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Producers have released a number of movies over the years that include time travel, while novels and short stories
abound. Some movies have gone all the way to ensure no paradox exists. One, that I know of, required the hero to
go back in time to stop an event, only to discover (just before he died) he had caused it to happen originally, which
was a good twist. Several movies push the limits of credibility and could cause heated discussions as to whether a
paradox exists. Others simply take no account of paradox, and sometimes ruined an otherwise acceptable movie.
Further arguments are that paradox exists in all time travel, yet some writers deliberately cause a paradox, and this
forms the main purpose of the story. Many short stories fall into the latter category.
For instance, the movie Somewhere in Time was a watchable romance. Without wanting to give too much away
about the story for those who have not yet seen it, the movie starts with an old heroine giving the hero a pocket
watch and saying "Come back to me". The hero eventually goes back in time, with the pocket watch, and later
returns to his own time while leaving the watch behind. This is the same watch the heroine keeps over the years to
give to him at the beginning of the movie. The writer(s) and/or producer could have avoided this paradox, but
preferred to keep it, or did not notice it. So, who mined the materials, processed them and passed the resulting
parts to a watchmaker, and who sold it? Answer: Nobody. The watch could not have existed. Yet they used the
watch as an important link between the two people and the two time frames.
I will only mention the Back to the Future movies because they were meant for family fun, and the first was not too
bad, apart from changing futures that the universe would not allow to happen. Ok, so we could argue alternative
worlds were in play, but that was not the intent. If anything, this movie included the sexual overtones that have
been the basis for other stories over the years. The later movies in the series cared nothing for paradox, only to
capitalise on the popularity of the original movie.
How about Terminator? For a start, I cannot believe that an intelligence like Skynet could even contemplate the
possibility of changing the future by killing the rebel leader's mother. Any intelligence should realise the person
already exists and nothing in the universe should allow that to change. This is the original 'killing of one's own
grandfather' that is used to show the uninitiated the meaning of paradox. Despite that, the producers came up with
an enjoyable movie. Again, the later movies made a mess of paradox to some extent, but only to capitalise on the
original box office hit.
There are several Time Police stories whereby the police attempt to stop anyone manipulating time. I suppose the
Timecop and Trancers movies fall into this category. The recent movie Deja Vu is a police procedural using 'time
viewing', whereby they pick up light and sound from the past. However, the hero then uses the machine to take
himself back to stop the event happening. This could result in an 'alternative world'.
If time travel was possible, and anyone found the way to overcome paradox, then would we see people appearing
and disappearing endlessly? No. Another point to remember about time travel and paradox is that the sequence
only happens once. It is not a continuous cycle of the same events. However, one episode in the Stargate SG1 series
did contain an amusing continuous cycle, but only because a person had set in motion a machine that caused the
anomaly. Another short story did use the continuing cycle plot by having the main character going back in time to
change something until he obtained the best result.
A more recent movie, The Time Traveller's Wife, attempts to avert paradox. The story follows the exploits of a man
who bounces back and forth in time, and they allow him to see a woman's diary showing when he turned up. He
then matches these meetings. However, I disliked the movie because these meetings, which eventually allowed the
two to marry, was too much like 'grooming' of a young girl. Did anyone else notice, or think, this?
I have used time travel in a couple of (as yet) unpublished stories, but have been careful to avoid paradox.
Another point to remember about time travel is the displacement of mass from one time frame to another. This
should, in theory, destabilise the known universe, but everyone generally ignores this point otherwise few storylines
would be possible. The only way to overcome this problem, if any audience was that pedantic and critical, would
be to move an equal mass in the opposite direction through time, in other words, at the moment a person moves
through time, an equal mass moves from the target time frame to that person's starting time frame. That could give
some interesting possibilities!
So, we already have several types of story, and many more exist. Sex in time travel, especially with one's own
ancestors, is fairly impossible but features in many stories. One of the impossibilities relates to anyone becoming
their own father because half the gene pool comes from the mother. Time policing could be argued as unnecessary
if one believes in the impossibility of nature, or the universe, allowing paradox to happen. Causality is possible,
whereby a note or newspaper is sent to another time, usually to a specific person. However, paradox would occur if
one sends the lottery numbers back to oneself while knowing they did not have the winning ticket. (Oops! In
Paycheck, the hero sees the winning numbers by looking into the future, then selects them. This neatly gets around
the problem.) Most stories tend towards violence by the need to murder a current adversary. Another plot type tries
to overcome paradox altogether by only allowing people to view the past, like historians. They watch the events
unfold on a screen, but can do little to provoke an interesting tale.
Alternative worlds was touched on earlier. Basically, the theory is that every decision by every person has an
effect on the future. This decision then causes new universes and worlds to start. For instance, if a Prime Minister
has to decide whether to start a war with his neighbour or bow to that neighbours control, we would have two
worlds. One world would start the war, while the other becomes the neighbour's vassal. If we have infinite futures,
and infinite worlds, then we also have infinite pasts, although these should diminish the farther in the past one
goes, theoretically. However, this could mean that to change something only requires moving to an alternative
world.
One general opinion, as mentioned above, is that science will not allow paradox to happen. Some stories have
tried to show this, by having a 'paradox screen', but then try to overcome it by opposing the argument and causing
the screen to fail. Others simply show that something happens to stop the event, and these stories can go from one
thwarted attempt to another. However, ill winds, slips of the finger, and poor mechanisms only go so far. How
about sending a suicide bomber back to King Richard's court, or the Vatican, to stop the Crusades? Would it
happen, or would the bomber find that the battery on the detonator was drained during the journey through time?
How could that happen? Perhaps the forces used for the time travel did it.
Time machines exist, in theory, but are impossible to build because of the power required to make them work.
Not all stories use ‘machines'. Some utilise Black Holes, and this is a whole subject on its own. Another way of
doing it is by travelling faster than the Speed of Light, but doing that is impossible too. (See the relevant page for
an explanation).
This is an interesting subject and should be researched further by reading the old stories and current and past
theories from the last three centuries. Finding the correct material could give you hours of fun, and open your mind
to more arguments and theories than can fit on this page. |
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