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From: Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Is use of literary person changing in indie SF?
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2024 19:10:04 +0000
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On 24/03/2024 03:47, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> One thing I have noticed recently in "indie" SF and fantasy books
> is a use of literary "person" I don't recall in fiction from previous
> years.
> 
> In particular, I have noticed books which are largely written in
> the first person, but which have cutaways to various third person
> viewpoints, perhaps omniscient, perhaps not.
> 
> My conjecture is that without editorial guidelines (or call it interference
> if you like) newer authors feel more free to jump around.
> 
> Has anyone else noticed this, or is it something that has always been
> around and I am just picking up on it now for some reason?
> 
> If it is a newish thing, is it happening in other genres (mystery, romance
> etc) or largely in SF?  (I will note that in romancey SF, I have also noticed
> dual first person narratives of late).
> 
> I find I don't mind it, btw.

I don't know if it's a new thing, or, as I
think you're suggesting, a new lack of an editor
slapping a new writer into using first-person
or third-person but to stick to one.

Joe Haldeman did it all over _Buying Time_ (1989)
also titled _The Long Habit of Living_.
And _Ghosts from the Past_ (2000) by Graeme Grant...
oh, I Think it's all third person, it just switches
point of view a lot.  And sometimes italics.
And some of it is stream-of-conscious-y.
It's a tie-in to a remake of _Randall and
Hopkirk Deceased_, a private detective fantasy
series in which Marry Hopkirk is killed and comes
back as a ghost, and I read it quite recently.