I love this cover! |
First published in
Startling Stories, summer 1944
This time travel story
has the same basic idea as the first story in this volume, The Circle of Zero. If space-time is infinite then somewhere, our history must
have repeated in the past, and it will repeat again in the future.
The way of getting to these forgotten past lives is kind of similar,
too. The Circle of Zero relied on hypnosis, this story relies on the
memories being written into a mysterious ‘blind spot’ in the
brain.
By attaching some kind
of incredible invention to his head, Blake Carson is able access
these memories and paradoxically remember his future. Naturally, the
first thing he sees is his own death. We’re back in the land of
rationalist fables.
In his introduction,
Ashley claims that Fearn has been somewhat forgotten since his death
in 1960 and this story is highlighted as one of Fearn’s favourites.
However, it’s a little hard to know what to make of it.
It’s clear that the
entire contrived remembering the past idea has been put in place to
allow for the early revelation that really gets the plot moving,
Carson’s discovery that he’s going to end up on the electric
chair, framed for a murder he didn’t commit by his researcher, Hart
Cranshaw. Waiting for the present to catch up with the future we know
is coming is one of the characteristic devices of a time travel
story. Particularly appealing is when the character knows they are to
die. It makes a character put their priorities in order, to think
through what’s important to them.
This can be revelatory
or it can drive a thriller plot, and Fearn opts for the latter.
Driven by a desire for revenge against Cranshaw he spends his final
days building up to a final desperate attempt to master the art of
throwing himself into the future using his knowledge of the future.
Amazingly, he partly
succeeds. At the moment they throw the switch on the chair he takes a
psychic lunge and finds himself floating outside his body. However,
the massive electric shock has interfered with his escape and instead
of a few days he’s projected much further into the future,
‘millions of years, quintillions of years’ he whispers to
himself.
He roams the chilly
blasted wasteland at the end of time, a desert lit by a feeble and
ancient red sun. He comes across a colony of termites that
communicates with him using psychic powers. They tell him that they
are the final race of intelligent creatures on Earth – once more,
the echo of H G Wells Time-traveller, as in Seeker of Tomorrow. After
a bit of mind reading discussion, the insects get bored and start to
wander off, but one remains behind.
One termite, larger than the others, was alone on the red soil. Carson gazed at it with smouldering eyes, the inner most thoughts of the tiny thing probing his brain.‘I understand,’ he whsipered. ‘Yes, I understand! Your thoughts are being bared to me. You are Hart Cranshaw. You are the Hart Cranshaw of this age. You gained your end. You stole my invention – yes, became the master of science, the lord of the Earth, just as you had planned!’
Given more time and an
absence of electrocutions, Cranshaw has managed top master the power
of projecting his mind forward at death. Now he meets his nemesis at
the end of time and Carson crushes him between his finger tips. Then
he feels himself tumble in the realisation that this is not the end.
He had not cheated
time! Neither had Hart Cranshaw! They had done all this before
somewhere – would do it again – endlessly so long as time itself
should exist.
As with Almost Human,
this is SF as morality play. The science fiction elements play the
roles of genies or pixies or leprechauns in folklore, putting men
into places where their morals are tested and usually found wanting.
Blake Carson is doomed by his desire to see the future. The true cost
is to lose all volition and collapse into Hell, cursed to enact his
unhappy life and humiliating pathetic vengeance again and again.
Themes: time travel,
the cycle of time, empty vengeance, morality play, the end of time
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.