Re: Needle (was Re: A different trans****tation threada (Re: Aside

On May 4, 9:22=EF=BF=BDpm, "Dan Tilque" <dtil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> The part about it being a secret WWII project was not in _Needle_, but
> rather in the sequel. (I suspect that part was a retcon, mainly because
> families don't normally accompany workers on secret war-time projects.)
> Just reading _Needle_, you have no idea when it actually takes
place.Cleme=
ntmanages to avoid specifics about various technologies so it
> could be anywhere from the mid-20th century to the 1980s or possibly
> later.
>
> I first read the book during the first oil crisis in the 70s. At the
> time, all sorts of alternative methods of producing fuel were being
> proposed. So the story fit easily into the gestalt of the times. I
> hadn't checked the copyright date, so had no idea it'd been written in
> the late 40s. I figured it'd been written in the previous year or so.
>


Yes. As somebody once said on another thread, it has a kind of
"timeless" air to it. In that, imho, it rather resembles _The Day of
the Triffids_. Both are in some ways _more_ topical now than when they
were written.




> Hmm, just checked ISFDB and find the sequel was written, or at least
> published, in 1978. So I wonder why the retcon, unless it'd been written
> in the 50s but not published until later.
>

It is of course _set_ in the fifties. It's supposed to be seven years
after _Needle_, which, given the latter's publication date, would put
it in 1956/7. So perhaps a few contem****ary references were made to
"place" it in time, though imho it would have done ok without them.


--

Mike Stone - Peterborough, England

You can tell what God thinks of money by looking at the people He
gives it to.