Science-Fiction (with time travel)

[Snowman37]

Science-fiction has been done a lot over the years. Time travel stories have also been done, especially lately. However, I have a question to you all. Would you find a time-travel story hard to follow if it dealt with multiple timelines converging into one? I have written an outline for a science-fiction story dealing with time travel, multiple timelines, and the end of the world. There will be three sequels, making the story a tetralogy. The first three parts should be easy for a reader to follow. However, Part 4 will involve several incarnations of a single timeship from various pasts and futures meeting up in the present day. In concept, does that sound like a bad idea?

[Wyrminarrd]

Personally I don't like time travel has most of the time it's not done well or logically. It's mostly how tv shows handle time travel that irritates me, books sometimes manage to create interesting stories.

I subscribe to the theory that if time travel were possible then travelling back in time would create an alternate timeline and thus if you change anything in the past you can't ever travel back to your own original timeline. What this would mean of course is that there would never be any reason to follow someone back in time to stop him since nothing that he does would ever effect you.

As for your particular idea I don't have enough info on to judge it, just make sure you are internally consistent and don't contradict causality to much .

[Snowman37]

I subscribe to the theory that if time travel were possible then travelling back in time would create an alternate timeline and thus if you change anything in the past you can't ever travel back to your own original timeline. What this would mean of course is that there would never be any reason to follow someone back in time to stop him since nothing that he does would ever effect you.

My story's take on time travel will be that there can only ever be one timeline. Rather than creating a parallel reality (Timelines A & B coexisting) or replacing timeline A with timeline B, Timeline A changes into Timeline B. Consequently, subtle changes are acceptable and sometimes embraced. Radical changes are fought in favor of the proper timeline. The catch is, each timeline's inhabitants will consider their timeline to be the proper timeline. This means that survivors from a prior timeline will fight to restore their timeline. Sometimes they will succeed, and sometimes they won't. There is no definitive timeline, because it's constantly changing. The question is, has it changed too much?

What do you think? Has this been done too much in fiction?

One thing I am having fun with: the leader of my fictional government agency is based off Morgan Freeman's screen presence. haha

[Wyrminarrd]

All I can think of is Asimovs "The end of eternity" though it's been well over a decade since I read it so I might be remembering things incorrectly.

But what I wonder is how can A and B exist at the same time if there is only one timeline? Wouldn't any change made by a time traveller be instant?

[Snowman37]

All I can think of is Asimovs "The end of eternity" though it's been well over a decade since I read it so I might be remembering things incorrectly.

I may have to read this. If my story reminds you of it, it may very well make for a fun read.

But what I wonder is how can A and B exist at the same time if there is only one timeline? Wouldn't any change made by a time traveller be instant?

Incase I wasn't clear, Timelines A & B would not exist at the same time. Simply, Timeline A becomes Timeline B. The characters in the story never think of time as an original timeline, an alternate timeline, a proper timeline, and so forth. Instead, it's simply a question of whether the timeline was changed too much. As I've said, small changes are usually tolerated.

[Wyrminarrd]

I´m assuming it would be explained in the book but I still wonder how would you know what has been changed? Are there monitors that are somehow outside of time, some kind of time cops?

[Snowman37]

The only way anyone would know is if someone or something survived a prior timeline, evidencing that reality has changed due to time travel. In the first book, two men are creating the frame work for their prototype, the world's first time machine. Little do they know that the timeline has already been radically altered numerous times, that they are directly responsible, and that someone from their past (generations into the past) has come to warn them. They don't take the news kindly, giving they haven't done anything yet... or have they? It's all very fourth dimensional.

In the story, the only thing capable of surviving a changing timeline is the timeship. It's temporal shields can protect it. From inside the ship, reality outside would instantly change. Think of Star Trek: Voyager's "Year of Hell" and Voyager's temporal shields. That's where I got the idea. However, if the temporal shields are done, and the timeline shifts... whoops.

