At last starting to reread this story but not going very far with it this evening. (Darkness and rain outside.)
It begins:
"In three hours by the clock they will be here to kill me." (p. 49)
First person, future tense. We expect this opening to be followed by some present tense narration and also reminiscences explaining the narrator's death sentence. Will he be rescued or reprieved or escape? Nothing in the text has yet identified genre but that will happen soon. They are on board a ship. What kind of ship? Since this is an sf collection, we expect a spaceship and indeed there is a reminiscence about flitting down to a planet further down on the opening page. We guess from the title and from some opening remarks that the narrator is a convicted traitor. We have read this story before so we remember in general terms how it ends. Since we are focusing here on narrative point of view and on the author's deployment of tenses, we might as well at this stage look ahead and compare the opening sentence quoted above with the concluding sentence:
"So I am now going to spend what time remains in thinking about
"THE END" (p. 67)
- half-sentence.
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