Retcon
Entry updated 5 May 2025. Tagged: Theme.
Shorthand for "retroactive continuity", the rewriting of established back-story, also used as a verb; a widespread practice in Comics and far from unknown in sf prose series. Its first appearance was in the letter column of the DC Comics title All-Star Squadron #18 for February 1983, actually on sale three months before the notional date. The term as originally conceived referred to continuity inserts that added to existing story continuity without disrupting it, often very useful. Following much misuse and outright abuse of the practice it is now understood to mean the opposite: something that overwrites and changes existing continuity. Indeed it might be said that the term "retcon" has been retconned.
A noted sf example is Isaac Asimov's major retcon of his Foundation sequence to merge it with his Robot stories, with the initial trilogy's predictive science of Psychohistory now shown to have been propped up by Secret Masters in the form of Telepathic Robots working behind the scenes to ensure that history follows the "right" course. A minor retcon in Orson Scott Card's Ender series is the rebranding of its insectile Aliens as "formics" to supersede the unfortunate "buggers" used in the first book, Ender's Game (August 1977 Analog; much exp 1985).
The term has also featured in Torchwood (2006-2011), and later in its parent series Doctor Who (1963-current), as the whimsical name of a fictional memory-wipe Drug (see Amnesia; Memory Edit). This was introduced in the first episode of Torchwood, "Everything Changes" (October 2006), and most promiscuously used in the show's third series. [DRL/RH]
previous versions of this entry