The turtle

The entire novel is offset as a 'frame' story, a convention of American gothic stories and novels. The book contains a fictitious Editor's Note explaining the origin of The Turtle as being physically delivered to the world's attention not by its author but by one of the author's friends long after it was written. The reputation and history of the book are further filtered and altered by the passage of fictional time. The events in the novel take place in 2001, but the Editor's Note is dated 2062, and the author's true identity remains a mystery. This is done to offset the fantastical nature of the later parts of the book