Writer Holds That Reality Broke in 1983, Convenes Readers to Rule on Films of That Autumn

THE INTERNET — Reality was "forever broken" in 1983, according to Christopher Knowles, author of the newsletter The Secret Sun, who argues that patterns from that year are now replaying in strange and inexplicable ways.

Knowles points to two nuclear near-misses in late 1983, particularly one on November 7th, and wonders aloud whether a simulation of sorts "kicked in" then. He recalls that his late friend Tracy Twyman believed humanity died in 2012 and was sent to a simulated Hell, a notion he says he tries not to credit. He also remarks that the debut of the first season of Stranger Things opened the night before the November 7th episode, in his telling.

The author then turns to the cinema of that autumn. He suggests that television's The Day After, and the film Testament, may have broken a spell of nuclear dread, since he remembers the fear subsiding after they appeared. He calls this a possibility that may need investigating. The Dead Zone and Brainstorm, he writes, seem to exist in a numinous space outside their own reality, and he links the latter to the drowning death of Natalie Wood.

Other entries receive more earthly treatment. Never Say Never Again he finds low-energy, while Risky Business surprised him by being good. The Big Chill he reads as a Boomer declaration of cultural war, and The Right Stuff he dismisses as tedious. He recalls seeing the re-released Rear Window in a grand old theater, and admits he never saw Possession or Deathstalker at the time.

The essay also carries a broader lament for modern America and its technologies, which the author describes in strong terms. It closes, as is the custom of the house, with a plebiscite: readers are invited to vote in the comments on which films belong in the Canon.