Not sure exactly where this goes, but I thought it might be a little bit of fun. It'll also be very helpful. I'm deliberately compiling a list of the different time travel theories and concepts that I can wedge into different points in my story. I have set strict time travel rules, but I will throw in discussions on the entire spectrum of theories and concepts. Just to make it fun. Like the grandfather paradox, the parallel worlds concept of time travel, Bill and Ted, whatever. So step on it, and when it reaches 88 miles per hours I want to see your posts and thoughts blasting through here. Unless you've done it already.......
My favourite tidbit is the converging timelines idea, which is something I draw inspiration from myself. The idea that no matter what you change in a specific timeline, random events will begin driving it back towards the actual timeline resulting in the same future. I also like the distorted timelines tidbit - another one I'm featuring in my own time travel stories. In the main world where I'm writing stuff & where I set roleplay scenarios magic leaves behind taint / corruption and there are time periods / events that have been so corrupted retroactively (by chronomancers) that they've become deathtraps for time explorers. Imagine going back to München in 1923 November to do /that one fated time-traveler responsibility/ only to discover that the whole Putsch happened in the midst of HUNDREDS of time travelers trying to swing the events one way or another.
The first thing you mentioned is interesting. You mean how you go back and save someone and then a day later they die in some freak accident, because time won't be messed with? Not sure I follow the second thing you mention regarding the traps. It reminds me of a cute video on youtube by Studio C where a kazillion different time travelers are bumping into each other in Nazi Germany, all trying to stop Hitler.
On the opposite extreme, you have Connie Willis' Oxford time travel series, in which time travelers are mysteriously diverted from visiting any spacetime location that has a significant impact on history, a phenomenon they call slippage. I think she mentioned in one book that no one had ever been able to get within a few hundred miles and/or several years of the battle of Waterloo, for instance. Then again, maybe the best attitude is the one taken in the Austin Powers movies: "I suggest you just don't think about it. And that goes for all of you as well."
My personal favorite is the Mandela effect. Some people remembering different things from a different past that may or may not have happened. Due to the universe always correcting itself by merging timelines.
That happened in Steins Gate (Major spoilers I guess) The friend of MC kept getting caught in a death loop so he had to time travel to many different timelines to prevent it. The more he did it the more shit hit the fan. It's a really good Visual novel if you haven't read it yet and like Time Travel.
Agree with above poster and Connie Willis' concept of slippage, it's fairly near the beginning of The Doomsday Book. Have you read The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas? There are some really good discussions about time travel in that - you can't travel back in time before time travel was invented because you need the technology on the other end for it to work, like a phone. And there is a certain point in the future they can't travel to, they speculate there was a disaster that destroyed the tech so they can't reach it. It's well worth a read for time travel fans.
I read a couple of flash-ish pieces, probably in Analog magazine, ages ago. In the one, they sent a time traveler back to the Big Bang. There's a legit scientific question of "Why did the Big Bang happen? What made the pre-big bang state unstable and cause it to, well, bang?" The answer is the mass of all the time machines arriving from every single race at every single time in the whole life of the universe sending back a time machine to find out why, and all of them arriving at the same instant. The other one (and this is kind of a Fermi Paradox for time travel: If it's possible, where are all the time travelers?) was that a functional time machine set up a field that could be locked onto by another time machine. Without that field, no time travel to the past was possible. So the first guy to invent a time machine was suddenly deluged by time travelers locking onto his field. Travel further past than the moment of him turning on his machine was impossible, but after that became commonplace.
I will write down "Mandela Effect". Apologies for tiny mini spoilers... Do you refer to the characters from Timeless? Or maybe Back To The Future where Marty remembers the crappy jobs his dad and brother had just a day earlier, while his family remembers the Marty they had known for 17 years? In Timeless, you can see the effects of it not only in history, but also in personal relationships. I always wonder where "the other one" has gone. I mean, imagine if YOUR son approaches you and goes "hey, listen, dad. I traveled through time and have returned. I changed the timeline so the job you currently have is a job that you didn't have last time around. Also, you know how the past 17 years we did stuff together and you also took me to your office and you remember that I've seen it and you took a picture of me in your office? I don't remember that. The person who you raised in the past 17 years, his personality, his memories... damn, dad, I don't know where he went. I'm a variation of him and I'm identical to him in some ways. But that's not me in that picture." Well, I think it's a nice attitude, depends on what you're writing. I solved all of the paradoxes a different way in my own thing. I have other problems, but at least not the time paradox!
Again, slowly. Cos this paradox is giving me a headache. I'll definitely add this one to my list of time thingies and google the crap out of the Fermi Paradox. Thanks.
Sounds amazing. I did something a bit different with the "laws" of time travel and resolved some paradoxes, but I did do something about the technology needed for both sides of the travel. Not that it limits my characters. I searched the Kate Mascarenhas novel on audible and I see it's already in my wish list. Not shocked to see it there When I get some more credits I'll remember that.
