>I'm loving SOS! Just thought I'd get that out of the way before this
>astonishingly quibbly nitpick.
>
>If Star Trek the show doesn't exist in the UF universe, what is
>the line "Every one's a Captain Kirk" in 99 Red Balloons
>referencing?

OK. A quick explanation, for those who haven't heard before:

The universe has been retroactively rebuilt many times. The core of this rebuilding, on at least two occasions, is the fall of 1991 on Earth, WPI specifically. As this rebuilding is dependent on the culture of this period, all fictional materials up to that point -do- exist and, by and large, -continue- to exist.

HOWEVER.

As history progresses both forward and backward from 1991, it changes in gradual but irresistible ways. Atlantis, for example, is told of by a survivor who crashes in Greece and befriends Plato. The 'War of the Worlds' broadcast is inspired by the crash-landing of a Zardon scout craft. Etc. etc. etc. In the future, those fictional sources from which characters, equipment, etc. are derived fall out of the general mass consciousness, and eventually any linkage between, say, the 3WA trouble consultants Kei and Yuri and an animation dated back to 1981 is regarded by the vast majority as tinfoil-hat territory.

Aside from a few hyperdimensional travellers or omnipotent beings, only a tiny handful of people are aware of any linkage at all; in general, these are people who are close either to the re-creation of the universe or to the creation of the specific items which are linked to the Earth culture mentioned. Even then, most of -these- have nothing more than a vague concept that something is wrong with their perception of reality, and NONE of them talks about it at ALL. It's not a comfortable topic under the best of circumstances.

In short, a 'Star Trek' TV show and the actual existence several hundred years later of the characters from that show are not contradictory, nor do they cause any paradox. It just so happens that the universe (read: the authors) doesn't -want- people to notice, so they don't.

And if you try to make the universe notice, your theories will be filed in the same place as the collected political thought of Lyndon LaRouche.

Redneck

Red wizard needs money badly...
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