Time Travel Question...

mbroadway · Dec 27, 2009

This is my first attempt at a time-travel theme. I have a question that I'm certain others have asked. I would appreciate any enlightenment.

Situation:
1. MC finds a device that allows time travel.
2. He utilizes it and travels to a previous time, prior to his discovery of the device.

Question:
Is this feasible? If not, how can it be written so that it's possible for him to have the device at a time prior to his discovery of it?

Thanks for any insight into this.

Michael

Maxinquaye · Dec 27, 2009

Quantum physis is not only stranger than you imagine. It's stranger than you CAN imagine.

As long as you find a consistent, somewhat plausible, theory I guess anything can work.

mbroadway · Dec 27, 2009

Thanks, Max.

After posting that, I realized that the DeLorean from Back to the Future existed in the past, before it was built. So, I guess that's a good basis for the possibility I'm considering. I think it will work. As long as I can make the reader suspend their disbelief.

I appreciate your comment.

blacbird · Dec 27, 2009

It's time-travel, which is to say, fantasy. You can do anything you want. This device has been used by many many many writers, from H.G. Wells onward. Ray Bradbury provided a famous example in his story "A Sound of Thunder".

caw

Maxinquaye · Dec 27, 2009

Yeah, and quantum physics does give you some legroom. You can have stuff happen in alternate realities. The time machine could exist earlier in another reality, and stuff like that.

Dommo · Dec 27, 2009

Watch the movie "Primer". It's probably the most realistic take on time travel you'll ever see, and I'm sure after the mind raping you'll receive, you'll see why it gets so complicated.

benbradley · Dec 27, 2009

mbroadway said:
This is my first attempt at a time-travel theme. I have a question that I'm certain others have asked. I would appreciate any enlightenment.

Situation:
1. MC finds a device that allows time travel.
2. He utilizes it and travels to a previous time, prior to his discovery of the device.

Question:
Is this feasible? If not, how can it be written so that it's possible for him to have the device at a time prior to his discovery of it?

Thanks for any insight into this.

Michael

Do his clothes go back in time with him? Or is it like that Terminator movie (which was it, 1 or 2) where Arnold suddenly shows up in the earlier time period naked? If his clothes go back, it's also easy to assume that anything he holds in his hand also goes back.

There's also Crichton's "Timeline" where some unknown things, like "where does the machine that brings them back to our time come from?" are explained in a 'cute' way. I'll let you read it and find out.

There have been several AW thread on time travel, this should help you find them:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="time+travel"+site:absolutewrite.com&start=20&sa=N

efkelley · Dec 27, 2009

benbradley said:
Do his clothes go back in time with him? Or is it like that Terminator movie (which was it, 1 or 2) where Arnold suddenly shows up in the earlier time period naked? If his clothes go back, it's also easy to assume that anything he holds in his hand also goes back.

All the Terminator movies have this effect. Their version of time travel allows only living organic material (and inorganic material wrapped in flesh) to travel in time. One wonder how the hair and fingernails made it, but meh.

Regarding the topic, I agree with the majority of the thread. What function do you need the time travel to fill in the story? It's really that simple.

Maraxus · Dec 30, 2009

There are fundamentally diffrent kinds of time mashines. Let's only consider backwards travel, traveling forwart is quite unproblematic:

1. Those that travel back in time with you: Back to the future, etc.
The mightiest of all time mashines, and thus the most problematic. Aproximately every problem is solveable, if this is played without limitations. Limitations are thus necessary.

2. Those that don't: Terminator.
You step into a teleportation chamber and travel in time. One important part should be that you can't move time travel chambers through time. Overall, in this case time travel is much less powerful and - unless you force it - less likely to create paradoxes.

3. Those that make your mind go back.
Groundhog Day could be mentioned, although there is no device. Seven days strangely goes in here, too because the main point is, that there is at every time only one mashine and one "you" and you can't travel back further then the existence of "you" or your time mashine. It can easily be seen, that this is the mose unscientific of all time travels but it avoids some balancing problems of time travels.
I just realised, that primer mostly fits in here, too, allthough it's very scientific and don't actually moves your metaphysical mind, or removes the "you" in the past you travel to.

AlterEgox5 · Dec 30, 2009

Totally plausible. And if you want to read the science behind the possibilities of travel, I recommend Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible. Hah, I actually just recommended this in another thread as well regarding hard SF.

