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What it would be like if it weren't like this
There's a sense in which all fiction is speculative fiction: it all occurs in a world which is not quite this one (the world as it appears to me) but subtly other (the world as it appears to the author, or as the author needs it to appear in order for the story to happen as required, or...).
Which is a prelude to the confession that one of the big pleasures of SF for me is also one of the big pleasures of historical fiction. Perverse though it may be to look for the same thing in narratives deliberately set in the past and those deliberately set in the future, what they both offer is an extreme case of "What is it like to be someone else?"
If I don't get that, I feel cheated - which is why anachronisms irritate me so much.
( Brother Cadfael's wristwatch )
Is this trivial? Perhaps. But it indicates a failure of imagination: Cadfael is not a medieval monk, he's a modern man in fancy dress. And it breaks my mood, my suspension of disbelief, as surely as spotting that all the aliens in the SF movie are humanoid, so that they can be played by actors in costume.
Which is a prelude to the confession that one of the big pleasures of SF for me is also one of the big pleasures of historical fiction. Perverse though it may be to look for the same thing in narratives deliberately set in the past and those deliberately set in the future, what they both offer is an extreme case of "What is it like to be someone else?"
If I don't get that, I feel cheated - which is why anachronisms irritate me so much.
( Brother Cadfael's wristwatch )
Is this trivial? Perhaps. But it indicates a failure of imagination: Cadfael is not a medieval monk, he's a modern man in fancy dress. And it breaks my mood, my suspension of disbelief, as surely as spotting that all the aliens in the SF movie are humanoid, so that they can be played by actors in costume.