Steven L. wrote: > Ilya2 wrote: > > A SF trope done to death is time traveler does something in the past, > > then either finds out upon his return that his own time has been > > altered (usually for the worse), or simply disappears. In "Lady Slings > > The Booze", Spider Robinson turns this trope on its head: Lady in > > question travels into past (into 1986, IIRC) in order to *fix* history > > -- to prevent US/USSR nuclear war and thus to make her own time and > > her own existence possible.
> > Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel capability > > examines history and comes to conclusion that a certain event was so > > improbable, it could only occur with outside interference, and > > therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel into past and to make > > the event happen?
> Yes, as others have already posted.
> I think it's safe to say that time travel, with all its permutations and > implications, has been done to death already.
> Probably every type of plot has been done by now.
> -- > Steven L. > Email: sdlit...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net > Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
VSim wrote: > Steven L. wrote: >> Ilya2 wrote: >>> A SF trope done to death is time traveler does something in the >>> past, then either finds out upon his return that his own time has >>> been altered (usually for the worse), or simply disappears. In >>> "Lady Slings The Booze", Spider Robinson turns this trope on its >>> head: Lady in question travels into past (into 1986, IIRC) in order >>> to *fix* history -- to prevent US/USSR nuclear war and thus to make >>> her own time and her own existence possible.
>>> Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel capability >>> examines history and comes to conclusion that a certain event was so >>> improbable, it could only occur with outside interference, and >>> therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel into past and to make >>> the event happen?
>> Yes, as others have already posted.
>> I think it's safe to say that time travel, with all its permutations >> and implications, has been done to death already.
>> Probably every type of plot has been done by now. > I strongly doubt that.
There is one unused possibility. Hold on a sec.....
<mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote: >VSim wrote: >> Steven L. wrote: >>> Ilya2 wrote: >>>> A SF trope done to death is time traveler does something in the >>>> past, then either finds out upon his return that his own time has >>>> been altered (usually for the worse), or simply disappears. In >>>> "Lady Slings The Booze", Spider Robinson turns this trope on its >>>> head: Lady in question travels into past (into 1986, IIRC) in order >>>> to *fix* history -- to prevent US/USSR nuclear war and thus to make >>>> her own time and her own existence possible.
>>>> Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel capability >>>> examines history and comes to conclusion that a certain event was so >>>> improbable, it could only occur with outside interference, and >>>> therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel into past and to make >>>> the event happen?
>>> Yes, as others have already posted.
>>> I think it's safe to say that time travel, with all its permutations >>> and implications, has been done to death already.
>>> Probably every type of plot has been done by now.
>> I strongly doubt that.
>There is one unused possibility. Hold on a sec.....
In article <1256523...@sheol.org>, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:
> Hm. Or, say, Singularity Sky, and the Big E therein. If you try > to do something that *doesn't* lead to the Big E (or even alters > the Big E's historical record, improbable as it is), you get > stomped on.
Or not. Frankly, the whole "Or else" threat looks to be possibly empty. Consider the contrast between the event, one of, singular, in which the Eschaton actually did something godlike, and all that's followed in which all it's done is run a small network of secret agents around to commit human-level acts of surveillance and sabotage.
It may say or imply, to its agents, that it has to tread very lightly within its own lightcone, but an equally reasonable explanation is that it _can't_ do any more than that. (And of course maybe the thing they're working for isn't even really the E at all.)
Ilya2 wrote: > Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel capability > examines history and comes to conclusion that a certain event was so > improbable, it could only occur with outside interference, and > therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel into past and to make > the event happen?
Anyway, why would he want to do this, since things are already OK the way they are ? What is he afraid would happen if he doesn't go there and make things happen ?
In article <b46ad59d-865e-4816-8da0-4aae12899...@y28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, Butch Malahide <fred.gal...@gmail.com> said:
> There are a bunch of stories about time machines which can only go > forward in time. Has anyone written about a time machine that only > goes backward?
