Narrators

The Winter Of The World, I.

The opening chapter begins:

"Once during the Ice Age..." (p. 9)

The entire narrative of this novel is to be set during a future Ice Age. Does this opening phrase imply that the narrator lives in a later age? That would involve a further historical perspective that is not developed in the text. Or is the omniscient narrator of all third person fictional narratives to be located outside all of space and time where we are supposed to do our best to pretend that he does not even exist? A later narrator would not be able to discern the inmost thoughts of his viewpoint characters and therefore must to that extent at least be fictionalizing! An omniscient narrator does know everyone's thoughts but even he is limited because, by literary convention and I think also by common sense, he should disclose the thoughts of at most only one character during the course of any discrete narrative passage. 

I welcome the additional historical perspective of a narrator located in a later age. Hloch and his colleagues across time add depth to Poul Anderson's Technic History. However, any hope that a post-Ice Age narrator of The Winter Of The World will reveal more about himself as the text proceeds are doomed to disappointment. From now on, after that opening phrase, we must close off any speculation about the narrator and focus only on the narrative.