Any story implicitly raises two questions. What does the story tell us? How did the story come to be told? Often, the second question is not addressed. Sometimes, its answer is out in the open, e.g., Doctor Watson (or some other first person narrator) tells us! Poul Anderson's Technic History has a truly impressive list of, usually named, individuals who either introduce or narrate stories without appearing in them:
Francis L. Minamoto
Hloch of Stormgate Choth
Maeve Downey (she is, just slightly, present in the text)
A.A. Craig
Vance Hall
Noah Arkwright
Judith Lundgren
unnamed author(s) of The Man Who Counts
Le Matelot
Urwain the Wide-Faring
Donvar Ayeghen
Michael Karageorge (Hank Davis)
These are our historical sources. James Ching writes the story that he appears in whereas Christopher Holm appears in one Technic History installment but writes or co-writes three others.
In some works - going outside the Technic History -, the answer to that question of how the story came to be told becomes quite elaborate. Thus, Steve Mauchek telepathically broadcasts Operation Chaos between timelines but then writes Operation Luna and seals the manuscript for a century. See Three Narratives.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Your comments here rang a bell in my head, reminding me of how Anderson used similar devices in other stories. And this is what I found at the beginning of "Dialogue," quoting from pages 235-36 of DIALOGUE WITH DARKNESS (Tor: Feb. 1985): "(The story has come to light even later than the teller intended--almost five centuries later. He left it in a goods deposit box at a financial institution in Bienvenida, which was then the only town on Arcadia, Epsilon Eridani II. He likewise left instructions that the box be opened after the last survivor of a certain trio died, and funds sufficient to cover its rental meanwhile. Unfortunately, an earthquake later wrecked the building. In the confusion everybody seems to have forgotten these orders. A new structure incorporated rubble from the old, the box therewith, in its foundations. Well-built, it lasted to the present day, when a remodeling project forced demolition and the container was discovered. If nothing else, the voice-tape it held is interesting for the confirmation it lends to a suspicion which some historians have long nursed."
Ad astra! Sean
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