410. Newspaper from an Alternate Earth

May 5, 2026

Q. I seem to remember a newspaper insert in the National Lampoon that was a single page modeled on the NY Times (though not the NY Times) with stories that seemed familiar, but were oddly mixed up. I was a young guy at the time and thought I had figured it out when I saw a small article mixed in that described how scientists believed another Earth-like planet might exist somewhere else in the universe. I then realized that this was a newspaper from that planet. Does this sound familiar, or was I just high?

A. I can’t shed any light on your state of mind, but the article you remember was real: The special “if” section, by Henry Beard, from the May 1971 (“The Future”) issue. It was a pull-out, full-size newspaper page (front page and page 2) of The New York World, a paper that went bankrupt in 1931. It was basically stories from an alternate universe, as you recall, where Hitler was a minor figure in the art world, the Bolshevik revolt failed, Lusitania was never sunk, etc. And features a large ad for a real but long defunct magazine, Collier’s.

It’s one of my favorite pieces.

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