John Grisham has perfected a kind of fiction in which it would be possible to address the plots of sf novels, like Poul Anderson's
The Shield Of Time, tangentially. In
Camino Island and
Camino Winds, writers of different genres of popular fiction socialize and discuss each other's works. Thus, these writers
could include an sf writer struggling to make sense of his own time travel narratives. Some of his colleagues would not understand the concepts. Perhaps one would understand but completely disagree with the line that the sf author was taking. Such discussions should not be allowed to dominate the plot, which would be about the relationships between the writers of romance, thrillers, detective fiction etc. However, as a
Camino-style novel approaches its climax, one of the issues concerning the reader could be how that time travel novel is going to turn out.
(Sorry about the empty white space at the bottom of the post, which I find unaesthetic, but not letting me delete it is another of the stunts that the New Blogger is pulling.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
What I think is the clearest example from the works of Anderson touching on what you discussed here, talking or writing about writing, would be his story, partly humorous, "The Critique of Impure Reason." A desperate mining plant manager was inspired to have fake stories written to persuade his self aware/AI robot that it was glorious to go to Mercury to work in the mines there!
And it then spiraled way beyond what had been intended, with an unexpected revival of long stagnant literature.
Ad astra! Sean
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