SOURCE: "Not With a Whimper: Hugh MacLennan's Voices in Time," in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 20, No. 2, Autumn, 1981, pp. 279-92.

In the following excerpt, Cameron examines MacLennan's thematic treatment of technology and power.

"If I have been prophetic in my earlier novels, it would not be pleasant if I were prophetic in this one," Hugh MacLennan commented [to Burt Heward in "Masterful Novel Protests Humanity's Ignorance," Citizen Ottawa, (27 September 1980)] of his latest novel, Voices in Time. Certainly if a mighty nuclear blast such as the one he describes taking place near the end of this century were indeed to shake the world down to a few hundred inhabitants, it would be horrendous. This explosion in Voices in Time is MacLennan's concept of what could conceivably be mankind's darkest hour.

Although he boldly sets his events in the years after this holocaust, his intention had nothing to do...