Time travel and suspension of disbelief

E.F.B. · Mar 25, 2014

I've been thinking about the concept of time travel a lot lately because the main idea behind my fantasy WIP is that my MC is going to magically travel to a time in earth's history that is so ancient it has fallen out of common memory. She'll be fairly heavily involved in the events that follow and then, when everything is over, she'll be magically brought back to her own time again where everything is still exactly the way it always has been.

My only concern about this idea is that I'm afraid readers might have an issue with the fact that my MC's time traveling to the distant past and had no effect on the present. Is this a legitimate concern that I'll end up having to address somehow in the story, or do you think suspension of disbelief would keep the reader from worrying about it?

rwm4768 · Mar 25, 2014

It depends on what form of time travel you're using. You could go the route that everything she did in the past already happened in her timeline, so she isn't actually changing anything. Or you could say that her time travel created a new timeline, but she can still return to her own timeline.

If you're having her change stuff on her own timeline, especially so long ago, I think readers would have trouble suspending disbelief.

So I'd go with the idea that her time travel has always taken place. Essentially, you can't change the past.

E.F.B. · Mar 25, 2014

rwm4768 said:
It depends on what form of time travel you're using. You could go the route that everything she did in the past already happened in her timeline, so she isn't actually changing anything.

That^ is something I had been considering but didn't know how to put it into words. I think it fits very well with what I want to do. Thanks!

kenpochick · Mar 25, 2014

Have you read "Pathfinder" by Orson Scott Card. He has a good take on the time travel paradox issue.

I would pose this question though: If whatever your character does doesn't affect the present at all, why should I care what they're doing? Make sure there is a satisfactory answer there.

BethS · Mar 25, 2014

E.F.B. said:
I've been thinking about the concept of time travel a lot lately because the main idea behind my fantasy WIP is that my MC is going to magically travel to a time in earth's history that is so ancient it has fallen out of common memory.

What I'd wonder is -- how will she speak the language?

E.F.B. · Mar 25, 2014

BethS said:
What I'd wonder is -- how will she speak the language?

Magical translation. The same magic that brings her to the past translates the language too. To show this, I'll have her not be able to understand the first few words that are said to her by the first person she meets in the past. Then as that person continues trying to talk to her, she is suddenly able to understand them and they understand her.

Torgo · Mar 25, 2014

In Julian May's Saga of the Exiles they get around this by having the characters travel back to the Pliocene era. IIRC the idea is that there have been a couple of mass extinctions since then, so any impact the time travellers have would be erased by those cataclysms.

King Neptune · Mar 25, 2014

Don't get hung up on the method transportation. Most time travel stories are about the events in the other time, and the transportation is just a minor device.

Read The Ship That Sailed the Time Strem for a cute bit of magical travel.

Torgo · Mar 25, 2014

Oh, your other get-out is that nothing can alter the timeline. Any attempt to alter the course of history is thwarted by what Stephen Hawking I believe called 'temporal censorship'.

E.F.B. · Mar 25, 2014

kenpochick said:
I would pose this question though: If whatever your character does doesn't affect the present at all, why should I care what they're doing? Make sure there is a satisfactory answer there.

That's a good point. I guess there's always the "domino effect" theory. Like, if my MC hadn't done the things that she did when she time traveled to the past then the present would have changed for the worse because the bad guy(s) would have won and messed up all of history. Or something like that.

Brightdreamer · Mar 25, 2014

I wouldn't try to micro-analyze it, but something should be mentioned, even in passing.

IMHO, if time travel is allowed by the laws of physics, I wouldn't be too worried about one human's decisions drastically altering her point of origin; physics trump free will, so if you're able to go there at all, it's never going to come down to your choices creating or obliterating your own reality/existence. Either you're traveling to a parallel timestream where your arrival and decisions don't affect your "original" world, or time just isn't as linear as we thought (the Doctor Who idea, that history is malleable and can/does change all the time, but unless you were time traveling you don't notice it.) So I'd go with the alternate-timeline idea, or handwave it with the "history corrects" idea, that any changes she makes will be absorbed and ultimately obliterated by the greater momentum of time's flow.

You could do the "she had to go back in time, because she did this which is why this happened, and ultimately her dropped shoe is the cause of Western civilization" bit, a.k.a the "domino" idea, but tread lightly - this pushes close to the prophecy idea of predetermination, which can kill tension if misused. (If there's no doubt that she can/will/did succeed because she already has, where's the tension?)

