Foreword

Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), Foreword, pp. 5-7.

Any text, whether fictional or not, might be preceded by a Preface, an Introduction or a Foreword. According to Chambers Dictionary:

a preface is a statement, usually explanatory, at the beginning of a book, and is not regarded as part of the work - whereas an introduction is so regarded;

an introduction is preliminary matter to a book;

a foreword is a preface.

According to these definitions, which I have paraphrased, a foreword to a novel (a long prose fiction) should not be part of the fiction but this one is. In this Foreword, we are addressed neither by the author, as in an introduction, nor by an omniscient narrator, as in the opening chapter of a novel with third person narration, but by a first person narrator very closely based on the author like the Lewis who appears in CS Lewis' Ransom novels or like the Maughham who appears in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.

The first person narrator of this Foreword passes himself off as the author:

"...any tale signed with my name must stand or fall as entertainment; I am a writer, not a cultist." (p. 5)

He says that, in this novel, we might recognize certain ideas from some of his earlier stories. Robert Anderson, a distant relative, refers to "Karen" on p. 5 and addresses the narrator as "Poul" on p. 6. Later in the novel, we learn that his surname is also Anderson. This narrator tells us that:

"Though our family is of Scandinavian origin, a branch has been in the States since the Civil War." (p. 6)

That sentence might be true and rings true.

Later, the narrator "...worried about what time might be doing to..." Robert Anderson. (p. 7) Literature in general address the passage of time but that phrase assumes an additional significance when the novel is also about time travel.

Wells' The Time Machine has two narrators, the outer narrator and the Time Traveler. There Will Be Time has two outer narrators, Poul Anderson, then Robert Anderson, whereas its time traveling hero, Jack Havig, when we get to him, is presented in the third person. There are very visible quotation marks around the entire narrative. Even while reading, we can ask: Did it really happen like this? Did it really happen? Of course  not, it's fiction. However, even within the fiction, we have to remember how many narrative layers are involved.