The "cannonball" method of time travel is not uncommon, where the traveler is like a cannonball fired form a cannon -- he travels but the machine that propels him stays where (when) it is. If you used one of those to go into the past, and it wasn't one of the cool models that has the capability to recall you, you'd be stuck there unless you could build a go-into-the-future time machine from available resources.
Consider the whole "Terminator" mythos, for example, or more obscurely, Monica Clee's BRANCH POINT. Though that latter one was a variant in which the four travelers (from 2062 to 1962) had some ability to make additional jumps further into the past even though the time machine itself was in 2062 (or wasn't, after they changed history). I don't recall the details though, mostly because I got bored after the initial action in which they leapt into the Kennedy White House and prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis from going critical, and stopped reading the book.
In article <ef4363cd-9056-4708-be61-fb3dbffa1...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, VSim <intel...@yahoo.com> said:
> Ilya2 wrote:
>> Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel >> capability examines history and comes to conclusion that a >> certain event was so improbable, it could only occur with outside >> interference, and therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel >> into past and to make the event happen?
> Anyway, why would he want to do this, since things are already OK > the way they are ? What is he afraid would happen if he doesn't go > there and make things happen ?
It depends on which theory of time and causality the protagonist believes in:
Theory #1: The important Good Thing in the past has happened, it's part of history, and that cannot change. Therefore I don't have to do anything to "make" it happen.
Theory #2: The important Good Thing in the past has happened, it's part of history, but that's all conditional on somebody (and it looks like it has to be me) completing the causal loop; if the loop isn't closed the exact way that it's supposed to be then the Good Thing will unhappen. Therefore I better get off my butt and do this.
William December Starr wrote: > In article <ef4363cd-9056-4708-be61-fb3dbffa1...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>, > VSim <intel...@yahoo.com> said:
> > Ilya2 wrote:
> >> Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel > >> capability examines history and comes to conclusion that a > >> certain event was so improbable, it could only occur with outside > >> interference, and therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel > >> into past and to make the event happen?
> > Anyway, why would he want to do this, since things are already OK > > the way they are ? What is he afraid would happen if he doesn't go > > there and make things happen ?
> It depends on which theory of time and causality the protagonist > believes in:
> Theory #1: The important Good Thing in the past has happened, it's > part of history, and that cannot change. Therefore I don't have to > do anything to "make" it happen.
Whether it can change or not is irrelevant. The important thing is, it won't change as long as nobody goes back to change it.
> Theory #2: The important Good Thing in the past has happened, it's > part of history, but that's all conditional on somebody (and it > looks like it has to be me) completing the causal loop; if the loop > isn't closed the exact way that it's supposed to be then the Good > Thing will unhappen. Therefore I better get off my butt and do this.
OK. Sound like replacement theory to me. Fairy tales, for me at least.
BTW, what if the hero is wrong, and it actually didn't have to be him ? What if he goes there and messes things up instead of making them happen as they already have ? Now that's a little more interesting a plot (in its naive way). But I suppose it has been done already.)
In article <1256532...@sheol.org>, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:
> And then, of course, there's the traditional metatime thing, where > any change made in the past takes a finite amount of metatime to > propogate to the future, and the old timelinle continues for a > short period of ... well, time, but realtime that corresponds to > the metatime. Sort of. Despite it being a horrid model, it's a > common one. Everything from Back to the Future to Meet the > Robinsons. Yeesh.
Has there ever been a story in which that propogation rate was one second per second? I almost recall an Asimov story like that.
In message <b46ad59d-865e-4816-8da0-4aae12899...@y28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, Butch Malahide <fred.gal...@gmail.com> writes
>On Oct 26, 9:59 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote: >> I think it's safe to say that time travel, with all its permutations and >> implications, has been done to death already.
>> Probably every type of plot has been done by now.
