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    Time travel burn out?

    Are you burnt out on time travel stories? I ask this, because I am writing an outline for a science-fiction novel. If successful, it will be the first of a four-book saga known as a tetralogy. What lead me to wanting to write this vast story is a simple question. What if you were building a time machine, and before you finish, you discover your future self had already changed the past and the future in a very bad way? What if you had to clean up the mess? This is what gave way to me writing my book. I don't think this has really been explored all that often. However, I love how SG-1 "Moebius" handled it. The team tries to snatch a ZPM from the past, but who expected to get stranded? Good intentions lead to an alternate timeline, and their alternate selves had to clean up the mess. This is a good example of what kind of territory my story will explore.

    The big question is, are you open to a book about time-travel should it feel new, fresh, and original?

    #2
    I think the genre has gotten to the point where time travel stories, unless done in an exciting and/or original way, are just very tired and tedious to slog through. Personally, I think that Moebius and Stargate Continuum suffer because of this exact syndrome.

    But that's not to say it can't be done in new and thought-provoking ways. SGU's Time, and the 2004 film Primer are absolutely examples of unique and compelling time-travel stories.
    "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

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      #3
      The spin I'm aiming for is minimal time-travel and a vast mystery and conspiracy revolving around an ancient time-machine. Sound original enough?

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        #4
        I'm always up for a good time travel story. Provided both the background rules of the time travel and the stories are well explained so that the reader/watcher doesn't see the story bogging down into time paradoxes that are next to impossible to figure out. For an example of how NOT to make a time travel story, see the movie Primer. It would have been a decent movie if they spent more time on explaining the background of the time travel rules in this movie, but they didn't and now it is just a headache inducing less than mediocre movie (although still great considering the budget it was made on).
        I'm an average viewer. As plain as they come. People make TV shows based on my demographic.

        Million's of ZPM's, ZPM's for free! Millions of ZPM's, ZPM's for me!

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          #5
          No way. Primer was a brilliant, brilliant film. Wasting time on exposition would've only dumbed it down and made it it into a run-of-the-mill boring movie.
          "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

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            #6
            Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
            No way. Primer was a brilliant, brilliant film. Wasting time on exposition would've only dumbed it down and made it it into a run-of-the-mill boring movie.
            yes well I'm a person who likes his entertainment to be "dumbed down" then I guess, I liked rewatching Shutter Island to see all the subtle clues showing which interpretation of the ending made the most sense and surfing the web reading other people's explanations and descriptions of clues I might have missed. I did read a brilliant piece from a phd in quantum physics on time travel relating to the movie primer and enjoyed it, but I did NOT... NOT like being forced to read it in conjunction with rewatching the different storylines to be able to make heads or tails of it with only a reduced amount of headache. Such aids should only offer extra added value, not be a necessity. As I said it was great relative to its budget, but on the whole it wasn't a great movie.
            I'm an average viewer. As plain as they come. People make TV shows based on my demographic.

            Million's of ZPM's, ZPM's for free! Millions of ZPM's, ZPM's for me!

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              #7
              Exposition does not automatically dumb down a story. It depends on how you use the exposition. In the book I'm writing, the exposition is in the form of flashbacks and briefings from government agents to the civilian main characters. In regards to Primer, I rented it once, excited about a time-travel movie I'd never seen. It was dreadfully boring. Time travel for money, really? Lame. I turned it off halfway through the movie and returned it.

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                #8
                I love time travel stories of just about any sort. So no i'm not burnt out on time travel and never think I will be. I think my most favorite sci-fi stories are ones with time travel. Like Doctor Who and the many episodes of SG1 and SGA.

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                  #9
                  I've started to hate time travel in most sci-fi shows because the writers can never seem to keep the rules straight. Stargate was imo very guilty of this since they introduced alternative timelines into the series which should mean that every time you go back in time all your doing is creating a new timeline. In Continuum they had the "real" timeline start to fade out which made no sense since even if time travel could erase everything that happens after you change stuff then it should happen instantly, not gradually.

