What We Can Know

Thomas Metcalfe is one of the novel’s two protagonists. His story, set in a speculative version of the world in the year 2119, provides a narrative frame for the story of the other protagonist, Vivien Blundy, who lives in the 2000s and 2010s. Thomas is a scholar of literary history who specializes in literature in English from 1990 to 2030. Consequently, he spearheads a postgraduate program focusing on this period at the University of the South Downs.

Thomas is defined by his fixation on the past, and his character arc involves moving beyond his idealization of the past and focusing on his future with Rose, developing the theme of Living With Hope in Times of Crisis. In Part 1, Chapter 12, he uses the story of biographer Robert Holmes’s imagined encounter with author Robert Louis Stevenson as a metaphor for his own relationship with the Blundys and their peers. Thomas describes his fixation as a feeling “beyond nostalgia,” partly because he is longing for experiences that he has only read but never lived through himself. When debating his preoccupation with Rose in Chapter 14, he makes it clear that he prefers the previous century because people were bold and reckless enough to invent new ideas.