Salairawns · Mar 25, 2014

E.F.B. said:
That's a good point. I guess there's always the "domino effect" theory. Like, if my MC hadn't done the things that she did when she time traveled to the past then the present would have changed for the worse because the bad guy(s) would have won and messed up all of history. Or something like that.

My concern with time travel, if she's already done it, is I start to imagine an infinite loop of the character traveling back to do the 'important thing.' That's probably not your intention.

Telergic · Mar 25, 2014

Just know for yourself what the time-traveling system is. If it's not consistent in your mind -- unalterable continuum with predestination, many worlds, tiny changes allowed but flatten themselves out, all time travel to the past erases the future, or whatever it may be -- then the reader will sense your confusion or disinterest and will be disgusted by it.

Roxxsmom · Mar 25, 2014

Well, you could argue that things being the way they are in the world is because she's already done what it is she did, but of course, she doesn't know what those things were. She doesn't even know whether or not she'll survive to come home, because it all happened so long ago there's no record of it.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it raises the specter of fatalism.

Another is the concept of time streams. She alters things in a different time stream, but when she's done, she still returns to her own. Of course, then there's the issue of whether a different time stream from her own really matters.

Or, you could have her return to the present and have it be different in some subtle or not so subtle ways.

There's always the potential for disbelief in any fantasy or SF scenario, time travel or no. It occurred to me when I watched Back to the Future, that changing the circumstances of Marty's parents' meeting would have erased his own (and his siblings') existence as much as their not getting together would have. Would his parents really have stayed in Mill Valley and followed the same exact plans with regards to their family if they were such different people? And even if they had, would they have ended up having sex on the same day and hour so the same three spermatozoa and ova would have met to conceive the same three offspring? Not likely.

But I shrugged that thought aside and still enjoyed the movie.

kuwisdelu · Mar 25, 2014

Roxxsmom said:
Well, you could argue that things being the way they are in the world is because she's already done what it is she did, but of course, she doesn't know what those things were. She doesn't even know whether or not she'll survive to come home, because it all happened so long ago there's no record of it.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it raises the specter of fatalism.

But that's an awesome source for internal conflict!

King Neptune · Mar 26, 2014

Roxxsmom said:
Well, you could argue that things being the way they are in the world is because she's already done what it is she did, but of course, she doesn't know what those things were. She doesn't even know whether or not she'll survive to come home, because it all happened so long ago there's no record of it.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it raises the specter of fatalism.

Whether one regards our time-space as singular or part of a multiverse, it is determined. Fatalism isn't a problem. Believeing in free will is a problem.

Trip F. · Mar 26, 2014

I would go with the predestination thing, Like the future the character lives in already has the past action in its history, but that's just me.

Max Vaehling · Mar 26, 2014

First of all, E.F.B., I think you're right that we can't just handwave time travel time-tunnel style anymore - readers are too ... temporally literate these days. The plus side of that is, you don't need to explain much anymore since we've all seen the various 'theories' at some point. Just choose a mythology, mention it somewhere ealry on and stay true to it. Plus, it's magic, so there may be a get-out-of-jail-free card n there somewhere.

If the era your protagonist returns to is so far in the past that we don't have a recollection of it anyway, I wouldn't sweat it too much. There is a ripple effect to time travel, but the thing about ripples is, they eventually die down. Torgo mentioned mass extinctions. Works for me. As long as she doesn't eat the one fish that would otherwise have been the ancestor of all humanity, I guess you could get away with a minor butterfly effect. (Though I'd like it if everything was more or less the same, except... no bees!)

Alternately, time travelers could somehow be tied to their timelines, like a geo-historical umbilical cord that would take an extra effort to cut. Uh, make that metaphysical rather than sciencey, because MAGIC!

Telergic · Mar 26, 2014

King Neptune said:
Whether one regards our time-space as singular or part of a multiverse, it is determined. Fatalism isn't a problem. Believeing in free will is a problem.

Such a flat-out statement of fact! I like a lot of your posts, KN, but this one is going too far. This is too strong a claim for either science or philosophy to support.

Z0Marley · Mar 26, 2014

My feelings aren't concrete. I like the idea of time travel, but I would want it to be someone really interesting to read about. I mean, could you imagine an Einstein mind getting sent back to an ancient civilization? It would be far more interesting than a girl with a pretty face changing all of history.

And as much as I'm a sucker for magic, I hate magic being the answer for the things that don't really make sense, personally. Magic helps her communicate. Magic teleports her back. When she accomplishes what needs to be done, magic teleports her to a present day!

