thoughts toward a flat earth campaign

Flat Earth theories are inherently conspiratorial: at root they’re not about geography but epistemology. The question on the flatearther’s mind is not so much “why would people believe the obvious lie that the Earth is a spheroid suspended in space?” as “what else could I get people to believe, and what else are They making me believe?” So I propose a new tack on the tired old Flat Earth setting:

1. since nothing can really be known, nothing is really unknown – simple ignorance does not exist. Anything that seems unknown is actually being hidden by a conspiracy. Estimating the size and power of conspiracies is the new scientific method. This ties flat earths to the other major strand in conspiracy theories, aside from the existence of a Big Secret: the reclamation of a Lost Glory. In this case, what’s being reclaimed is the excluded middle, which explains why this stuff is so popular away from the coasts.

2. All countries are rated on a Reality Scale. Australia scores 80% reality, America only 10%‡, due to its greater wealth and consequent conspiratorial clout. There is a schism over whether this means Americans only use 10% of their America. A low reality rating might seem like a problem, but it’s actually a disruptive opportunity – any unreality you have is up for exploitation, because if nobody’s sure if it exists, then anything could be there! Which attracts Venture Capitalists, the unreality miners par excellence. Celebrities declaring you a hoax or appearing on the Discovery Channel can drastically lower your reality rating, which is the secret reason why both things exist. Also, your reality rating is the same as your % in lair stat, ie how much of a shut-in you are.

3. the following Earths exist simultaneously, in mutual contra(mis)di(re)ction:

a. Flat America and its rivals, among which John George Abizaid’s version makes it clear why America and Europe, being in the Goldilocks zone for solar visitation, are naturally the most industrious of nations;

b. Flat China,± extending out to the ends of the universe in space and time:

c. Hollow Earth, which is all wuxia inside;

d. Diatomaceous Earth, which is full of glass;

e. Mathematically perfect(ly flat) Earth, which it turns out might’ve been a Hollow Earth in the past?!? According to the last link:

1) Atlantis is really a history of the pre-diluvian HOLE world.
2) In the beggining, all was made geometricaly perfect.
3) The world we have today is just a “reck” of that ancient world, after big cataclisms.”

…see? Flat Earth = lost continents = Lost Glorious Past. It’s mathematical.

f. Realpodean Earth, in which New Zealand occupies the map space that’s usually labeled North America. On this Earth, Guadalcanal has a mysterious gate complex that allows you to “tunnel through” to Europe or America, whichever is more politically influential at the time. Nobody has any idea what that means.

4. since map projections are no longer a problem, each projection is also a competing Earth. The big ones are:

f. Mercator Earth, with a gigantic Greenland, which is why we should stop worrying about global planar warming;

g. Polar Earth, mounted on a pole (see c);

h. Dymaxion Earth, which is constantly reworking its map projection and therefore has very unpredictable sea cargo delivery times.

All the map Earths have a big white border around the outside to hold the oceans in (maybe, say the philosophers, the same white border). The Illuminating Sages have sent expeditions to the corners, hoping to find the Page Number, which will give us some lower limit on how many other universes there are.

Chris Koeberle offers:

I imagine there must also be a panoply of Atlas Earths, with pageomancers who can instantly transport themselves to the facing page, or after much study to a page of the same number in a different volume. And sometimes you have to pay a license fee to visit a copyright trap.
Traveling to the equator or Equal Area (minimum) to transit to Mercator, then making the nigh-infinite trek almost to the poles, where you can make the dizzying leap to Equal Area (maximum)

So you see, the conspiracy really consists of refusing to turn the page. Although doing so would also test whether gravity is local to the page or fixed on some external coordinates.

Trying to cross the middle of any Atlasworld always involves traversing the Gutter, where things frequently get lost.

The wildest academic speculations involve the fabled Registration Marks, which appear off the edge of every page. In theory you could use them to travel to any other page in any other atlas, but only off the edge of that other page, as well. This is either wonderfully powerful or completely useless, depending on who you’re talking to/how much they’ve had to drink.

‡ there are no percentages below 10% and no numbers below 1: zero and negative numbers are a banking conspiracy.
± yeah I know the link says SEAsia, but the old Middle Kingdom idea of China is absolutely a Solar polity, which is to say, exactly like a Galactic polity except it’s unwilling to acknowledge other power centers.

Made it this far? Have some flatearther maps:

The new classic, populated with lost continents galore, a readymade kitchen sink setting – kitchen sink because those tend to have flat bottoms. Note the multiple suns and moons (doubled, so that the black moon can sometimes sneak in front of the white one, creating the monthly phases we see). Consider how gravity works, and what keeps the suns and moons up in the sky. Wonder about what happens really when they set and rise, and how long the nights must be in Gonoria. And wonder who would admit to coming from Gonoria.

Does this version seem less ambitious to you, tailing off into unknowns? But look at the obvious projection distortion of Odin! That takes some special kind of boldness, to just throw that in there.

A rather pedestrian Lost Continent of Mu, nonetheless handy for linking together all those intolerably isolated bits of Oceania. And in case you thought this Pacific Sunken Continent thing was just a Euro-American fetish, here – have an Indonesian Lost Glorious Past conspiracy.