[lmoroney]

Conceptually, your story sounds great. time travel is hard to write...My novel, 'The Million Year Journey' is sort-of about Time Travel, taking string theory into effect...it's a lot of fun, but it was hard to write, and harder to make it plausible...

[blueray]

i've always liked time travel. to me any way a show does it is good, as long as they are consisted throughout the show. that's something that annoyed me a little in sg-1, they have 1969 which suggested it was all destined to happen, and the rest of the time travel episodes where they alter the timeline multiple times.

as for not being effected by it, that is usually the time traveler or in the ds9 episode i just watched "past tense" and the crew still on the defiant didn't get effected by the away team changing the timeline, due to some feed back (o'brien explained in detail ). but the quadrant around them changed.

[Wyrminarrd]

Star Trek and Stargate are both guilty of butchering time travel logic and are the major reason that I've started to hate time travel on television. I think the single biggest wtf moment I ever had regarding time travel was in "Stargate: Continuum" when things started to fade out because of time travel alterations:

1: If there is only one timeline then it should have changed instantly, no slow fading.

2: The show has already established multiple timelines so a time traveller shouldn't have any effect on his own original time travel, all he does by going back in time is remove himself from the timeline. As far as everyone else is concerned he might as well have committed suicide.

[Snowman37]

i've always liked time travel. to me any way a show does it is good, as long as they are consisted throughout the show. that's something that annoyed me a little in sg-1, they have 1969 which suggested it was all destined to happen, and the rest of the time travel episodes where they alter the timeline multiple times.

Most TV shows that touch on time-travel more than once have covered both an alterable timeline and a predestination paradox. Really, time travel can lead to multiple paradoxes, and an alterable timeline can create a predestination paradox.

as for not being effected by it, that is usually the time traveler or in the ds9 episode i just watched "past tense" and the crew still on the defiant didn't get effected by the away team changing the timeline, due to some feed back (o'brien explained in detail ). but the quadrant around them changed.

Usually the rule is that the time traveler, his time machine, and any elements from the future are exempted by the changing timeline IF they preceed or are the origin of the changes to the future. Alternatively, a BS scientific explanation of why the person, machine, ship, or whatever was "exempt," such as X particles of BS whatever. hah

Star Trek and Stargate are both guilty of butchering time travel logic and are the major reason that I've started to hate time travel on television. I think the single biggest wtf moment I ever had regarding time travel was in "Stargate: Continuum" when things started to fade out because of time travel alterations:

1: If there is only one timeline then it should have changed instantly, no slow fading.

I had a problem with this two. This is one of those stories were dramatic license supecedes scientific sensibility. They wanted to create tension. Vala, Teal'c, and Tok'ra vanish. O'Neill charges Ba'al, Ba'al kills O'Neill, what's left of SG-1 flees to Earth, only to arrive in an alternate timeline. It was said the wormhole protected them, but then wouldn't it protect everyone else using the stargate at the time? To me, a perfectly timed wormhole would make more sense. If it can send you to the past and future, why not protect one from a changing timeline? But yeah, the shifting timeline was silly in an otherwise fun movie. I can dismiss dramatic effect over realism if the story is good.

2: The show has already established multiple timelines so a time traveller shouldn't have any effect on his own original time travel, all he does by going back in time is remove himself from the timeline. As far as everyone else is concerned he might as well have committed suicide.

The show has established multiple timelines, yes, but through one timeline changing into another. That's why there was so much urgency to restore the future in "Moebius" and Continuum. That's also why changing the past was necessary in "2010." They wouldn't have bothered, if they thought they were simply changing an identical reality's past. As Teal'c once said, "Our reality is the only one of consequence." The only episode of the franchise to mix time travel and parallel realities was SGA's "Before I Sleep" where McKay suggests that Weir came from another reality rather than an alternate timeline. However, he contradicts himself in "The Last Man" with a plan to change history by sending Sheppard back in time. He wouldn't have bothered if he was just going to change some other reality. As for SGU's time-travel related episodes... I haven't seen them.

[Wyrminarrd]

But it can't work like that, causality demands that the original timeline still exists in order to create the new one.

