Fiction And Time

Fiction reflects life. Therefore, serious fiction reflects the passage of time. An unserious fictional series can show its hero as always in the prime of life even though years or even decades should have elapsed since the series began.

Authors who do acknowledge the passage of time can do this in completely different ways. Thus, to summarize in a single sentence, Dornford Yates, whom I am currently reading, regrets the passing of the Edwardian Age whereas Poul Anderson, whom I always reread, looks with interest towards possible futures - continuing the project of HG Wells' Victorian Time Traveler.

Readers can appreciate both perspectives although I do not share Yates' idea that life would have been better if times had not changed. (That phrase deserves to be capitalized: "...that Life would have been Better if Times had not Changed.")

In his Time Patrol series, Poul Anderson uses time travel to look not at the future but at the past and with different results. Whereas Charles Whitcomb contentedly leaves the Patrol to settle down in Victorian London, Manse Everard has learned better than to return to the Midwest of his boyhood. (Scroll down.)

Jack Finney's time travel is nostalgic whereas Wells' is futuristic. Anderson, of course, gives us both.