But yeah, others have already pointed out the example of Terminator - Arnold goes back into a time before SkyNet was even created. It works.

RSD · Dec 30, 2009

Wait a tick. Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably, I could go back and visit my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how cou ... oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.

~Austin Powers

If you notice in the examples given (Back to the Future, Terminator) the people/machines that traveled back in time had either no way, or a hard time of returning back to their own time. All because they lacked the technology to get them back. Back to the Future still had the DeLorean, but no plutonium to power it, and no gas in the 3rd movie (yet it still had Mr. Fusion). All the Terminators were one way trips.

I guess it doesn't really matter if the device is magical, but it seems the past is a lot more trickier than the future. Even in Back to the Future 2, when they went to the future, all of the damage was still done in the past.

dclary · Dec 30, 2009

Don't forget Barry Allen, the first modern-age Flash, as he raced to save the universe in the first Multiverse collision, went back in time and encouraged himself to become the Flash.

Time travel is awesome. Just be consistent with your rules and no one will question them.

TMA-1 · Dec 31, 2009

Time travel is not ruled out by physics as we know it, in fact it does leave the possibility open. And that goes for time travel both back and forward in time. But to have a small device which will allow you to travel in time into the past and the future with ease would require technology beyond anything we have today.

Temrek · Dec 31, 2009

Personally, I prefer the alternate reality option. Instead of travelling back in time, you travel to an alternate reality which is exactly like earth except in year X instead. Thus you can change events to your hearts content without inducing paradoxes.

This option does not always fit, at least if you want to explore possible effects on the future rather then having the character explore the past. If you use 'true' time travel, either decide to avoid paradoxes all together or how you will handle them!

As to answer your original question, any device that creates a "time travel bubble" around itself should travel with the user. Just bring a portable power source!

stephenf · Dec 31, 2009

I think there is a theory, that will support any idea.But at this moment in time ,time travel is impossible.In fiction everything is possible,the trick is to make convincing. My favourite time travel idea is David Grinnrll's Edge of Time. Some scientists create an entire universe and keep it in a shed The universe's time is moving at a much faster rate than our own,so the scientist can visit different points in there captured universes history.

BillPatt · Dec 31, 2009

All kinds of Time Travel books and short stories

I'm posting just to see how many I can remember that have not been previously mentioned.

All You Zombies
Dinosaur Beach - Keith Laumer
Technicolor Time Machine
Fires of Paratime

More as I think of them.

megan_d · Jan 3, 2010

Anything is possible with time travel stories, just remember to stick to the rules you establish.

Art_Sempai · Jan 4, 2010

Just do a good job of suspending belief.
Arr...I just remembered the Bill and Ted movies.

Dave.C.Robinson · Jan 4, 2010

I'd do it by decoupling the character's personal timeline from the rest of the world.

He's going along with everyone, picks up the device and then doubles back into the past, where he starts moving forward again. He keeps the device because even though it's earlier in the world's timeline, it's later in his own timeline. He picked it up (the number of hours/days/years he has experienced since he got it) ago, regardless of the actual date and time.

At least that's how I would do it.

kaitie · Jan 4, 2010

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, timey-wimey stuff.

megan_d · Jan 4, 2010

kaitie said:
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, timey-wimey stuff.

Damn it, I'd just managed to get my mind off 11's departure. Now I'm all sad again!

scottishpunk · Jan 4, 2010

Since time-travel is made up anyway, you can come up with your own rules and ideas of how it works. The main thing is to BE CONSISTANT and avoid plot holes. I find bad plot holes in most time travel stories, even the ones I love... so be careful.

megan_d · Jan 4, 2010

I've never attempted time travel myself, but I image a index cards or a flow chart or a big board with pins and bits of string would be handy in keeping everything straight and avoiding plot holes.

Axler · Jan 4, 2010

One of my books (Omega Path) dealt with travel to fixed points in time and space, that were actually impervious to any kind of tampering. The travelers were shunted off sideways, through a "sidereal conduit" to an corresponding but slightly different timeline. Nothing they did there could affect the timeline from which they came.

Smiling Ted · Jan 4, 2010

Go here and scroll down to "Time Travel." It was set up for this.

Time Travel Question...

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