Stargate established with the mirror device that there are many timelines so there is nothing to say that creating more is impossible. The fact is simply that in order to use the time travel storylines the writers ignored how it should work and that's why I hated time travel in the Stargate universe.

[Snowman37]

But it can't work like that, causality demands that the original timeline still exists in order to create the new one.

Why? Embrace the paradox.

Stargate established with the mirror device that there are many timelines so there is nothing to say that creating more is impossible.

Those two episodes were about parallel realities, not alternate timelines.

The fact is simply that in order to use the time travel storylines the writers ignored how it should work and that's why I hated time travel in the Stargate universe.

How it should work, or how you want it to work? If you go back in time and end up in a parallel world, you didn't go back in time at all, because you're not in your own past, so... I don't even know what you're talking about.

[Wyrminarrd]

What are parallel realities other than alternate time lines? Is there any difference between them and if so what are they?

As for how I want it to work it's simple. In order for there to be no violations of causality any trip back in time has to cause a new timeline to form since the only way that event's can be changed that way is if there is a timeline A in which a person always goes back in time and there is a timeline B in which a person always came back in time. If A doesn't happen then B can't happen which in turn means that A should happen but that means that B happens so A shouldn't happen and so on...

This is the only way time travel works and without causality violations. I could forgive a single timeline premise in which time travel changes things but it must be consistent and without any other timelines or "realities" being present since those mean that. I just can't embrace paradoxes when it's clearly been shown that they aren't there and yet all those supposedly super smart people in the show can't figure out how the logic has to be.

And your right, when you travel back in time you are free to kill your younger self if you want to. Killing him will have no effect on you since this version of you belongs to the new time line while the young you in your original time line will always grow up to go back in time and kill a younger version of himself. You still go back in time, everything in the new timeline will play out the exact same way if you don't change anything.

[Snowman37]

What are parallel realities other than alternate time lines? Is there any difference between them and if so what are they?

Some people see them as one and the same. Others, like me, consider them to be very different. A parallel world is something that always existed. An alternate timeline is one's own world changed by a trip to the past. The original timeline has transformed into the alternate timeline. The only way that world can ever be recovered is by going back in time again and setting things right. This is how most time travel stories handle an alternate timeline, especially Back to the Future.

As for how I want it to work it's simple. In order for there to be no violations of causality any trip back in time has to cause a new timeline to form since the only way that event's can be changed that way is if there is a timeline A in which a person always goes back in time and there is a timeline B in which a person always came back in time. If A doesn't happen then B can't happen which in turn means that A should happen but that means that B happens so A shouldn't happen and so on...

Why can't B happen without A preceding it? Sometimes, the paradox is the answer.

This is the only way time travel works and without causality violations.

Based on what authority?

I could forgive a single timeline premise in which time travel changes things but it must be consistent and without any other timelines or "realities" being present since those mean that.

Forgive? None of my stories touch upon parallel worlds except one or two, and those that do are radically different and have nothing to do with time travel. The time travel stories that feature alternate timelines depict the previous timelines as no longer existing. They don't exist, because they never happened, but they had to happen in order for the alternate timeline, but they don't exist, because they never happened... Wait. Paradox! Solution. If I draw a line on a sheet of paper to a circle, and you erase half of it and finish the line to a different circle... does that mean my line never existed? Same concept with timelines, at least as to how they will be presented in my stories.

And your right, when you travel back in time you are free to kill your younger self if you want to. Killing him will have no effect on you since this version of you belongs to the new time line while the young you in your original time line will always grow up to go back in time and kill a younger version of himself. You still go back in time, everything in the new timeline will play out the exact same way if you don't change anything.

In my stories, if you went back and killed your younger self, the older you would continue to exist in an alternate timeline. However, there is no original timeline where you grow up to go back in time to kill your younger self. That reality is gone, because it was rewritten into the new, alternate timeline. The older future you is merely a left over remnant and the catalyst for the new, alternate timeline. Reality changed, it was not duplicated.

Why is there so much resistance to this concept?