named Jamie MacCrimmon, and he looked rather nice in his kilt.
I was sitting in church the next day thinking about it, and thought, Well, you’ve got to start somewhere, and it doesn’t really matter where, since no one’s ever going to see this—so why not? Scotland, eighteenth century. And that’s where I started—no outline, no characters, no plot—just a place and time.
Q: Is there any significance to the title Dragonfly in Amber?
A: The dragonfly in amber is something of a symbol of Jamie and Claire’s marriage—not only via the token Hugh Munro gives Claire—but as a metaphor; a means of preserving something of great beauty that exists out of its proper time. Also, amber is a rather mystical substance that’s been used for magic and protection for thousands of years. (See “Where Titles Come From” for a fuller explanation.)
Q: Which cover(s) do you like best?