Review: The Fixed Period, by Anthony Trollope
a review by Rich Horton
The Fixed Period is set in 1980 on the fictional island of Britannula. Britannula has been independent of England for a few decades, and has established a prosperous and comfortable society. Their laws have one peculiarity: a "fixed period" of life: anyone reaching the age of 67 will be "deposited" in comfort for one year, then humanely put down. The idea is to preserve people from the ills of old age, and to remove the burden of unproductive people from the economy.
This law was passed when no one neared that age. The novel is narrated by the President of Britannula, Mr. Neverbend (a typical Trollope name with a meaning), who spearheaded the movement for the Fixed Period. But he tells us from the start that the law has been suspended, and that Britannula has lost its independence, and is again a colony of the British Empire. He is writing this account in order to promote his ideas, and to complain about England's actions.
The trouble starts when the oldest resident of Britannula is approaching the age of 67. This is Mr. Crasweller, who is a wealthy man, and who is also Mr. Neverbend's best friend. Mr. Crasweller was a supporter of the Fixed Period legislations, but as he approaches the age of "deposition" he is increasingly reluctant. After all, he is quite healthy, in both mind and body. And, indeed, several of the older residents are beginning to make it clear that they too have changed their minds. (Hardly surprising, I say, as I'm 65 myself!) But Mr. Neverbend, true to his name, insists that the law must be enforced, and expresses his disappointment with his friend's weakness. (He is about 10 years younger -- who knows what he'd think if he was the same age!)
Mr. Crasweller's beautiful daughter Eva is another factor. Naturally, she doesn't want her father to be killed. But whoever married her stands to gain control of the Crasweller estate. One of her suitors, then, is quickly revealed as a opportunistic troll who will be glad to see Eva's father die ... but another suitor is the President's son, Jack, who, for the sake of Eva, takes up against his father's beloved Fixed Period. Another complication is a cricket match between a team from England and the locals ... and one of the Englishmen falls for Eva as well.
It's ultimately rather weak, though Trollope is an engaing enough writer that I wasn't bored. The philosophy of the Fixed Period and its opposition are both weakly argued -- the novel would have been more interesting if it was more deeply discussed, though I suspect Trollope didn't have his heart in that. (I do think Trollope is satirizing the notion that a person's only worth is his productivity, his direct economic contributions to society.) The first person narration is an issue as well -- Trollope was an absolute master at the omniscient, author-centric, point of view, and here, with Mr. Neverbend narrating (and controlling the discourse about the Fixed Period) we lose something valuable. The romance plot is paper thin, to boot, and neith Jack nor Eva really draws our interest (except perhaps for Jack's cricket exploits.) Trollope does throw in some very modest extrapolations: a war in which England and France oppose the US and Russia, a super weapon, steam bicycles, a sort of (wired) telegraph, and, most amusingly, cricket played with mechanical bowlers.
I wondered if this was the first fiction to posit a polity with mandatory euthanasia at a fixed age. The idea has been used since in SF, of course, with the most famous examples being Isaac Asimov's Pebble in the Sky, in which the far future Earth mandates euthanasia at 60, and William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's Logan's Run, in which the age of euthanasia is 21 (though elevated to 30 for the movie version.) Offhand I can't think of any SF with that concept earlier than 1950, when Pebble in the Sky was published, but I wouldn't be surprised if a story or two from the pulp era had posited such an idea. That would still leave primacy with Trollope -- but it turns out he actually got the idea from a Jacobean-era play! This was The Old Law, by Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger, probably dating to the 1610s. In this play, men are to be killed when they reach the age of 80, and women at the age of 60! (As one character says, "There was no woman in this Senate, certes".) It turns out this law is a fake, designed to test the virtues of the citizenship -- those who do not resist the law are deemed to be bad people. Thus, the play doesn't QUITE portray a society with mandatory euthansia -- but it certainly portrays the idea.
One final irony: shortly after this novel was published, Trollope died -- at the age of 67.
