Part 12 in the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Dr Karen Hughes
I employed a variety of narrative techniques in my new novel, Gaba Gali, to disrupt the reader’s natural assumptions and create the impression of non-linear time. I based my approach on the manipulation of discourse-time, set against the presumption of linear story-time. As David Wittenberg writes:
Even where plots are thoroughly indefinite or ambiguous concerning the events they communicate, whether deliberately or accidentally— “achronic,” in Genette’s term, or “fuzzy,” in David Herman’s—a presumption of underlying regularity tends to abide, such that linear story-time is in principle recuperable from the merely functional, partial, or “equivocalpseudo-time” of discourse. (123)
Wittenberg goes on to describe narrative as “characterized not only by temporal dualism, but more pointedly by an inherent discrepancy between temporal layers, one of which, the ‘pseudo-time’ of discourse, always tends to postulate or reduce itself to the other, the regular, linear chronology of story” (123). He supports this argument with a review of Western philosophy, noting: “Phenomenological thinking, in particular, suggests that the strange games we perpetually play with time, dividing and recombining it in equivocal yet entirely common acts of storytelling, reflect an elemental narrative structuring of human perception and experience” (124).
Wittenberg’s discussion, referencing Genette’s “true time”, proceeds from the assumption that the events of a story occur in “regular, linear” time (123). Even the “average” reader expects the story to be linear and is proficient at interpreting a seemingly disparate discourse in this way (citing Mieke Bal, 124). I took advantage of this expectation to create surprise and suspense by setting sections of the narrative out of time, a strategy which David Herman suggests promotes uncertainty by prompting readers to “model a world in which the temporal position of certain events remains indeterminate” (Story Logic, 218). By manipulating the discourse-time, I aimed to challenge the reader’s perceptions of the mundane world and open their mind to the idea that everything is happening in a single moment across infinite possible universes—both within the story and in the reader’s everyday reality.
My discourse begins in the present with the adult voices of Jordy and his sisters, Kayla and Tess, and later provides flashbacks—a standard technique in mainstream fiction—to the protagonists’ shared childhood through Kayla’s “memories” and “past lives”. Kayla is twenty years old and apparently living in the regular chronological or “true time” of the story. The narrative becomes more surprising with the insertion of seemingly random out-of-time sections in the collective voice of the protagonists after they have transitioned to fifth-dimensional Terra, a planet superimposed onto Earth. At this stage, it is not clear to the reader what is happening or why the voices are presented in this way. These sections are set beside linear third-dimensional sections; transitional sections in which the protagonists move into timeless extradimensional spaces using shamanic tools such meditation, drumming and psychedelic drugs; and sections in which the protagonists switch between third-dimensional timelines, apparently based in “true time”. The effect of this manipulation is to present a series of events which are clearly connected on some level but might not be causal, thereby challenging the reader’s natural assumptions.
Ted Chiang uses a similar technique in “Story of Your Life” to create the “sense of wonder” that speculative writers aim to inspire in their readers, forcing a conceptual breakthrough or change of paradigm (Nicholls, “Conceptual Breakthrough”). While Chiang’s story-time is linear, he manipulates his discourse-time through the past and future memories of his narrator, Dr Louise Banks. Dr Banks speaks in the second person, addressing her unborn child, and her first sentence is in simple present tense: “Your father is about to ask me a question.” She switches to simple past tense to recount the events of the evening, and then back to simple present tense: “[N]ow we’re slow dancing … And then your dad says, ‘Do you want to make a baby?’” (Arrival 111). The first sentence is a subtle foreshadowing of the fact that Dr Banks’s memories are not limited to the past. The reader might wonder how Dr Banks knows that the father is about to ask the question, or they might simply read this sentence as part of the memory that follows. The next paragraph tells the reader that the setting is in the present: “Right now [my italics] your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Ave,” but then the language switches to simple future tense— “I’ll say”, “You’ll say”—as she narrates her memory of a future conversation with her yet-to-be-conceived daughter.
As Dr Banks’s memories move backwards and forwards along the linear timeline of the story, the reader begins to understand that she is somehow “remembering” the future. The language becomes a balancing act between past, present and future: “I know how this story ends; I think about it a lot. I also think a lot about how it began, just a few years ago …” (112). This manipulation of the chronological story-time is unsettling for a reader who assumes that we can only remember past events. Dr Banks’s memories of the future create surprise and wonder, raising questions in the reader’s mind. How can Dr Banks remember the future if it hasn’t happened yet? And if she can remember the future, will she be able to change it?
The narrative then switches to simple past tense to recount a standard science-fiction adventure story of alien contact and scientific discovery. Just as the reader is getting comfortable, however, Chiang inserts a shocking section in simple future tense about the daughter’s death:
The request for that meeting was perhaps the second most momentous phone call in my life. The first, of course, will be the one from Mountain Rescue. At that point your dad and I will be speaking to each other maybe once a year, tops.
After I get that phone call, though, the first thing I’ll do will be to call your father.
He and I will drive out together to perform the identification, a long silent car ride. I remember the morgue, all tile and stainless steel, the hum of refrigeration and smell of antiseptic. An orderly will pull the sheet back to reveal your face. Your face will look wrong somehow, but I’ll know it’s you.
