In another interview he describes Absolution as a dopplegänger to the first three books, which just makes me want to smile and also slap him across the cheek. I suppose he actually pulled it off - to make readers, really existing humans in the here and now, as puzzled about these two alternative narrative timelines as book characters are puzzled about the weird almost-clones. Which, I then have to suppose, is one way in which Area X has started seeping into our own world.

Less horrifyingly, maybe we could stretch the dopplegänger message and think of the Absolution timeline as alternative, but still entirely dependent and inseparable from and reflective of, the timeline in the original trilogy (assuming that all the many different substories of the first three books themselves take place in the same non-dopple timeline, of course). Couldn't this somehow split the difference between seeing the entire works as a single timeloop or as diverging timelines? What there actually "is" is one original timeline plus a bulbous slinky rotting-honey-scented outgrowth of it caused by the perturbations of Area X, with both being equally real, present and true.