On November 17, 1944, he was somewhere near the German guns - and in London as a time traveler. He had known a girl in Streatham, London, in 1943. He was at college in 1947 and visited Amsterdam in 1952. In 1990, he reflects:
"The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return."
-Poul Anderson, (New York, 1991), p. 178.
- whereas Jack Finney's time travelers want nothing better than to retire in a nostalgically remembered pre-World War I United States. I would be interested to revisit childhood haunts but not in the hope of recovering any lost innocence.
We would like to read a novel about Everard's first thirty years of life.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I too have wondered what it would be like to be able to travel to the past and see myself as a child and my parents. Of course I doubt they would recognize the far older adult "me."
Sean
Paul and Sean:
In one of the James Bond novels, Bond wondered what his younger self would think of him, if they could somehow meet. As I recall, he was in a kind of gloomy mood at the time and believed teenage!Bond would think of present!Bond as something of a failure or morally corrupt.
Hi, David!
Now that was interesting! I like the Bond books, esp. the ones featuring the indisputably evil USSR and its KGB as the opponents fought by Bond. But I don't recall the bit you remembered.
Yes, compared to a 14 or 15 years old James Bond, the far older Bond of the novels is probably not quite as GOOD as his younger self. But the older Bond did have some loyalties, such as to Queen and country and his colleagues of the Secret Service. But the kind of self critical introspection mentioned here seems more typical of Dominic Flandry, not James Bond.
Sean
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