In Chapter I of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, Robert Anderson replaces "Poul Anderson" as the first person narrator and describes Jack Havig's birth in 1933. Thus, it will be some while before Havig becomes our adult protagonist. This is a biographical novel although it will not take us anywhere near its hero's death. However, by the end of the novel he will no longer be alive in the twentieth century.
The opening pages make Senlac a very real place and could have been the beginning of a contemporary novel. In fact, I would like to read a novel about other residents of Senlac who knew the Havigs but who never found out that Jack was a time traveler. I have mentioned before that I am fascinated by the idea of works of different genres fitting into the same time frame. Thus, Anderson's Time Patrol is - or at least could be - operating somewhere in the background behind the machinations of the highly secretive Swedish intelligence services encountered by the protagonists of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.
Characters whom we know to be time travelers if we have read other works could interact with characters in contemporary novels, the point being that the universe is bigger than we usually suspect.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That would be interesting, a "contemporary" story set in Jack Havig's Senlac or Manse Everard's NYC. I can well imaging residents of Senlac who knew the Havigs and, if talking about Jack, thought him friendly but somewhat reserved. Similarly, Manse's neighbors in his apartment building and nearby businesses he patronized would know him slightly.
And you recall, of course, the elegiac description we get of Admiralty Center in Chapter VI of WE CLAIM THESE STARS, which Flandry somewhat disparagingly called a "Damned company town." My point being that the administrative heart of the Imperial navy had become a city with millions of people going about their ordinary lives (besides being in the Navy or working for it). A story set wholly in Admiralty Center would have been good!
Where did Admiral Kheraskov live when not at his office? What were his merely personal hobbies and tastes? And so on!
Sean
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