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Post by A on May 4, 2012 2:29:50 GMT -5
Well, the 1930s sounds a bit too early for advanced computers that can recognise a person. The 1940s doesn't work, so about the 1970+ would be the tie period. Probably DH/LS didn't focus on a specific time period though, so yeah.
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Post by Very Funky Disco on May 4, 2012 5:10:53 GMT -5
Personally, I go with the early-'80s.
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Post by colette on May 9, 2012 8:40:10 GMT -5
I'm sure that Snicket placed it after 60's because in THH he mentioned laser once in the Chapter where Klaus and Sunny were looking for surgeon. Laser was first used in 1960 by Teodore Maiman. So, in canon the story takes time between 1960 and 2006(when TE was written).
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Post by Christmas Chief on May 9, 2012 14:50:29 GMT -5
I was unable to articulate this before, but I think I'll try now: The series takes place during the most modern time possible for Lemony to still be able to go back and research them as though they happened long ago, but not so far back that he'd be unable to find evidence of the Baudelaires' journey. Whatever period this might be takes place in a different location, so they can still have some modern technology without other basic comforts (e.g., the same way Russia was years behind Westernization before Peter the Great).
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Post by Hermes on May 9, 2012 16:51:06 GMT -5
I was unable to articulate this before, but I think I'll try now: The series takes place during the most modern time possible for Lemony to still be able to go back and research them as though they happened long ago, but not so far back that he'd be unable to find evidence of the Baudelaires' journey. Whatever period this might be takes place in a different location, so they can still have some modern technology without other basic comforts (e.g., the same way Russia was years behind Westernization before Peter the Great). I'm sure this is right, but of course it raises the question when Lemony is writing. Are you taking it he is writing at about the time of publication? That sounds most reasonable to me, but I'm not sure we have any proof of it. If we are going to use technology as a clue, the most important point, I think, is that Prufrock Prep has a computer with a screen - electronic computers go back to the 40's, and machines that could be called computers, though not electronic, much further than that, but I don't believe any had a screen before the 70's.
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Post by Christmas Chief on May 9, 2012 19:07:20 GMT -5
I'm sure this is right, but of course it raises the question when Lemony is writing. Are you taking it he is writing at about the time of publication? That sounds most reasonable to me, but I'm not sure we have any proof of it. Yes, I think so. There are the Dear Reader/Kind Editor letters, which are written as though the books are being published as they're written, for the benefit of the general public.
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Post by Hermes on May 10, 2012 9:59:44 GMT -5
Very true. There are also the messages to Kit, though as they mess up all possible timelines perhaps we should ignore them.
It would seem that at least part of the series was published within ten years of it happening, since Beatrice seems to have read some of it.
But of course, if you are really set on an earlier date, you can say that what we are reading is a reprint, and it was originally published in Lemony's own country nearer the time when it happened.
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Post by Dante on May 10, 2012 10:06:06 GMT -5
I can't wait to see what ATWQ will throw into the mix in this regard. I can just imagine us arguing a few years down the line that the series is a conflation of present-day Lemony's notes and his younger self's diaries as a way of getting around chronological inconsistencies.
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Post by Hermes on May 10, 2012 13:02:25 GMT -5
We have a precedent for that, of course, in The Basic Eight.
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Post by lemonmeringue on Mar 25, 2018 13:02:08 GMT -5
I think the books take place in the past, but not that long ago, however, in a world that is in some details different from ours - North American aristocracy, for one example - in which outdates stuff is used more prominently. I think the entire idea that the books were Victorian or something like that is entirely based on the mock-gothic style, which says absolutely nothing about the actual setting. Instead of an anachronistic more-distant past, that uses stuff from our time, I think it's set in a fairly contemporary time, in which some stuff is simply more antiquated.
The books have been published between 1999 and 2006, and Lemony Snicket was pretty much, well let's say not yet old, pretty much middle-aged, by that time. Yes, Snicket, not Handler - after all, Snicket pretends to be real, and Handler is his represantative, and we'll leave it at that for this matter. The time the books have been published (and written) in real life, is the same time in-universe, a time where we have an unhappy, but living and active Lemony.
