How in the world do you make time travel work?

Quantum Entanglement.

There's, oh, so many problems with time travel 'cause it's all theory.

I don't believe time is a single line. I believe it's a branching network.
So if you go back in time to kill Hitler, then you just created a different line in the system, not necessarily changing yours.

If you do believe in the single time line, then if you go back in time to kill Hitler, you wouldn't remember it, you would never have gone back in time or done anything related to time travel, and Hitler would have just died as history. Everything you were was changed as history changed, but 'cause of the person you grew to be and how, you're not the same and everything changed for you--even the act of travelling back in time.


Question: Why are you wanting to write about time travel, when it confuses you?
I just don't see the point, especially if you have to expertise yourself on it, when other people barely understand it.
Methinks you're just setting yourself up for an expert to sweep in and bludgeon your story to death 'cause your wrong about something.

Time travel is one of those major plot hole engines in science fiction... See Back to the Future or the Terminator films.

Short hand tends to be the grandfather paradox and butterfly effect. You wouldn't exist if you'd gone back in time and killed your grandfather.So you couldn't have gone back and killed your grandfather and so on.

The many worlds theory solves that paradox. You go back in time kill your grandfather and create another reality which branches off, in which the future you never existed. Unfortunately you now can't go back to the future as it no longer exists in the form you left it.

Blimey I'll let others chime in or I could be writing this stuff for a long time. Look up the grandfather paradox and read Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder.

Good luck.

I'm roughing out the plot of a novel I'm writing that heavily relies on time travel. The MC goes back in time to kill himself because he indirectly caused the end of the world. Upon killing himself, he would cease to exist, therefore averting the apocalypse. So the time-travel issue is resolved by keeping it affecting only one life. I did it that way because like you, I didn't see a way around the paradox. Maybe there can be a way for the time traveller to retain memory once he/she completes the goal so they know it happened, even though it didn't really happen.

I've gone crossed-eyed a dozen times trying to keep it all straight myself.
Use graphs and charts.

A.

alldis said:

I'm roughing out the plot of a novel I'm writing that heavily relies on time travel. The MC goes back in time to kill himself because he indirectly caused the end of the world. Upon killing himself, he would cease to exist, therefore averting the apocalypse. So the time-travel issue is resolved by keeping it affecting only one life. I did it that way because like you, I didn't see a way around the paradox. Maybe there can be a way for the time traveller to retain memory once he/she completes the goal so they know it happened, even though it didn't really happen.

I've gone crossed-eyed a dozen times trying to keep it all straight myself.
Use graphs and charts.

A.

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But if he succeeds in killing himself, that doesn't solve the paradox, because he won't be alive anymore to go back in time and kill himself. So he won't die. So he will be alive to go back in time and kill himself. So he....well, you get the idea.

I kind of like the idea that everything that has happened, has happened after the effects of errant time travellers has been taken into account. So, if you went back in time to kill your grandfather, you simply wouldn't be able to. Either your gun would jam, or someone would intervene, or maybe you'd kill the wrong person.

JimmyB27 said:

But if he succeeds in killing himself, that doesn't solve the paradox, because he won't be alive anymore to go back in time and kill himself. So he won't die. So he will be alive to go back in time and kill himself. So he....well, you get the idea.

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Haha. That's what makes it so fun / frustrating to think about.

As for the OP: Perhaps the time travel could be a one way trip. You go back in time knowing you've changed the future, but in doing so can not return to that future. So say you go back to assassinate Hitler, you best be prepared to live the rest of your life in his decade.

I would make my own rules and stick with those. Do I want characters to go back in time in my story and be able to change the past or not? Do I want characters when they went back in time and killed their grandfather to disappear immediately, pop out of existance when they tried to return back to their present, or remain as they were albeit somewhat confused? I can choose whichever works best for my story.

Until time travel is proven to be possible, no one can accuse you of doing it wrong. (Well, they can, and someone probably will, but their view on time travel and what happens to people going back in time to kill their own grandparents, is as unproven as yours at the moment.)

derail/

How in the world do you make time travel work?

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Just to say that every time I see this thread, I hear the tearful Christmas morning wail of a frustrated, sweet little boy who's spent since five a.m. trying to make his cardboard-boxed "Super Time Travel Machine" take off with him in it.

While his heartless, soulless, prankster parents snigger and put the video of him on you-tube.

Aw, lambie....

/end derail


ETA: Good luck with it SMP

I love reading (and writing) time travel stories because of all of the possibilities. It's something that we don't know how it 'works' so we can use our imaginations. My biggest gripe as a reader, though, is when the author is inconsistent with his time travel, leaving gaping plot holes like one of the previous posters mentioned. My suggestion? Read, read, read as many time travel stories as you can get your hands on, then create a method/theory that works with your story, and stick with it.

