Usually, a film flashback shows us what happened. Occasionally, it shows us what someone said happened. One scene on British TV showed us what Watson thought happened at Reichenbach: both Moriarty and Holmes fell to their deaths. The film Gambit showed us what Michael Caine's character said was going to happen, then showed us what did happen. My companion came out of the cinema very confused - thinking that the character had gone through the same motions twice with different outcomes. I think that the Baron Munchausen film turned out to be mostly a yarn spun by Munchausen.
Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows presents several flashbacks as Kossara Vymezal tries to retrieve and restore distorted memories. She remembers (?) her uncle, Gospodar Bodin Miyatovich saying, on a sun deck of the Zamok:
"'...the time may come...the time may not be far off...when we need another civil war.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT p. 409.
Later she remembers that, in his hunting lodge, he said that:
he talks rashly in anger but tries to act in calm;
Dennitza's only choices are Terra, the Troubles or tyranny and taming by Merseia;
so he picks Terra.
Was that talk of needing a civil war Bodin speaking in anger or a false memory planted by Aycharaych, hypnotist and telepath?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think that talk about NEEDING a civil war was a false memory implanted by Aycharaych into Kossara's mind. Everything we came to know about Bodin Miyatovich makes me believe he would regard the mere idea of starting a civil war inside the Empire with horror and dismay.
Sean
Human memory is unreliable enough as it is. And implanting false memories, which then feel "real", is definitely possible -- it happens fairly frequently. A telepath would be much better at it.
My favorite metaphor is that memory doesn't function like a camera doing a recording, it's more like a novelist telling a story; and you rewrite to some extent every time you recall the memory.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree. Recalling a memory is not like seeing a photograph. More like a written text edited many times.
Sean
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