>There are a bunch of stories about time machines which can only go >forward in time. Has anyone written about a time machine that only >goes backward?
It's not that uncommon, the one that immediately comes to mind is the one in DeCamp's _A Gun for Dinosaur_ and sequels.
I wrote one into my RPG - no problems going into the past, but you couldn't come forward to a moment later than the moment you left plus the subjective time you'd been travelling, e.g. if you spent two subjective days travelling in time, and eight days in the past, you couldn't come forward past ten days after you left. One of the quirks was that you _had_ to come forward those additional ten days, the past wasn't quite real (or at least didn't appear to be) if you were even a few seconds behind your present.
Silverberg had one which only sent people back into the really deep past, used as an alternative to execution. But there was a trick to that one... -- Marcus L. Rowland http://www.forgottenfutures.com/ http://www.forgottenfutures.org/ LJ:ffutures http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/ Forgotten Futures - The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game Diana: Warrior Princess & Elvis: The Legendary Tours The Original Flatland Role Playing Game
Marcus L. Rowland wrote: > In message > <b46ad59d-865e-4816-8da0-4aae12899...@y28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>, > Butch Malahide <fred.gal...@gmail.com> writes >> On Oct 26, 9:59 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote: >>> I think it's safe to say that time travel, with all its permutations and >>> implications, has been done to death already.
>>> Probably every type of plot has been done by now.
>> There are a bunch of stories about time machines which can only go >> forward in time. Has anyone written about a time machine that only >> goes backward?
> It's not that uncommon, the one that immediately comes to mind is the > one in DeCamp's _A Gun for Dinosaur_ and sequels.
> I wrote one into my RPG - no problems going into the past, but you > couldn't come forward to a moment later than the moment you left plus > the subjective time you'd been travelling, e.g. if you spent two > subjective days travelling in time, and eight days in the past, you > couldn't come forward past ten days after you left. One of the quirks > was that you _had_ to come forward those additional ten days, the past > wasn't quite real (or at least didn't appear to be) if you were even a > few seconds behind your present.
A variation is that you can go back in time and change things, but if you try to return to your home time you will go back on YOUR timeline; i.e., you can change things for the better in the past and there will be a new future for those people, but YOU are stuck with the old future because that's the probability line you came from. The only way for you to escape that is to travel into the future like everyone else: one second per second.
Marcus L. Rowland <forgottenfutu...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>I wrote one into my RPG - no problems going into the past, but you >couldn't come forward to a moment later than the moment you left plus >the subjective time you'd been travelling, e.g. if you spent two >subjective days travelling in time, and eight days in the past, you >couldn't come forward past ten days after you left. One of the quirks >was that you _had_ to come forward those additional ten days, the past >wasn't quite real (or at least didn't appear to be) if you were even a >few seconds behind your present.
... based on Watson's (?) Croyd novels?
Dave "and then there's the Veils of Azlaroc" DeLaney -- \/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK> http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
In message <slrnhekgtp.s9o....@gatekeeper.vic.com>, David DeLaney <d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> writes
>Marcus L. Rowland <forgottenfutu...@ntlworld.com> wrote: >>I wrote one into my RPG - no problems going into the past, but you >>couldn't come forward to a moment later than the moment you left plus >>the subjective time you'd been travelling, e.g. if you spent two >>subjective days travelling in time, and eight days in the past, you >>couldn't come forward past ten days after you left. One of the quirks >>was that you _had_ to come forward those additional ten days, the past >>wasn't quite real (or at least didn't appear to be) if you were even a >>few seconds behind your present.
>... based on Watson's (?) Croyd novels?
Don't know them. The basic time machine for the RPG was a moderately large steam ship - you needed something mobile with a conductive exterior weighing a minimum of a couple of thousand tons or it wouldn't work. I had a lot of fun with that one, it _seriously_ buggers up a lot of the "get rich quick" time machine tricks.