It just doesn't strike my fancy, but someone playing around trying to figure out time or time travel, accidently getting themselves transported, have to study the culture to begin learning the language is really exciting to me.

Of course, Narnia worked out perfectly well and it has the exact same concept except the world is a fantasy world.

King Neptune · Mar 26, 2014

Telergic said:
Such a flat-out statement of fact! I like a lot of your posts, KN, but this one is going too far. This is too strong a claim for either science or philosophy to support.

I'm aorry, but that's what logic and science say. If you want it to be otherwise, then find a way around cause and effect, and tat might be a good premise for a story, if I could imagine it. .

kuwisdelu · Mar 26, 2014

King Neptune said:
I'm aorry, but that's what logic and science say. If you want it to be otherwise, then find a way around cause and effect, and tat might be a good premise for a story, if I could imagine it. .

No, not all of science is determinate. We don't know nearly enough to say that freewill contradicts science.

Telergic · Mar 26, 2014

King Neptune said:
I'm aorry, but that's what logic and science say. If you want it to be otherwise, then find a way around cause and effect, and tat might be a good premise for a story, if I could imagine it. .

Your logic may say it, but science does not. And certainly not philosophy.

Science currently has no explanation for the privileged status of the time dimension and the unique quality of its 1 second-per-second apparent rate of change. There is no way to rotate objects through time as through the other dimensions.

So for many if not most scientists, the very concept of spacetime is a convenient abstraction, but it's not necessarily considered a real thing.

The past and the future do not exist in any ontological fashion from that point of view; there is only a constantly changing present. And in that present, events are determined by quantum theory, with no hidden variable, so there is no predetermination whatsoever.

NeuroGlide · Mar 26, 2014

My question: If she went so far back into the past that we've forgotten it, how does she know it is the past?

E.F.B. · Mar 26, 2014

Max Vaehling said:
First of all, E.F.B., I think you're right that we can't just handwave time travel time-tunnel style anymore - readers are too ... temporally literate these days. The plus side of that is, you don't need to explain much anymore since we've all seen the various 'theories' at some point. Just choose a mythology, mention it somewhere ealry on and stay true to it. Plus, it's magic, so there may be a get-out-of-jail-free card n there somewhere.

If the era your protagonist returns to is so far in the past that we don't have a recollection of it anyway, I wouldn't sweat it too much. There is a ripple effect to time travel, but the thing about ripples is, they eventually die down.

I hear ya. That's sort of what I was hoping for in relation to sending her so far back in time, that maybe there wouldn't be as much of a chance of her changing the future. So, choosing a mythology, mentioning it early and staying true to it sounds good.
A small note on "As long as she doesn't eat the one fish that would otherwise have been the ancestor of all humanity." I'm writing from a creationist perspective, so she can eat whatever fish she wants to without any problems.

M.Austin said:
My feelings aren't concrete. I like the idea of time travel, but I would want it to be someone really interesting to read about. I mean, could you imagine an Einstein mind getting sent back to an ancient civilization? It would be far more interesting than a girl with a pretty face changing all of history.

Who said anything about a pretty face? I'm not writing about a super model. I plan on my MC being fairly ordinary in appearance. Even if I did describe my MC as being pretty, does that mean she couldn't be interesting too? I prefer writing about female characters with depth, including intelligence, courage, heart, and strength of character, not shallow, Bella Swan types.

M.Austin said:
And as much as I'm a sucker for magic, I hate magic being the answer for the things that don't really make sense, personally. Magic helps her communicate. Magic teleports her back. When she accomplishes what needs to be done, magic teleports her to a present day!

It just doesn't strike my fancy, but someone playing around trying to figure out time or time travel, accidentally getting themselves transported, have to study the culture to begin learning the language is really exciting to me.

Of course, Narnia worked out perfectly well and it has the exact same concept except the world is a fantasy world.

I understand what your saying about using magic as the answer for things that don't make sense and that bothers me a little bit too, but the other stuff you mention is getting too close to the realm of science fiction than I'm interested in. My story (at least the part that occurs in the ancient time) actually has more of a Narnia/Lord of the Rings vibe and has mythological creatures like elves, willow the wisps, etc.

NeuroGlide said:
My question: If she went so far back into the past that we've forgotten it, how does she know it is the past?

She doesn't at first. That's something that gets figured out along the way with the help of other, wiser characters like the elves who, along with other creatures of myth and legend, used to exist in my version of the ancient past. Over the years, as humans became more prominent, they all either went into hiding or died off and our memory of their existence faded into nothing more than myth. At least, that's what I'm going with for the time being.

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