altaltä

Altaltä is a term used in speculative fiction and philosophical discourse to denote a distinct ontological layer that exists alongside the observable world. Described as an "old overlay," altaltä is not a scientifically established concept; its meaning and mechanics vary across authors and contexts.

The term appears to be a neologism combining the German word alt, meaning old, with a suffix used in fantasy lexica to name realms. Its earliest circulated usage is informal, arising in online communities and fringe literature where writers experiment with recursive time and memory as narrative devices.

In one set of treatments, altaltä is a passive background that characters may access through relics, places, or rituals. In others, it is an active layer that can influence events in the primary timeline, generating recursive causality where actions in altaltä feedback into history and future possibilities.

In practice, altaltä serves as a metaphor for collective memory, the persistence of cultural age, and the ways societies reinterpret the past. Critics emphasize its fictional nature and caution against treating it as a claim about reality, while proponents use it to discuss ontology and temporality.

See also: parallel universes, layered reality, alternate history, memory politics.