Futures And Pasts

Science fiction can be set in the past, present or future of this or another timeline and can involve multiple timelines, as in Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix sequence. Anderson found three ways to set sf in the past:

aliens visit Earth in a historical period;

mutant immortals live through history;

time travelers visit historical and prehistorical periods.

 

Anderson wrote some, although not much, sf set in the present and a lot set in alternative futures.

 

The future begins tomorrow. The Time Traveler passed through "tomorrow" before proceeding to 802,701 AD, then to "The Further Vision." Much sf is set in the future, i.e., later than its publication date. CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength was first published in 1945 and, according to its Preface, is set:

"...vaguely 'after the war'."

-CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 349-753 AT p. 354.

That might have been "the present": 1945, immediately after the war. However, the Preface is explicitly dated "Christmas Eve, 1943." (ibid.) Thus, at the time of writing, the outcome of the war was not yet known and, curiously to us now, "after the war" counted as the future.

 

Section 6 of "Time Patrol" by Poul Anderson begins:

 

"London, 1944."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 6, p. 44.

 

However, "Time Patrol" was published in 1955 so the London blitz was then a past period visited by Manse Everard of the Time Patrol. The younger Everard was at that time across the Channel and CS Lewis had completed writing That Hideous Strength although it had not been not published yet. Of course, we do not think of Lewis or of many other people when reading "Time Patrol." However, we are supposed to imagine that everyone else is proceeding as they did in 1944 when Everard visits the blitz.

 

Works of fiction are usually fictions to each other. Time Patrol and That Hideous Strength are mutually incompatible. Thus, either they are set in alternative timelines or, willingly suspending disbelief, we accept that Everard visits the blitz between the completion and the publication of That Hideous Strength. Another idea is that what is fictional in one timeline is real in another.

 

Fictional detectives usually refer to Sherlock Holmes not as an illustrious predecessor but as a fictional character. I can't say "another fictional character" because they are not fictions to themselves. However, Holmes is real in "Time Patrol" and in Lewis's The Magician's Nephew even though these works are mutually incompatible. Holmes and Watson show up in the Old Phoenix and Holmes has a collateral descendant who emigrates from the colonized planet, Beowulf, to the colonized planet, Roland. But these are different versions of Holmes.