Lessons of a Connecticut Yankee (#SFWApro)

As part of the research for Time Travel on Screen I reread a book I’d read a couple of decades back, Bud Foote’s A Connecticut Yankee in the Twentieth Century: Travel to the Past in Science Fiction. It was a good decision, though I had to settle for inter-library loan instead of buying a copy (they run around $80, last time I checked). And despite the fact one of his key points, that Connecticut Yankee was the first story dealing with time to the past, isn’t true (but there’s no question Twain’s novel had far more influence and recognition than its few predecessors).
Foote’s book is an in-depth analysis of the Twain novel and the Yankee’s role—as a nostalgist exploring the legendary Arthurian past, an imperialist imposing his will on primitive natives, as a tourist visiting a Third World country. He also looks at other books that deal with similar themes, from Jack Finney’s many stories of nostalgic time-travel to a better era to Lest Darkness Fall, L. Sprague deCamp’s take on a modern man trying to transform the past. In his writing, Foote touches on several themes I’ll be bringing up in my own book (giving him credit, of course).
•The problem of causality. Fiction depends on characters making decisions and then dealing with the results. Time travel implies a world where that may not be true.
•Morality. If someone in 1889 decides to murder a new-born baby because he’s convinced the kid is evil, the would-be killer is obviously a madman and a murderer. If I got back and try to murder Hitler (born 1889), it’s different because my morality is shaped by knowledge of the future (this is an interesting topic I may come back to in a future post of its own).
•Nostalgia for the past. Was it better? Or is that only an illusion? Based on my watching so far, I’m inclined to say that in movies and TV, the issue is usually fixing one’s personal past rather than any particular longing for the days of old when knights were bold.
•A breakdown of time-traveler character arcs. The time traveler can be happy in his own time, then accidentally (or intentionally) be exiled to the past. She can be a lonely outcast in the present who finds happiness in the past, or someone who doesn’t fit in there either. He can return from the past with a fresh appreciation for the present, or tormented that he’s lost the one place he fit.
Although Foote’s focusing on travel to the past, the same applies to a lot of parallel-world stories. In Random Quest, for instance, the protagonist is perfectly happy in his home timeline. Then he gets jolted into an alternate history, meets his alt.wife and feels even happier. When he returns home, he seeks out her counterpart, marries her and becomes happiest of all (as noted at the link, this is illogical, but it’s a staple of the genre).
I may have to re-borrow the book at a later date or order it myself because it’s really handy when writing about this stuff.