A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a science fiction novel published by Madeleine L'Engle in 1978. This is the status of literature in America in the early decades of the new millennium: fictional representations of history that insist upon telling a story of America that is not whitewashed of all its ugly acts are being banned alongside books telling stories that dare to suggest gender just might be a little more complicated than ministers and talk radio hosts can conceive. Into this not very brave and not very new world inevitably arrive books that no rational mind could possibly imagine being controversial enough to join the ever-expanding list of literary works deemed too dangerous for young minds.
Author Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time was one of the top 25 most frequently challenged books during the 1990s, according to the American Library Association. Among complaints by those looking to have it banned back then in what rather amazingly looks from today’s perspective like a more innocent time was that its message stands in opposition to fundamental tenets of Christianity. In addition, the novel written for children and young adults was accused of indoctrinating those young readers with a message that belief in magic and faith in religion is essentially the very same thing. A Swiftly Tilting Planet has not yet faced the same outrage and concerted attempts to ban it from schools, but that is most likely due to its not being as well known as the author’s most famous novel. Since the magic in this sequel is even more pronounced as an ideological necessity for protecting the world against right-wing authoritarian impulses, it is likely only a matter of time before the sequel shares the same dubious infamy as its prequel.
It is at this point that the danger to impressionable young readers of exposure to unicorns arises. The mythic single-horned creature enjoyed a carefree existence free from being politicized for millennia. While there have certainly been billions of people throughout history who did not embrace unicorns to their bosom, they did not do so out of fear that the unicorn was a symbolic incarnation of the danger of changing the past in order to alter the consciousness of the present. The plot of this novel is dependent upon unicorns being the instrument by which traveling through time is made possible. The young protagonist of the story who is sent on a mission to alter present circumstances by going back in time must “ride” a unicorn to impact this transformation. The mission is complicated by the fact that while the unicorn is endowed with the magical ability to travel through time, traveling through space is infinitely more difficult. This limitation on the unicorn’s power means the mission to alter the present by changing the past will require an extensive trial-and-error approach of getting to just the right “when” that will facilitate the ability to get to the right “where” in order to assure arriving at the precise right moment in which the future can be changed.
The past which must be changed in order for the future to be altered so that presentation of the book is no longer what it was involves the complete erasing of the historical record of a dictator called Mad Dog Branzillo who is bringing the world to the verge of nuclear annihilation. The present-day to which the reader is introduced is thus a very dangerous place and the means by which it has reached this point is a very ugly story. After all, there is no one single feel-good story about the rise of a despotic tyrant. History needs to be changed in order to avert the potential end of the entire species. In so doing, the knowledge that everybody has of that ugly history will instantaneously be erased the moment the past is changed. Everything about Mad Dog Branzillo that everybody ever knew will cease to exist and be replaced with a new version of history. And, of course, they will never know the difference. The only history they will know is the one that took place following the ride of the protagonist upon a unicorn back through time.
With that understanding of how the magic works in this novel, it becomes much clearer how the future destiny of A Swiftly Tilting Planet tilts toward being banned. And the danger it presents to impressionable minds within certain political quarters comes into very sharp focus. Those factions have already made themselves quite clear by being quite vocal that they are fundamentally opposed to altering the present by going back in time to change history. Of course, the villainous mechanism necessary for this magic to take place in the real world isn’t unicorns. But CRT is considered every bit as mythical and dangerous to the legacies of all the Mad Dog Branzillos whom they have deemed worthy of protecting.