“Yes, that’s her,” I’ll say. “She’s mine.” You’ll be twenty-five then. (115–16)
The temporal shift here is dramatic and designed to shock the reader into a different worldview. Dr Banks can remember her daughter’s death, twenty-five years in the future. She also knows that she will be separated from the father by this time. This introduces a new paradigm in which the future has already happened and it is possible to remember it. It also introduces one of the major themes of the story—if you could “remember” the future, would you make the same choices?
By intersecting the main past-tense narrative with out-of-time sections relating future memories of events that will occur in the daughter’s short life, and by adding these sections in a non-chronological order—“I remember a conversation we’ll have when you’re in your junior year of high school”, “You’ll be six when your father has a conference to attend in Hawaii”, “I remember a picture of you taken at your college graduation”, and so on—Chiang layers his narrative with two stories: the science-fiction tale of the heptapods whose strange language Dr Banks must interpret, and Dr Banks’s future memories of her unborn daughter’s life. It is not until page 159 that we fully understand how these stories fit together. As Dr Banks explains: “Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all.” By learning the heptapod language, Dr Banks is able to perceive the world through the same “simultaneous mode of awareness” as the heptapods. This does not, however, mean that she will change her future: “What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know” (163).
Dr Banks’s dramatic shift in perspective changes her view of time and, in doing so, alters her perception of reality. By the end of the narrative, she is a passive figure whose increased knowledge seems to have somehow destroyed her freedom of choice while at the same time allowing her to surrender to her fate, whether it be “an extreme of joy, or of pain” (172). This could be interpreted as a form of predestinarianism or, in a more aesthetic sense, as a nostalgia for what Martin Hägglund calls “the radical temporality of life”, the “passing away of the moment” (15). In my novel, the future is fluid and depends on the choices, both conscious and unconscious, made by the protagonists. The emphasis is more on the concept of radical responsibility than on ideas of fate or destiny—unless fate can be construed as a choice made by the seventh-dimensional oversoul and then surrendered to by the protagonists as third-dimensional fractals of that oversoul. While Chiang and I approach the question of time from philosophically different angles, our common ground is the use of both the tropes of science fiction and the manipulation of discourse-time throughout the narrative to surprise the reader and encourage a glimpse into other paradigms.
The manipulation of discourse-time was particularly useful to me in the later chapters of my novel when the characters began switching timelines. I wrote Jordy’s climactic riot chapter in the style of a plot-driven thriller with an action vocabulary and less reflection from the narrator. Using short sentences, violent imagery and a disintegrating social setting reminiscent of the apartment building in High-Rise by J. G. Ballard, I aimed to create a cinematic climax which would accentuate the dramatic sense of helplessness and defeat experienced by the characters trapped in their mundane world. In this chapter, time is linear and there is a clear line of causation through the depicted events—until Jordy rolls his ute in the pouring rain and steps into another universe. Jordy’s accident subverts the causal timeline, and the reader is gradually made aware of this by glimpses that could at first be explained away but which become more convincing as the narrative proceeds. The intervention of Uncle Bill in an out-of-time dream sequence prepares the reader for the next section, when they will be called upon to suspend disbelief and accept that Jordy’s reality has changed. From this point, the narrative moves at a slower pace, incorporating more idealistic imagery. The setting is charming. The characters are more self-aware and there is very little conflict. The transition to a more utopian fifth-dimensional reality has begun.
In this transitional chapter, I employed a contrastive style of narrative to surprise the reader and prepare them for a different (and more hopeful) view of reality. I had already primed the reader for the shift in paradigm by introducing ideas about multidimensionality and alternative worlds earlier in the narrative. I used causation to depict the chaotic fourth-dimensional experience of the characters trapped inside the towers at Xīncūn, relying on what Herman describes as a “bivalent temporal system to read later events as the effect of earlier events, and earlier events as the cause of later” (Story Logic 225). I then contrasted this with the “multivalent temporal system” in the latter half of the chapter, where the reader is encouraged “to read some events as indeterminate, that is, as occupying an inherently vague position on the chain of cause and effect undergirding the story, such that an event might precede its cause” (225). This refers to what Herman calls “timelessness” and Genette calls “fuzzy temporal ordering” (Currie 226). While the temporal shift is designed to surprise the reader, it is not completely unexpected. I used the same technique to evoke alternate states of consciousness in earlier chapters, particularly in the sections where Kayla drifts into her “past lives” and where Tess experiments with various shamanic tools that alter her perception of reality.
The techniques demonstrated in Gaba Gali and in the other works of speculative fiction discussed here are used to create an impression of alternative paradigms—non-human perspective, alien dialect, and non-linear time—that are difficult to convey in written language. By disrupting the reader’s assumptions and offering unexpected interpretations of the mundane world, I hope to encourage the opening of the door in the reader’s mind, allowing them an imaginative glimpse into possible new realities.
Chiang, Ted. “Story of Your Life.” Arrival. Pan Macmillan UK, 2016, pp. 109–172.
Currie, Mark. “Contemporary Formalisms.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by Matthew Garrett, Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 217–30. Cambridge Companions to Literature.
Herman, David. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. U of Nebraska P, 2002.
Nicholls, Peter. “Conceptual Breakthrough.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute, et al. Gollancz, 22 May 2016.
Wittenberg, David. “Time.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by Matthew Garrett, Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 120–31. Cambridge Companions to Literature.