Tuesday 28 July 2015

Points Of View In Time Travel Fiction

In The Time Machine, HG Wells describes a journey from London 1895 to 802,703 and beyond from the Time Traveler's point of view with first person narration. In "Time Patrol," Poul Anderson describes journeys from New York 1955 to the American Oligocene, Victorian Britain, post-Roman Britain and London 1944 from a Time Patrolman's point of view with third person narration.

Differences:

country and century of origin;
direction of travel;
number of journeys;
a single time traveler, the Time Traveler, as against a member of a time traveling organization, a Time Patrolman;
first as against third person narration;
mere time travel as against space-time travel;
subjective travel time as against instantaneous transition;
implicit as against explicit paradoxes.

Similarities:

a temporal vehicle that the traveler sits on, not in;
vivid descriptions of visited periods;
the time traveler's point of view.

Anderson's first two Time Patrol collections were Guardians Of Time (four stories), expanded to The Guardians Of Time (five stories), and Time Patrolman (two stories).

The first four stories are narrated from the point of view of Patrolman Manse Everard. The fifth is narrated from the point of view of Patrolman Tom Nomura. The sixth returns to Everard. The seventh alternates between the point of view of Patrolman Carl Farness and the collective viewpoint of the Goths visited by Farness. At last, a time travel story presents not only the point of view of a time traveler but also that of the people he visits.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We also see occasional mention in the Time Patrol stories of time travelers who were not officers of the Patrol, but either legitimate "civilian" time travelers or criminals like the Exaltationists. Civilian time travelers obviously came from the future of the time when temporal travel was invented. I think most civilian time travelers were scholars studying various aspects or periods of the past.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
But are any passages narrated from their points of view?
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Not that I know of, true. But the Patrol included among its functions advising, guarding, rescuing at need, etc., such civilian time travelers. You might say these were its everyday, routine, and peaceful activities. It was one such traveler who rescued Stephen Tamberly, stranded by Don Luis Castelar in the remote past, in "The Year of the Ransom." Guillen Cisneros had been investigating a type of potteryware being made by Tamberly which did not truly belong to the milieu he had been marooned in.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
That is an all too rare and very welcome encounter with a civilian time traveler but unfortunately it is narrated from Tamberly's pov.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good point, we only see Guillen Cisneros from Tamberly's POV. I simply don't think there are any civilian time travels mentioned in the stories by name except Cisneros. Pity.

Sean