Real-life events are a recurring motif in The Bone Clocks, often appearing as part of the novel’s settings. They play several functions: grounding the novel’s fantastical elements in the genre of historical fiction and drawing parallels with the ongoing war between Horology and the Anchorites. In 1984, Holly overhears two people talking about the miners’ strike and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a topic that is brought up again when Holly meets Ian and Heidi. In 2004, Ed is covering the occupation of Iraq as a correspondent.

Mitchell then projects his novel into the future, using the same technique to develop a speculative vision of geopolitical unrest and environmental degradation. In 2043, the world is affected by a cataclysmic event called the Endarkenment and tensions arise around the involvement of the Chinese military in Ireland—events that are portrayed in the same realistic mode as real events.

In each case, adding world-wide situations to the novel underscores the relative helplessness of individuals to influence outcomes of events they are greatly affected by. This parallels the way the Atemporal war affects Holly and many of the people in her life. Holly solution is to join to the Horologists’ efforts anyway; the novel suggests that the only reasonable reaction to powerlessness is persevering to act.