19th-20th Century Earth
19th-20th Century Earth (Kiravic: Ēarth kês Sintox-Féox Petraséga) is a 21198 speculative fiction novel by Virak Kōrōsin. Set on a fictional planet called “Earth”, which it describes in great detail with inset maps and illustrations, the book describes some 200 years of the planet’s history, including the rise and fall of empires, revolutions, genocides, and devastating global wars.
Premise
Earth is usually understood to be populated by humans (though the dominant species of the planet is not explicitly identified in the text). Most of the cultures, religions, and political systems of Earth have recognisable real-world analogues, albeit overlaid on a radically different geography and historical trajectory. Most of the book centres on the countries surrounding the planet’s second-largest ocean - loosely inspired by Levanto-Sarpic cultures - which undergo rapid technological and economic development over the course of the book, fuelling an exciting series of internal and international conflicts.
Reception and Impact
Upon release, 19th-20th Century Earth was panned by literary critics for engaging in excessively detailed worldbuilding at the expense of a coherent or compelling story, and for its “utter lack of the bare-minimum plausibility required to maintain readers’ interest in works of this genre.” Kōrōsin’s artistic vision for his fictional world has been described as “a shockingly meticulous exposition of comically sophomoric tropes.” In spite of such criticism, Kōrōsin’s thick description of a vaguely-familiar fantasy world appealed to many readers - particularly adolescent males - and it quickly became a commercial success. Authorised translations have been published in most major national languages, as well as a translation into Khunyer by Kōrōsin himself. It has proven to be a highly profitable property for the Futuron Corporation, which has produced numerous tabletop games, videographic games, animated films, and merchandise lines based on the book.
A decade or so after entering print, the book began to attract more serious reconsideration from critics and academics offering a more charitable interpretation of 19th-20th Century Earth as having much greater intellectual depth than it had been credited for.
If we peel back the garish outer layers of Kōrōsin’s Earth - impossible plot devices like the ‘Armenian Genocide’ and such cringeworthy juvenile notions as ‘Belgium’ - we begin to uncover an understated but deeply insightful treatment of weighty questions about the nature of man, the causes and consequences of war, the origins of political order, and the banality of evil. Kōrōsin’s knowingly overwrought world - sufficiently familiar to be accessible yet sufficiently exotic to be intriguing - serves as provocative bait to draw the reader into this intellectual quagmire and challenge their assumptions about the grand arc of history.
— Mediolanus Áreuvartan, Annual Reflections on Popular Literature, Issue 12, Vol. 4
Some have attributed a cosmopolitan liberal agenda to Kōrōsin, based on the recurring theme of liberal-democratic states triumphing over their illiberal and authoritarian adversaries, culminating in the book's final chapter 'The End of History and the Last Man'.
Author
Virak Kōrōsin (Khunyer: Kőrösi Virág) is a first-generation Kiravian author of Hendalarskaran Khunyer descent. He is a lifelong resident of Śervinak, Niyaska, a working-class port city in the Valēka metropolitan area. Despite the substantial royalties from his book and its derivatives, Kōrōsin continues to restore car interiors at the shop established by his immigrant parents, with whom he still lives. 19th-20th Century Earth is his only published full-length work to date. An anticipated prequel, 16th-18th Century Earth, has been delayed for six years and counting.