Surprising literary ventures
Gary Dexter THE FIXED PERIOD (1881) by Anthony Trollope The Fixed Period is the most un-Trollopian thing Trollope ever wrote. It is a firstperson futuristic narrative set in the state of Britannula, an island somewhere near New Zealand, in the year 1980. The President of Britannula, John Neverbend, decides to institute a fixed term of 671/2 years for the life-span of his citizens, after which they will be dealt a painless and compulsory euthanasia. The Fixed Period is similar in style to a book published a few years earlier, Samuel Butler's Erewhon; in film perhaps its closest kinship is with Logan 's Run or Soylent Green.
Let any man look among his friends,' Neverbend says, 'and see whether men of 65 are not in the way of those who are still aspiring to rise in the world. A judge shall be deaf on the bench when younger men below him can hear with accuracy; his voice shall have descended to a poor treble, or his eyesight shall be dim and fading . . . It is self-evident that at 65 a man has done all he is fit to do.
What did (the 66-year-old) Ming Campbell say on his resignation? Wasn't it 'I believe that I have fulfilled my objectives'?
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