Backtracked Summary?

[Cole Milne]

I was reading World's Best Science Fiction (1969) and the short story Backtracked By: Burt Filer was in there. I found myself re-reading some pages a few times and I don't think I fully grasped the concept of the story. I was wondering if any could summarize or has found a summary that could help me further understand the story.

Thanks!

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

That story happened to be in the very first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I ever owned. I have read it again since, but I won't claim to have an absolutely perfect memory of it. Anyway, as I recall:

The protagonist wakes up one day to find that his thirty-something but weak body (I think he had some problem with his leg; in any case, he could not run very fast) has been replaced by a forty-something but stronger body. This is in a future where this is known to be possible; the process of trading bodies with your younger self is known as backtracking. He does not know why his future self did this. He finds out when he has to use his stronger body to save the life of his wife during some accident or other. He then realizes that he spent years doing hard exercise to build up his weak body so he could send his stronger body back in time to do this.

I'm sure there is more to the story than that, but that's the bare bones of the plot.

 

[Cole Milne]

That story happened to be in the very first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I ever owned. I have read it again since, but I won't claim to have an absolutely perfect memory of it. Anyway, as I recall:

The protagonist wakes up one day to find that his thirty-something but weak body (I think he had some problem with his leg; in any case, he could not run very fast) has been replaced by a forty-something but stronger body. This is in a future where this is known to be possible; the process of trading bodies with your younger self is known as backtracking. He does not know why his future self did this. He finds out when he has to use his stronger body to save the life of his wife during some accident or other. He then realizes that he spent years doing hard exercise to build up his weak body so he could send his stronger body back in time to do this.

I'm sure there is more to the story than that, but that's the bare bones of the plot.

Thank you very much! I was also wondering what the incident was? That part was also confusing to figure out what happened to her.

Thanks!

 

[J-Sun]

I read this on seeing this thread because it got me curious. To tighten up Victoria's comments with the benefit of a fresh reading, he was 36 and one of the last sufferers from polio which had disfigured a leg and left him generally weak and out of shape. He gave up ten years and comes back fit and strong - I mean, still disfigured, but has compensated. He doesn't know what's happening because the time cops basically fuzz up your memory to prevent paradoxes. The incident seem to be just her picking flowers and slipping off a cliff where she clings for life.

Spoiler

He vaults the picnic table, runs like mad, is able to catch only a single wrist, and pulls her up over the cliff where they both collapse, he with freshly damaged leg, she with damaged arm. And then there's a "screw it" paragraph that I guess is the point and can be interpreted how you like. I was thinking it was too "simple" a story of an upbeat ending until the final paragraph but, IMO, it rather clumsily avoids that by ending with the "where are they now?" which describes them getting divorced a couple years later and the foreshadowed companion of the backtracker ending up with the girl and the backtracker ending up alone. You could say this indicated that "love" is ephemeral or that love is so enduring that the guy's okay with saving her no matter the end result or you could maybe think he should backtrack again and maybe drop the other guy off a cliff or whatever.

It was an interesting story with a neat gimmick, but a little too gimmicky for me.

Anyway - don't know if there was any need for this post, but that's some of what occurred to me on reading it. If there were still fuzzy areas, maybe it helps a little.