Alternative Biographies

Reading fiction set in the 1950's reminds us of World War II not because the War happened in that decade -it didn't! - but because the characters who were adults then would have been involved in the War or at least alive during it. It remained a major part of their recent past. This applies both to Poul Anderson's Manse Everard, Time Patrolman, and to Ian Fleming's James Bond, secret agent.

Everard served in the War and was recruited by the Patrol in 1955. Bond served in the War either after he had bought a car in 1933 and worked for the Secret Service before the War or after he had joined the Service only in 1941 and then only by falsely claiming an age of nineteen. M who informs us of the second date adds that popular accounts of Commander Bond's adventures are inaccurate!

The Time Patrol is familiar with alternative biographies. In fact, such a discrepancy has to be resolved in the very first Time Patrol story:

"To us, it was a matter of record that one Charles and Mary Whitcomb lived in Victoria's England. It was also a matter of record that Mary Nelson died with a family she was visiting in 1944, and that Charles Whitcomb had lived a bachelor and finally been killed on active duty with the Patrol."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 6, pp. 51-52.

M resolves a contradiction by telling us that Fleming's earlier accounts were inaccurate. Everard resolves a contradiction by rescuing Mary in 1944 and arranging for Whitcomb to leave the Patrol. However, such extratemporal interventions could not happen in Fleming's universe! Contemporary fiction exists in a bubble where its characters and their settings never overtly interact with the Solar System, the Milky Way, other galaxies, other dimensions, other timelines or whatever else might be out there even though they must be surrounded by, and indeed must be a very small part of, the totality of reality.

Both contemporary fiction and sf are realistic but in different ways.

See also earlier blog references to WWII here.