"Consider Ensign Helen Kittredge. We pick her name at random out of personnel data. These say little more about her than that..." (p. 276)
Biographical details follow.
Who is this editorial "We" that suddenly appears on our page? When I write "We," on this blog, I mean "I," unless, alternatively, the context makes clear that "We, the readers" is meant.
This "We" who randomly picks Helen Kittredge's name is not the ubiquitous omniscient narrator of much prose fiction because his knowledge of Helen is limited to what he can find in the personnel data which we gather that he is able to consult. (I write "he" but pronouns break down at this point. Maybe "they" would be more appropriate?)
The novel cries out for an Introduction and an Afterword clarifying who this narrator is/these narrators are. When the Nicholas van Rijn short story, "Esau," was collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Hloch, the fictional Earth Book compiler and editor, informed us in a newly written introduction to this particular story that it had been written by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren and published in an Avalonian periodical called Morgana. We would appreciate similar information about the narrator(s) of this chapter who resort(s) to speculation about Helen's experiences and eventual fate. It is someone who lives in Technic civilization and who therefore is part of the story.
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