callaghan%pseudo.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (05/21/85)
From: callaghan%pseudo.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Gaylene Callaghan DTN:523-4523) Speaking of time flowing backwards, I read a "short" story a while back and I have no idea where I put the magazine, or even if I still have it. It was about a person (alien, I believe) on the run that could "remember" the future and plan his path on what he "remembered". He had no view of the past, immediate or otherwise. (Sorry, that's all I remember) Does anyone have any idea of what I'm trying to remember? Thanks in advance. Gaylene
kcarroll@utzoo.UUCP (Kieran A. Carroll) (05/22/85)
*
In referring to "a person...who could 'remember' the future...
and had no memory of the past" (to paraphrase), you bring to mind
two fictional characters. The first is, of course, Merlin
from T. H. White's books about Camelot; he quite literally lived
backwards, and had his house in the woods filled with Victorian
paraphernalia, left over from his distant past. The second is a
character of James Gunn's, whose name I can't remember, who's been
appearing in Analog for the past year or so. This person is a time
traveller from the future, who has the ability to predict the
outcome of events at certain critical points, and uses this ability
to try to influence these events, so that the horrible future
he was sent from will be avoided. Everytime he does this, he
destroys his own future, and thus in a sense his own "past",
wiping his memory clean. Each story in this series has started with the
character waking up an amnesiac, finding a note he wrote to himself
the previous day describing his situation, and going out to alter
the world's future. They all end with him writing a note describing
what he's just accomplished, addressed to the version of himself
who will wake up the next day with no memory of these events.
I have the strong feeling that these stories will soon be collected
in novel form...
--
Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!kcarrollbrad@rtech.UUCP (Brad Bulger) (05/27/85)
> From: callaghan%pseudo.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Gaylene Callaghan DTN:523-4523) > Speaking of time flowing backwards, I read a "short" story a while > back and I have no idea where I put the magazine, or even if I still > have it. > It was about a person (alien, I believe) on the run that could "remember" > the future and plan his path on what he "remembered". He had no view of > the past, immediate or otherwise. (Sorry, that's all I remember) This sounds like "The Golden Man" by Philip K. Dick - it's the title story of a short story collection of his. The title character is a mutant who escapes capture or danger by selecting a safe path out of his "memories" of possible futures, and who has no conception of the past.