Élisabeth Vonarburg’s Reluctant Voyagers breaks with mimetic spatio-temporal bearings through the poetics of uchronia (the alternate history genre), a sub-genre of science fiction (sf). The novel presents an alternate history of North America. The gaps between the fictional universe and the empirical world are revealed at the level of history (actors and events), of politics (established powers and dissenting factions), of demography (physical and socioeconomic conditions), of geography (on the urban and geological scale), and also of science and anthropology (the normalisation of paranormal abilities). While distanciated, the story lends itself by analogy to a re-evaluation of the history and territory of Québec, conflating the imaginary and the factual. We demonstrate to what extent the knowledge and initiatives of the characters constitute a meta-discourse on the literary experience; its production and its reception.