                  Therefore time travel as a way to save somebody is pointless, that person is dead and all you could possibly achieve is to save an exact duplicate of that person. Also worth pointing out is that when you return to the future you have to return to the future of this alternative timeline you've created, there is no going back to your own and if you want to live in the new universe you either have to change your name or kill the "you" that's already there and take his place (unless you have a timeline travelling machine as well ).

                  Time travel can work as a story medium, just write out the ground rules that it's based on and never do anything to contradict those rules. I'd also personally prefer having something in the story that explains away paradoxes.

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                    #10
                    I think a good place to start with time travel is to have a single, unique defining aspect of your time travel device.

                    Terminator: Only living things can travel in time.
                    Back to the Future: 88 miles per hour.
                    TimeCop: Same matter can't occupy same space.
                    Dr. Who: You interfere in your own timeline and there are fixed points in time where events must not be changed.
                    Quantum Leap: Travel within your own life time (but they broke this once, mainly due to a DNA connection to the person he leaped into).
                    Deja Vu (loved this one): limited to viewing back 4 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes, 45 seconds, 14.5 nanoseconds and sending some back would kill them.

                    sigpic

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                      #11
                      Time travel is certainly one of the tenets of sci-fi. It can be great if you have an interesting means of time travel and the characters and their situation are interesting. Like anything, the most wonderful plot can be destroyed by horrible characters, and the best characters can be destroyed by a horrible plot.

                      Best of luck with the writing!
                      sigpic
                      More fun @ Spoofgate!

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                        #12
                        Wyrminarrd: I've created rules for time travel in my story. The idea is that you can travel to the future, but returning to the present potentially changes that future. If you know the future, you change the future by knowing what will happen. This future knowledge effects your decisions. If you travel to the past, your mere presence changes the past, because you weren't there originally. You can totally unravel the past, but the time-travel is exempt from changes to the timeline if he arrives at the point of divergence. If he doesn't exist in the new timeline, the traveler will continue to exist as a left-over remnant. There will only be one timeline, but one that is constantly in a state of flux due to time travelers. There will be character resurrections in planned sequels through time-travel. Your concept is that each venture to the past creates a new timeline. Fair enough, but you can't create something from nothing. My view is that the new timeline writes over the old timeline. The time traveler, his machine, and whatever came with him are exemptions as they were the cause of the change.

                        SaberBlade: The time machine in my story is a one-of-a-kind portal, it can take you anywhere, anytime. The catch is, if you go somewhere... the operator has to turn the portal on at your selected departure place and time. If you miss it, you're stranded. Alternatively, he just turns the portal on right after your arrival and recalls you.

                        nx01a: I have three central characters and a vast array of supporting characters. I also have a vast story spanning the Earth, thousands of years, and several timelines. I have enough backstory to cover at least seven books. I also have enough material for nine sequels and several spin-offs.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Snowman37 View Post
                          If successful, it will be the first of a four-book saga known as a tetralogy.
                          As a struggling (and as yet, failing) writer myself, I just wanted to say something to this. Don't let yourself get boxed in by such ideas, pilfer your ideas from wherever you've got 'em. You don't want to struggle with a beginning because you want to encroach on later stories, or else you'll never get anywhere
                          "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

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                            #14
                            Never think of yourself as failing, that is counter productive. I struggle too, but isn't that half the fun? My story is completely mapped out for Part 1. I also have plenty of material for all three sequels. I've even worked out the fates of everyone and the time machine in Part 4. The first story is told from an outsider's perspective who only joins the grand time-travel adventure for a short time. The outsider's journey ends while the larger story continues, leaving a cliffhanger for the sequels. The three sequels will then pick up on the larger story with the outsider from the first book slipping into a supporting role.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Snowman37 View Post
                              Never think of yourself as failing, that is counter productive.
                              Probably, but with a whopping 25 pages written across 4 different projects and a few more outlines I haven't even completed yet, I'm not feeling very effective at the moment
                              "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

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