As the story takes place, Snicket would be not-quite-yet middle aged, or at the "lower end" of middle-aged rather than the "upper end," if you know what I mean. Same for the Baudelaire parents and Olaf. I know, people act as though Olaf was an "old man" in the books. But he wasn't - he was a fairly young, at best middle-aged man. Base this on the age people normally have children. The Baudelaire parents, the Snicket siblings, Olaf, the squalors, etc. were during the books all old enough to have a teenaged child, but young enough to have a baby. In all honesty - I think they were somewhere between their mid-thirties and mid-fourties at that time.
Snicket the narrator could be somewhere in his fifties, I guess. Maybe a bit older, but not too much older, if at all. And I am pretty sure the books take place in the 80s or 90s. It is also simply the time that makes most sense.
Because it was a time where old stuff often still existed, while new stuff came into being. People had more advanced computers and walkie-talkies and whatnot, but people still heavily relied on books and libraries, used mostly typewriters for writing, and so on. Why shouldn't some secluded towns and really strange organizations use telegraphy? Sure it's outdated, but was and is still possible to use - there's just no need for it, or interest in it. Seculuded towns and starnge organizations are weird, too, and they love outdated stuff, so it's actually not that far-fetched. People always associate decades with what came up in them, rather than what was actually commonly in use, as things don't simply appear out of nowhere and other things disappear. It's just like people always acting as though young people today didn't know what fax machines were, when of course, they do, and fax machines were not only widely used in their childhood, but are very much used today.
Long story short: Rather than people constantly assuming that the books took place long ago with modern stuff thrown in unrealistically for the fun, I am sure they took place not that long ago, with older stuff thrown in fairly realistically for the fun.
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Post by Dante on Mar 25, 2018 14:04:36 GMT -5
You do raise an important point about the influence the prominent illustrations have on us as readers. It's easy for us to think of Olaf as an old man because Helquist so strikingly illustrates him as such; but the text doesn't really say anything of the sort. This also affects our ideas about the time period because of the kind of architecture that's on display.
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Post by lemonmeringue on Mar 25, 2018 15:09:36 GMT -5
I think the illustrations are based on the atmosphere that was originally intended - the mock-gothic style. But of course, "mock-gothic" in style doesn't mean Victorian in time - just like The Addams Family is set in the 60s/90s. As for Olaf's age, I don't know if maybe Handler intended him to be older in the beginning, until the entire background and V.F.D., etc. were introduced. On the other hand, I'm not sure if he really looks that old even on the illustrations. His entire behaviour and lifestyle in the books scream "not that old" and the illustrations make him look rather filthy and creepy, but not necessarily old. He has that weird hair colour, that formerly blond people with beginning grey hair have, and maybe a few wrinkles, but there's nothing that looks really old, rather than in-not-that-good-of-a-shape-and-could-also-use-a-shower.
Edit: By the way, if I were to get more specific, I'd say Violet was born in the mid-70s, Klaus in the late 70s, and Sunny in the late 80s; the Baudelaire parents and Lemony in the early-to-mid 50s; Kit, Jacques and Olaf around 1950. I see the books happening pretty much 89/90. Maybe you could agen up all of them a few years, and have the books in the late 80s, but that would be it then pretty much.
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Post by Hermes on Mar 25, 2018 16:45:14 GMT -5
Well, the issue of Olaf's age has now been resolved ('prematurely aged by a life of villainy').
We've discussed this in a few places, and two things are worth noting: a. If you go by the decor, ATWQ belongs to a more recent period than ASOUE - the 30's, rather than the Victorian age. Which strongly suggests you shouldn't go by the decor. b. There are references to quite recent literature - e.g Larkin's 'This Be the Verse', first published in 1973 if I remember rightly (EDIT: actually 1971).
(On the relation between Snicket and Handler, you might like to check my story Preludio.)
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Apr 3, 2018 5:29:49 GMT -5
Something I mentioned somewhere on this vast website before was that in The Unauthorized Autobiography, Vice Principal Nero writes a letter sometime after the events of The Austere Academy. He encloses a reading list that Ms. K, Mr. Remora's replacement, had provided to her class. Assuming Ms. K is Kit, then this would have been before The End. The reading list includes Roald Dahl's Matilda, which was published in 1988.
Personally, I think the series is set in 'the past' and that's as specific as it gets, but if we're going to pick it apart, we could assume that the events do indeed happen around the 80s or early 90s. This would make sense considering when A Series of Unfortunate Events was first published.
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Apr 4, 2018 15:19:47 GMT -5
I vote in the "If you look at a calendar it's the 1980's, but the Snicketverse is an alternate history in general" camp.
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