Simon writes:
In the introduction to The Fall (1998) there is an invitation to time travellers of the future to meet me in what was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek experiment. If you've not read the book you can catch up with the introduction which is reproduced in full here on the website.Since publication of the book people have asked me what exactly did happen on the day of the experiment. Did travellers from the future appear? Did men in black swear me to secrecy? Was I sober? Well... To save me re-telling events over and over, here is an account of what happened... the whole unvarnished truth...
At precisely 2 pm on Saturday, 11th April, 1998, I had an appointment with travellers from the future.
Don't get me wrong. I hadn't decamped from a secure institution, the straps of my strait jacket fluttering prettily in the breeze. Nor had I been devouring Class A substances. And although I am a fiction writer I was dealing, for once, with hard fact.
For twelve months prior to this rendezvous I had been writing The Fall, a novel about a group of people who come unstuck from the here and now and start sliding back through time. At first it's a few hours, then days, then years.
Before hitting the keyboard I found the perfect way to loosen up my imagination was to take a bike ride along the country lanes that surround my house in the big, rugged county of Yorkshire here in England. Rattling along under clear blue skies, I dreamt about what my temporal Robinson Crusoes might make of Victorian England.
One such lane leads to the hamlet of Hampole where old houses cluster around a crystal clear spring.
Now it's here that my imagination really started to flow. In the 1300s a highly individual character by the name of Richard Rolle lived in Hampole. Poet, hermit, mystic and arguably the first teenage rebel, he wrote the strange and powerful book Incendium Amoris (The Fire Of Love), which is basically a DIY guide to achieving a mystical union with God: the effects of which are so mind-bending (allegedly) they make tripping on LSD about as cosmic as a visit to your local DIY store's sand and aggregates department.
There I'd happily settle on a grassy knoll, the sun warming my back, a sprig of clover between my lips, and I'd picture the incomparable Mr Rolle fetching water from the spring while muttering to himself about angels and eternity.
It's here an idea sparked inside my head. A curious, yet strangely compelling idea at that. Just think, I told myself, if I could read something of Mr Rolle's written 700 years ago, is it possible that someone might read one of my books 700 hundred years from now?
Because while researching my book I'd learnt that a number of scientists had ventured that a working time machine might be built within two hundred years.
A train of logic began rattling through my skull. I realised The Fall might (just might!) be read 200 years from now; and, secondly, that reader in distant futurity might be the proud owner of a spanking new time machine.
Eureka!
So, why not include in the book an invitation to any time travelling readers in the future to pop back and visit me?
Blimey. Suddenly time travel seemed easy – even with my elementary physics. All you need do is the literary equivalent of chucking a message in a bottle into the sea. Only here, of course, it is into the sea of time.
So, I did just that. The Fall contains an invitation to our descendants to meet yours truly at a given time and place. Now all that's required of the book is to somehow avoid being thrown out for the next several hundred years.
Well, that's phase 1 of the experiment. Now for phase 2:–
With my invitation issued I only had make the rendezvous. So, it was on that blustery April day I arrived at Hampole to begin my vigil.
I sat in the car for fifteen minutes, recording my observations on a dictaphone: '... a little bit of sunshine at the moment... breeze blowing the trees... soon I'll get out of the car and look at the spring...'
Hmmm... this wasn't looking too promising. No silver-suited time travellers bearing interesting gifts. I recalled Hawking's comment: 'If time travel is possible, why haven't we been overrun by tourists from the future?'
Was my time travel experiment fatally flawed? Had my books survived far enough into the future? Was time travel impossible after all?
At around 2.15 I drove home, thinking a tad sourly that if this had been an episode of the X-Files amazing stuff would have happened right, left and flipping centre.
And yet it was only later that I recalled a few anomalies that set me thinking.
The lane to Hampole is a long one. There are no houses, only fields. Rarely are there any pedestrians. But, curiously, as I drove to my rendezvous I noticed some incongruous characters. In fact, they were incongruous enough for me to describe them into my dictaphone.
The first was WOMAN WITH PRAM (I shall call her). On that blustery day she walked along the lane pushing a pram – a big old fashioned thing with wire spoked wheels. She was young and wore a loose fitting summer dress that didn't fit her properly. What's more, it was redolent of '58 rather than '98.
Now, do I recall a secret smile playing on her face?
Oh boy, my imagination was really in gear now.
Character number 2. I'll call him THE BLACKBERRY PICKER because he was standing peering into a hedge (not far from WOMAN WITH PRAM). Fifty-ish, silver haired, he wore a light coloured boiler suit; in each hand was a silver bucket. And he appeared to be searching for blackberries, even though it was only April.
The what-ifs came thick and fast. What if these were the time travellers afterall? What if we are visited secretly by all and sundry from the future? My imagination cheerfully polyfillered over any cracks in the scenario.
Why, the more I thought about it, the more I could imagine them hissing over tiny radios as my red car hove into view: 'Here comes Clark! Act natural!' So, the woman wearing her enigmatic smile, pushed her historically inaccurate pram; THE BLACKBERRY PICKER pretended to pluck berries from a plant that wouldn't bear fruit for months yet.
Lastly there was DIY MAN. He worked in the bedroom window of a house that overlooked where I sat in the car. Wearing decorator's overalls, he hammered the frame fairly unconvincingly for ten minutes (mental note: time travellers aren't particularly adept at low-profile stake-outs).
So, there it is: I've blown the time travellers' cover. Their secret visits here are exposed.
Joking aside, wouldn't it be something to meet our great, great grandchildren? Come to think of it, I can try this experiment again, can't I? Microfiche copies of this article will be virtually immortal. Just waiting to be dipped into by our progeny centuries hence. Oh well, here goes again. On Saturday 3rd July, 1999 I was meeting friends at a Terror Scribes gathering from 1.00pm onwards at The Howard, Sheffield. You're more than welcome to visit me there, dear reader of the future.
Only this time don't be shy, d'ya hear?