From: Timothy Ledbetter
Category: Amis
Date: 8/10/99
Time: 12:22:59 PM
Remote Name: 130.159.248.36
Okay so he covers his arse. It even sounds like it might be theoretically possible, relativity and all that , but although he carefully ensures his novels reality is cohesive he's still going a long way just to give symbolic weight to Nicola's Birthday/deathday. Why didn't he just make it Aug 11? I don't really buy the whole Armageddon thing in the novel anyway.
And never mind bar-time and the value of cash there's not a single mobile phone, fax, PC, or Lap Top in the novel. Keith would certainly have a mobile and probably have some way of cheating people with the horrible bleepy little cancer inducing things. The "Bad Boy of Brit Lit" he might be, Nostradamus he certainly isn't. But then I don't suppose he was being predicitve was he? But that's the problem with setting novels a specific the future it throws people of the scent. For example, remember 1984 when the media got all in a tizzy trying to show how wrong Orwell's "Predictions" for Britian had been? Now that never happened to Huxley cus he never said wht year it was in "Brave New Wotld" (or else it's dead far off I can't remeber which).