>Dave "and then there's the Veils of Azlaroc" DeLaney
>> Dave "and then there's the Veils of Azlaroc" DeLaney
> Doubt it, I'm not sure I ever read that one either. Saberhagen?
Yes. I'm not sure why Dave mentioned it as it doesn't really involve time travel. Basically, on a lightly colonized planet under a weird sun, once a year the star would emit a 'veil' that would settle on the planet and trap everything under it in a temporal field that mostly isolated it from the rest of the universe. ("Mostly" because it was light-permeable, though not 100% transparent, but matter couldn't pass through it.) If you were on the planet when a veil fell, screwed you were; you were stuck there, able to interact only with everybody else that was trapped in the same layer as you were.
I think there was a plot too, but I have no memory of it.
>>> Dave "and then there's the Veils of Azlaroc" DeLaney >> Doubt it, I'm not sure I ever read that one either. Saberhagen?
> Yes. I'm not sure why Dave mentioned it as it doesn't really involve > time travel. Basically, on a lightly colonized planet under a weird > sun, once a year the star would emit a 'veil' that would settle on > the planet and trap everything under it in a temporal field that > mostly isolated it from the rest of the universe. ("Mostly" because > it was light-permeable, though not 100% transparent, but matter > couldn't pass through it.) If you were on the planet when a veil > fell, screwed you were; you were stuck there, able to interact only > with everybody else that was trapped in the same layer as you were.
> I think there was a plot too, but I have no memory of it.
Iirc, the "plot" was that there was a couple who were visiting Azlaroc, and were doing time-diving as a scientific experiment, and they got separated (one of them may have seen a companion from a previous trip that got caught by veil-fall) and the tension of whether they both get back to the ship before this year's veil-fall, or will they be separated forever? But yeah, it was mostly a travelogue.
And the interesting thing to me was the idea that the buildings, etc., could still be built on after the veil-fall. So you could add a room to house in Year 2, that year 1 people can't get to because it doesn't exist in their year, but the Year 3 people can walk into the room which is coexistent with the room that the Year 2 people can get to. I just can't wrap my mind around how that works. It seems logical to me that the veil should somehow keep you from adding to a building that is covered with it.
: Rebecca Rice <rebecca_r...@att.net> : Iirc, the "plot" was that there was a couple who were : visiting Azlaroc, and were doing time-diving as a scientific : experiment, and they got separated (one of them may have : seen a companion from a previous trip that got caught by : veil-fall) and the tension of whether they both get back to : the ship before this year's veil-fall, or will they be : separated forever? But yeah, it was mostly a travelogue.
Yep. There was also a subplot about somebody who had a scheme for getting out from under the veils, to escape, iirc something like sneaking around them in the/a 4th dimension or sommat, but it backfires and he's trapped under more veils than ever, so many that he's barely detectable anymore; I'm thinking hundreds of thousands of yearly veils, or maybe it was millions.
: And the interesting thing to me was the idea that the buildings, etc., : could still be built on after the veil-fall. So you could add a room : to house in Year 2, that year 1 people can't get to because it doesn't : exist in their year, but the Year 3 people can walk into the room : which is coexistent with the room that the Year 2 people can get to. : I just can't wrap my mind around how that works.
Yeah, I'm not sure it was fully consistent. But it was a bit more complicated than "light but not matter can pass through a veil" per upthread. That's maybe a good summary, but matter "in" adjacent veils can interact somewhat (so isn't totally intangible), an light is blurred somewhat (so things aren't totally visible), getting blurrier and more intangible the more veils between. To see or interact through tens or hundreds of veils, you need specialized equipment, called iirc "diving gear", and reaching the guy mentioned above, essentially impossible (at least, without trying the same sort of dangerous methods that landed him in his predicament in the first place). However, even a single veil prevents you fron leaving, despite being tantalizingly able to interact almost normally with next year's visitors.
