This was a good sequel to a truly awesome story.

(Guess I would have been even happier to see more of Lois and Clark in the epilogue, but that's me.) And I really loved this:

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“Are you sure about this?” Lois asked.

They were standing outside an unfamiliar house in the suburbs, and Lois’s stomach clenched. It was one thing to know that you had alternate versions of your parents in another world. It was another to knock on a door and confront them.

The thought that they might reject her because she wasn’t their daughter was paralyzing.

“Lucy is with them,” Clark said. He looked good in his charcoal suit. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it a little. “This is a gift…If I could see my own parents again…”

Lois nodded slightly and squeezed his hand in return. With the other she reached out and knocked on the door.

It took a moment for the door to open, a moment in which Lois felt her knees weaken. She’d faced gunfire in Iraq that had made her less nervous than this.

When the door finally opened, Lois heard a gasp as she stared at an older version of the woman who had raised her. A moment later she was enveloped in an embrace so tight she could barely breathe.

It was good to be home.
That almost brought tears to my eyes.

Personally I don't care much about Lana one way or another, but I realize that it was necessary for her to make an appearance in the epilogue. You wrote the necessary interlude well.

And I was glad to see Cyrus again! Yay!

To me, though, the most interesting aspect of the epilogue was how it underscored that although this 1990s LnC altworld resembles our own world in many ways, it is fundamentally different from the world we are used to:

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He’d decided to make a big splash immediately, to keep the government from covering everything up.

This government didn’t even try. Within twenty four hours the passengers were already being released. They weren’t even required to stay in quarantine, something Lois felt was a mistake.
Consider how trusting this world is.

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There were no twenty four hour news networks here, although Lex News was apparently considering making the transition.
Without such an outrageous amount of information - some of which may not even be true, mind you - people may in fact feel less scared.

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In a world without You Tube and tabloids paying outrageous sums for gossip, people were more polite and genteel.
I think this is a lesson that many people forget too easily. It is easy to take one's own world for granted - one's own society's gadgets, one's own society's brands, one's own society's tabloids and YouTube videos, and one's own society's silent commands regarding what it means to be normal and to fit in. That is why it can be so disconcerting to meet other people from other societies, who can prove to be so different from oneself, despite appearing so deceptively similar.

The second most interesting aspect of this epilogue was of course the description of how H.G. Wells helped Siegel and Shuster to invent Superman as a comic book character.

It was interesting to learn about Kent Taylor and Clark Gable. Wikipedia says this about Kent Taylor:

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Along with Clark Gable, Kent Taylor served as the inspiration behind the name of Superman's alter-ego - Clark Kent.[1]
Well, fancy that!

As for Clark Gable - well, when I first heard of him, I thought to myself that he had almost the same name as Superman! laugh

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Clark Gable's most memorable movie character must be Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind. Another person who appeared in that movie was George Reeves, who later played Superman in the 1950s TV show, The Adventures of Superman!

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George Reeves on the right. The still is from Gone With The Wind.

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George Reeves as Superman.

Another person Shayne told us about here was the real-life inspiration for Lois Lane, actress Lola Lane! (Wooops - I almost wrote Lola Dane!)

[img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2001/1849648332_3cf3a7fa8a.jpg?v=0[/img]

Okay, all this was a lot of fun, but why did Shayne include this interlude in his epilogue at all? Let me guess that Shayne is telling us that Superman is a real person in all those other universes out there. (Or at least in several other universes out there.) But Superman doesn't exist for real in our world, and therefore H.G. Wells had to make sure that he at least exists here as a comic book character. That way people in "this world" (which, all thing considered, is probably not "our" world after all - I mean, have you heard of reporter Lois Lane reporting from Iraq?) - well, people in "this world" would recognize Superman when they saw him and realize that he was there to help! How fascinating it is to think that our world, and Shayne's Lois Lane's world, may be the anomalies, because in these two worlds Superman doesn't exist for real!

That was a stupendous fic, Shayne, and I don't see how it can not be a Kerth shoo-in!

Ann