There are changelings in Poul Anderson's fantasies, The Broken Sword and Operation Chaos. In sf, time travel obviously raises the possibility of switching infants in time.
"'Johnny. Two of him. Then one again... The other one!'" (I, p. 11)
Hearing a baby scream in the bedroom, Eleanor Havig carries her son, John, wet from the bath but wrapped in a towel, through to investigate, sees a wet naked baby in the cot and drops John in surprise only to see him disappear. Falling, the baby has instinctively traveled a short interval back in time. Dr Robert Anderson believes, and persuades Eleanor, that she has hallucinated.
This is the first manifestation of Jack Havig's power, the equivalent of the infant Clark Kent lifting furniture or holding up a falling car. Until p. 11, we could have been reading a mainstream novel. In the Time Patrol series, Manse Everard does not encounter time travel until adulthood so there could be a mainstream novel about his earlier life, including World War II.
3 comments:
Think of the havoc some enemy of the Patrol could create by arranging for Manse to die in WWII... 8-).
Sure but that would be another sf/time travel story. I am interested in a sort of mainstream/sf interface where we read about a character like Everard both before and after he joined the Patrol.
Kaor, Paul!
Or at least a mainstream short story or two about Manse Everard, before he joined the Time Patrol.
Ad astra! Sean
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