The framing device is a brilliant literary invention. We read about pilgrims in an inn. The pilgrims tell stories. We read the stories. There are at least two layers of narrative. There can be more layers because stories can be told within stories. When reading fiction, we sit comfortably while reading about other people having a hard time somewhere else. With a framing device, we sit comfortably while reading about someone sitting comfortably hearing about someone else having a hard time. A narrator's survival is (usually) guaranteed if he has survived to tell the story - although fantasy allows for a hereafter. In fact, a hereafter, even better a hereafter coupled with pre-existence, would be the ultimate framing device. Dominic Flandry hints at such when he reflects that Emperor Hans Molitor:
"...either appalled Manuel Argos or won a grudging approval, in whatever hypothetical hell or Valhalla the Founder dwelt."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 339-606 AT III, p. 380.
A supernatural hereafter has to remain hypothetical in hard sf. However, by way of contrast, see Anderson's War Of The Gods. The opening Chapter I and the concluding Chapter XXXV are set in the realm of the gods. In XXXV, the hero Hadding has died and realized that he was the god Njord. Thus, the divine story frames the human story.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ah, THE CANTERBURY TALES of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Well, I believe the hereafter, the supernatural, is real. Also, Anderson wrote plenty of hard SF with characters believing in the supernatural. Therefore, it's not quite correct to say the supernatural can only be a hypothetical in hard SF.
Ad astra! Sean
Also the 1001 Arabian Nights.
In that case the narrator of the framing story is having a hard time while telling stories about other people having a hard time.
Kaor, Jim!
Ha! I have a selection from the ARABIAN NIGHTS translated by Sir Richard Burton in which the narrator in the framework has to beguile the sultan or shah by telling him such entertaining stories that he does not kill her the next day.
Ad astra! Sean
If the narrative itself came down on the side of the literal existence of a supernatural hereafter, then it would change from hard sf to fantasy.
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