For my current WIP, I set certain restrictions on time travel, but I skipped over a lot of the 'science'-y stuff. Time travel is an essential part of my story, but it's not necessary for the reader to understand the physics of how it works. Think of "The Time Traveler's Wife" -- the author kept the explanation vague (it's some sort of biological/genetic mutation), and focused instead on how it played out in the characters' lives.

Check out this thread for some thoughts on the subject. http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=262101

Time travel is complex and it depends on how you want to portray it. Watch shows and movies about time travel. Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Terminator, 12 Monkeys, and The Time Machine just to name a few. Charmed also had a number of time travel episodes and Star Trek had even more. You can get ideas by seeing different portrayals.

I love time travel, but...yeah. It's confusing and complicated. Ultimately all you can do is decide how it works for *your* story, then either stick to the rules you've laid down or provide damn good reasons why the characters can break them.

When I was writing a time-travel story*, I had the traveller as outside events due to intervention from sort-of godlike people who were intervening to sort out a problem and using him to do it.

In another story*, it was only travel to the future that was possible.

*abandoned
*also abandoned

I make my own rules, and stick to them. Detailed notes with timelines for everything helps. I also think the less complicated you make the rules, the better. There is so much possibility with time travel, as long as you keep your idea consistent within the confines of the world you created, I think it can work.
Good luck!!

" 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. "

Make up whatever rules you want to govern how time travel works in your story. If you want paradoxes, there they are. If you don't, don't have them. You're the author - you get to say what goes. Just pick a rule-set and follow through, don't change the rules in the middle of the game.

benbenberi 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... time-y wimey... stuff. "

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That's the first time I've ever thought of time as an amoeba!!

In quite a few time travel stories it turns out that the traveller was *supposed* to travel back in time in order to create the world in which he travels back in time... for example, sometimes he finds out that his grandfather was not actually his grandfather (hey, come on, how many women do you think had secret affairs during WWII while their husband was away fighting?) and killing him achieves nothing. In some occasions they turn out to BE their own grandfather.

It is worth reading Pratchett for a very intelligent (if humourously presented) take on time travel which states that reality has an inertia and history will find a way to come about whatever you do - kill Hitler before he becomes Chancellor? Well, someone else steps up and fills the same role - the social and political situation (Germany in financial trouble, excessive racism against 'non Germans' such as gypsies and Jews who are blamed for all the problems, and so on) is the same and anyone with approximately the same political views will end up invading Poland. Maybe some details are different, maybe the holocaust is less or worse, maybe Poland is invaded a few years earlier or later, but there will still be a war.

This is, of course, one of many theories and they can all only be theories as there is no way at present to test any of them. So, best thing to do is pick the one that most fits your story and apply it consistantly.

How do I make it work? With a lump hammer and a lot of shouting.

Time travel is horrific, but the way that works for me (once I put the hammer down) is just make the rules up, but make sure you stick to them. So long as you have internal consistency (or acknowledge any inconsistencies with a genre-savvy character) I'll take your word for it.

mccardey said:

derail/



Just to say that every time I see this thread, I hear the tearful Christmas morning wail of a frustrated, sweet little boy who's spent since five a.m. trying to make his cardboard-boxed "Super Time Travel Machine" take off with him in it.

While his heartless, soulless, prankster parents snigger and put the video of him on you-tube.

Aw, lambie....

/end derail

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"How do you make time travel work?"
"I don't know, I'll tell you yesterday when I've worked it out."

onesecondglance said:

"How do you make time travel work?"
"I don't know, I'll tell you yesterday when I've worked it out."

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Bahhaha!

I experienced time travel in a dream. I met my parents before they married. I was an adult and it was at a church picnic at the church where they eventually married. I spoke with my mother. She liked my name and said that when she had a son she might name him Alan. My father didn't like this stranger talking to his girlfriend.


I once asked my father if such a thing had happened. He didn't remember it. He also didn't remember where my name came from--no ancestors named Alan--except that, "It was your mother's idea."


If you use parallel universes or the notion that time is an endlessly repeating loop, time travel can be made believable. If a character comes back from the future and alters its course, you might also wish to erase memories of the other future from the traveler's mind and replace them with the consequences of the alteration. Only the reader knows about the both futures.


Gives meaning to the old saying about meeting oneself coming and going.

Al Stevens said:

Gives meaning to the old saying about meeting oneself coming and going.

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Hmmph. More like it explains why half the time we don't know if we're coming or going.