At the end of the day in time travel stories, that's what people want. Stories. Not a science book. I don't really want all these theories to make my story realistic, I want them to bounce ideas around in my head. The communicator idea is a good one, I might incorporate to into my story, but I want Keith to go back in time. And yeah, ^^^ was helpful, thanks
If I am reading a science fiction story, whether it is on time travel or something else, and the author has clearly given no thought to the science aspects, then I stop reading and move on to some that is good.
Indeed. If you are writing a fantasy, then all you have to worry about is internal consistency, and the story can be as realistic or unrealistic as you like. Or you can write humor along the lines of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But if you're going to approach the work as science fiction, then the science aspect will matter to the audience (as well it should). But when I read Outlander, for example, I didn't really care whether the time travel made sense or not.
Heh. True And if you get a publisher they'll probably classify it as whatever they see fit. I know someone who wrote a fantasy, and then when a publisher took it on they wanted her to make a few modifications so they could call it Romance and shelve it there. She made the modifications and the book hit the shelves in the Romance section.
I know I am desperate to keep my first book fantasy rather than Sci-Fi because there is nothing Sci-Fi about my later time travel - it involves a mouse running up the clock, clock strikes one, mouse falls downs and wall of the chapel disappears lol From what I have read having a scientific explanation for my magic makes it borderline even if it does involve fireflies and elements This is why i think I need an agent.
The trick to writing about time travel is be irrational. If you try to rationalize time travel it will be a failure. It needs to act however you see fit in this world you are creating. So just go with it and have fun
Two words: Butterfly Effect. It may be a movie, but it is also a theory with its feet firmly grounded in chaos theory. Consider the following: Assume a perfectly ordered universe is where every event has a perfect causal relationship with everything else. Absolute causality. But, what of the perfectly chaotic universe, where an infinite number of events may happen at any given time with zero causality? Express this mathematically. 1 / x == y You already know what this curve looks like, but consider the implication. In a perfectly chaotic universe as the number of events "x" approach infinity, the odds of any single thing happening "y" approach.... zero. I've heard arguments stating while the odds of a singular event occurring infinitesimally small, the odds of something happening are certain. This is not actually true, because in a perfectly chaotic universe there are an infinite number of things which can happen. The only time an instance of certainty occurs is when an interval of chaos is established, as opposed to total and complete chaos. Within any given interval of chaos there is absolute certainty something will happen, but without that interval, that region of containment defining where chaos begins and order ends... nothing... ever... will happen. This is why time travel is impossible, because of the lack of any interval of order in the otherwise complete jumble of reality you have created by reliving something which has already happened. See, the past is an interval of perfect order. The future is an undefined infinite region of chaos. The only place for you in reality is the present. If you were to go back in time you would reshuffle the deck and create an entirely new undefined future of perfect chaos. In that instance everything is different. You're stuck.
Just because we can't wrap our brains around retrograde time travel doesn't mean it isn't real. Even Einstein thought black holes were a myth, a curiosity. That's what I love about science fiction, it probably isn't true, but it could be.
Thanks for letting me know because now I MUST go read that, but Bradbury must have gotten the idea from chaos theory, specifically the three-body problem made apparent by Henri Poincaré, 1890. I failed to properly clarify this. I don't think going back in time is necessarily impossible, but I do question the possibility of going forward. That's why I think the resolution of Unified Field Theory rests on the shoulders of statisticians, because the quantum state (the complete state of all variables known and unknown) of an object can never be known. But, an object's objective state can be known. Intervals of order and chaos. Hmmm, now there's another idea altogether.....
'People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.' Basicaly, Time can be rewritten. Or why not have some gods or big aliens overlords sort the paradox out?
If you're writing a science fiction story about time travel, the last thing you want to be is irrational. As for traveling forward in time, all you need to do is accelerate to relativistic speeds. The practical effect is like traveling forward in time. A year passes for you, but 20 for others, etc.
The theory thing confused me a bit and if he wants to get around it why not go back into time and kill Tommy himself? Just putting that out there. The killing should be easy for him to get around.
The whole grand father theory and your Hero killing the grandfather isn't needed. If he can travel back in time why not have your Hero travel back in time to the when the back guys parents first met and inject the father or mother or both with a chemical which will make them both unable to have children. Then technically they haven't killed anyone but have saved the day. Loop hole.
Hi, There are all sorts of non-violent ways to stop the bad guy being born, heck just go back at the time when he was supposed to be conceived and come up with a credible reason why one of his parents should be away on business etc. It doesn't need to be bloody. But there are other problems and paradoxes associated. First, if your MC goes back and does this, then he's just locked the entire future from the point in the past where he made the change to the point in the future where he goes back in time. After all if its a fact that in the past he did stop the baddie being conceived, then there can be no change in the future that can stop him from going back into the past. This of course leads to the next problem, if everything that must happen to make him at some future point go back into the past to fix things, is fixed, i.e. must happen, then the world must still be destroyed, so he can fix it. Next, as with all time travel problems, there is the tourist issue. Say time travel is regulated, and only one person a year can go back into the past to watch record a certain act, e.g. the crucifixion. The future is infinite (maybe?) which means that if one person a year goes back to the same event, then at some point, there are going to be so many time travelling tourists watching the crucifixion that there won't be room for the Roman soldiers! Of course in say ten million years that problem will just get worse as the city gets overrun by time travelling tourists! Then there's the old violation of the conservation of matter and energy issue. If matter can not be created or destroyed, only changed, then these ten million tourists weighing in at say seventy kgs each, i.e. seven hundred million kgs of extra matter, exist at the point in time when the crucifixion occurs, but dissappear. At some point, not only is that additional matter a problem for conservation laws, but it would actually become so great that it might have geologic effects, i.e. the formation of a canyon around the crucifixion or even worse spatial effects as the mass of the Earth increases so much as the tourists arrive that the Earth's orbit changes. The real sod though is the issue of changing one thing. It can't be done. So your MC goes back and the baddie isn't concieved. Sounds good. Except that through his life time as he grew up the baddie had interactions with lots of other people and the world as well. How many other people will not be born simply because he didn't act in the past as he shoul have? How many new people will be born for the same reason? Remember to change the creation of a human being you only need ensure one sperm doesn't make it, but another may take its place. So delay the mating (oohh I like the sound of that!) by maybe only five minutes and the baddie could replaced by a completely different person, a sister maybe. And of course if he spent a life interacting with other people, as everyone does, then what are going to be the effects of all those interactions not happening? Time travel has a few technical problems associated with it. Cheers.
If it were me, I would just stab Tommy when he was a baby if Tommy and Kieth (Keith?) are close enough to both die if Tommy's dead parents would cause them both to die. Otherwise I don't see the problem of the Grandfather paradox.
I think you need a chicken-and-egg loop. The guy goes back in the past to initiate events that would fix the horrible things that are going to happen, and _also_ initiate events to get himself to go into the past, to initiate events that would fix... and round and round. This isn't my idea, but if I tell you where it came from, that would spoilerize that piece of fiction. So the initial reason to go to the past (the Horrible Things) was replaced with another reason (his older self in the past telling his younger self in the future to go to the past.) ChickenFreak