So... it wasn't like a thin, impenetrable layer of saran wrap that you're trapped under. It was more that each atom of you got a metaphorical teflon coating, making it difficult to interact with anyhing other than atoms with the sane amount of teflon. Including interacting by bouncing photons off. And incidentally making the potential energy "depth" compated to the rest of the universe infinite. Sort of.
Anyhoo, an interesting setting if you like that sort of thing.
It's ridiculous that we still have a hole in the ozone layer. We have men, we have rockets, we have Saran Wrap ... FIX IT!! And don't come back until you do.
>> Oh, doy, there's also Time Squad, late of Cartoon Network, where >> the protagonists live in a massive space station in the far future, >> monitoring history for things going wrong, whereupon they go back and >> put them right again.
>For a cartoon show, criticizing the accuracy of the "science" may not >be reasonable, but a lot of SF stories get this wrong too.
>Shouldn't the headquarters of people whose goal is to change history >to set the future to a certain value, against interference, have their >headquarters in the *ancient past*, so that they're not going >disappear the first time anything changes?
I have wondered about that myself. Mind you, maybe it did fail. "That might account for Atlantis", he said, his voice dopplering as he GDRVVFed away.
>> Oh, doy, there's also Time Squad, late of Cartoon Network, where >> the protagonists live in a massive space station in the far future, >> monitoring history for things going wrong, whereupon they go back and >> put them right again.
>For a cartoon show, criticizing the accuracy of the "science" may not >be reasonable, but a lot of SF stories get this wrong too.
>Shouldn't the headquarters of people whose goal is to change history >to set the future to a certain value, against interference, have their >headquarters in the *ancient past*, so that they're not going >disappear the first time anything changes?
In Fritz Leiber's Time Wars stories (_The Big Time_, "No Great Magic", "Try and Change the Past") their headquarters is God knows where, but they have many substations and staging areas and R&R places outside normal time altogether, from which with the right machinery they can go to any part of space/time they want.
-- Dorothy J. Heydt Vallejo, California djheydt at hotmail dot com Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress. Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
>Ilya2 wrote: >> A SF trope done to death is time traveler does something in the past, >> then either finds out upon his return that his own time has been >> altered (usually for the worse), or simply disappears. In "Lady Slings >> The Booze", Spider Robinson turns this trope on its head: Lady in >> question travels into past (into 1986, IIRC) in order to *fix* history >> -- to prevent US/USSR nuclear war and thus to make her own time and >> her own existence possible.
>> Has anyone else done this plot: somebody with time travel capability >> examines history and comes to conclusion that a certain event was so >> improbable, it could only occur with outside interference, and >> therefore it is THEIR responsibility to travel into past and to make >> the event happen?
>Come think of it, the greek victory at Salamis was pretty improbable. >As was the beating the Armada took from the british in 1588. One of us >should probably go back there and fix these things.
SPOILER ALERT!
Brunner's "Times Without Number" has our timeline coming into existence because of the Spanish Armada being defeated.
Gene Wirchenko <ge...@ocis.net> wrote: >>As was the beating the Armada took from the british in 1588. One of us >>should probably go back there and fix these things.
I remember hearing a radio interview with someone twenty years or so ago. He was trying to get funding to raise and study a couple of the Spanish ships to verify a theory. According to his theory, most of the Armada had been recently upgraded with much higher power cannons.
When used in battle with full-power broadsides against the enemy, the shock forces from these larger cannons were larger than the ships could bear and (he theorized) the ships shook their seams open in the battle. The unlikely victory could make sense if the Spanish ships started sinking without even being hit.
>SPOILER ALERT!
RASFW cite removed. -- apart from one noisy guy up in Canada, no-one wants a three-cylinder tissue box on bicycle tires.
Naughty-naughty little boy. Keep the mutual admiration stuff to the "trolling" thread I built for it. You know better than that. -- apart from one noisy guy up in Canada, no-one wants a three-cylinder tissue box on bicycle tires.
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