Is science fiction just history writ large or is history simply science fiction written backwards? Many science fiction writers have asked this question indirectly. David Mitchell makes it the modus operandi of his novel Cloud Atlas.
Cloud Atlas is a series of nested stories, each split in half.
The first story is set in the early 19th century; the second in the early 1930s; the third in the 1990s; the fourth slightly in the future; the fifth at least 500 years in the future; and the sixth in the far future. Each story has been cut off midway through the plot, only to be resumed later.
The reader's task is to make the logical narrative connections.
One obvious link between each of the stories is a similar birthmark worn by the main character in each tale, the presence of which is pointed out to readers in the first half of each plot. Another connection is the way each narrative becomes a story in itself that is read by some of the main characters described in stories from later eras.
Each of Mitchell's characters is in some sort of rebellion against an oppressive ruling political or social system. However, the stories vary widely in approach.
The troubles being experienced by the main character of the first story are attributable mostly to his own naivety, while the libidinous nature and lifestyle of the main character of the second story - a composer who becomes the helper of an older, more famous contemporary - are the cause of all his troubles.
Only in the third story do we find heroic characters who oppose government villainy and thereby attract the wrath of a malevolent ruling elite.
This theme is carried through into the science fiction stories, one of which tells the tale of a woman trying to escape from the grip of a Nineteen Eighty-Four-ish society, and the other, which describes the situation faced by a selection of characters whose far-future Eden is attacked and nearly destroyed.
You will enjoy Cloud Atlas if you enjoy David Mitchell's playing with a wide variety of storytelling modes but, in the end, you might not be convinced by the links he makes between the stories, or his conclusion: that worthy and heroic individuals in any era can beat oppressive power systems.
