Discussion Questions
1. Historical fiction and science fiction
have at least one thing in common: they must fill the reader in on enough
of the texture of daily life to establish a world that is significantly
different from the reader's own. What sorts of details help Robinson rebuild
the world of 1945?
2. Part of story is told from January's
perspective, but there are times when the narrator looks at him from the
outside. When does this happen and why?
3. How does January's response to the film
of the first atomic explosion defamiliarize an image that many of us now
take for granted?
4. Is January's "imagination" really some
sort of psychic power, like telepathy or clairvoyance?
5. What happens when the narrative flashes
forward from 1945 to the present or sometime in between? Do those sections,
like the one in which January anticipates his colleagues' lives after the
war, read like history or prophecy? |
