Random Quest - Critical Opinion

Critical Opinion

Eugene Stubbs wrote: “Random Quest works well as both a science fiction story and as a love story, and is rightly accounted one of Wyndham's best. Still, a closer look reveals some dangling ends. (...) What happened to the other Ottilie in the other world? Supposedly the nasty other Colin Trafford came back, to cause her even more heartbreak. Our Colin Trafford is a physicist, he knows what experiment accidentally sent him to the other world. How come he does not even consider repeating that experiment under controlled conditions? (...) And is Belinda Gale truly Ottilie? The other Colin Trafford was a completely different man, with a very different personality, though both Colin Traffords shared the very same childhood and diverged only at 10 or 11. Ottilie and Belinda diverged from each other even before birth, growing up each with a different name, with a different father, in a different country. There is every reason to think that Belinda would be a completely different person. Colin thinking of her as being just a ‘copy’ of another woman from another world might not be the best beginning for a marriage.(...) The film made on the base of the story resolves all these problems, by having the other world's Ottilie die suddenly of a congenital heart defect of which she was tragically not aware. Thus, Colin Trafford has nothing to seek in that world – the only Ottilie he can still hope to find is the one in our world. And also, whether or not this other Ottilie is the same person that he fell in love with, he must find and warn her to take care of her heart defect, before it kills her, too. Anything else can wait until her life is saved. (...) A film adaptation is not always more logically consistent than the literary original. In this case, it is.”