Aldiss confessed that this story contains one of the wackiest ideas that he ever had. Does it
contain time travel? You should read the story first and decide for yourself, but here’s my
spoil-laden take on the matter:
An invisible, subterranean gas can be supplied right to
your house along with controls that let you control its delivery to your brain. Depending on
the concentration, the result is to bring aspects of your previous consciousness (or that of
your ancestors) right into your present-day brain: physical sensations, bodily abilities,
mental attitudes, and the psychological make-up of the channeled person all take over your
body, although you remain present. To me, this could be ancestral memory—perhaps passed
down genetically and triggered by the newly discovered gas—but I’m going to list it as
time travel.
Fifi could not understand what on earth he was talking about. Every since leaving
Plymouth, she had been adrift, and that not entirely metaphorically. It was bad enough
playing Pilgrim Mother to one of the Pilgrim Fathers, but she did not dig this New World
at all. It was now beyond her comprehension to understand that the vast resources of
modern technology were fouling up the whole time schedule of a planet.