The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Time travel is a staple of SF. It can be a theme of its own or used to explore other themes. It can be terribly confusing since we don't have a vocabulary to deal with it. Consequences can be unexpected & the rules vary.

What are the best time travel stories you've read? What are some of the neatest ideas?

"Where Does the Concept of Time Travel Come From?" is an interesting, if brief look at time travel stories.
https://www.space.com/time-travel-ori...

Here's one I just finished:
"Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death" by Caroline M. Yoachim
A 4-star story that I liked a lot:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And Charlie Stross's brilliant time travel novella, “Palimpsest”, first published in his WIRELESS collection (2010). It's a takeoff on Asimov's classic "The End of Eternity" -- but much better written. 5 stars! Not online, but here are some other paper reprints: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
Won the Hugo & Locus awards for that year, and well worth seeking out. My take: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Peter wrote: "Here's one I just finished:
"Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death" by Caroline M. Yoachim
..."

That is a good story! Thanks.

Wikipedia's article is unusually good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_tr...
In particular, their discussion of whether physics permits real time travel is interesting, and thought-provoking. The notable Absence of time travelers from the future
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_tr...
section is partic interesting: they compare this to the Fermi paradox.
"Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans" to visit. Heh. No luck with that so far!

And, of course, HG Wells pioneering story is still well-worth reading!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tim...
has interesting info and links to PD copies. I might reread it myself. Has the group done that?

The term "time machine" was coined by Wells. I didn't know that.

We haven't read The Time Machine, but we've read 3 other novels by Wells, so it's not eligible anymore for a group read. I've read it several times & it is a good, interesting book. His social/political feelings are pretty obvious with time travel to add spice.

I have several favorite time travel stories.
"By His Bootstraps" & "All You Zombies" by RAH & "A Sound of Thunder" by Bradbury probably top the list. They may not be the very best, but I read them early & often, so they really impressed me.

Of course, we just discussed " The City on the Edge of Forever Teleplay", one of the great original Star Trek episodes. I'll link my review because there were several threads that didn't make it to the screen.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I found the one about Trooper to be particularly good & I wish it had stayed.

Ellison did a couple of Outer Limits shows with time travel in them. Robert Culp played the cyborg in "The Man with the Glass Hand" which was really good. There was another one where an assassin soldier was sent back to kill someone, I think. I can't recall its name. Several other Outer Limits episodes played with time travel & so did the Twilight Zone.

It got to be such a popular theme that publishers quit taking any more for quite a while. I forget where I read that or the exact details, but I think they new ones were pretty much rejected on sight for most of the 70s.

Re' some of the more popular & recent-ish titles, I did not like Dark Matter because it was too derivative, or The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August but I'd be willing to try that one again, and I really liked Replay but I'm not positive it would hold up to a reread.

What we're discovering in the GR group that focuses on TT is that a lot of non-SF relies on the TT hook. Obvious in hindsight is Romance, as what waitress or secretary of today doesn't want to go back in time to meet a Highland bandit? Also Historical Fiction uses TT as a gimmick, especially in Children's novels but also in adults' stories like The Mirror, in which a modern person learns the truth about their family's, and/or their country's, past. Then there's literary fiction like the bestselling The Time Traveler's Wife which I actually did quite like and want to try to reread.

I liked Dark Matter quite a bit, but saw it more as multiple dimensions, an important distinction to me. They're different processes, although they can often boil down to similar things.

In time travel, there's usually just one person who can interact at various times in their personal time line. In Dark Matter, the same guy at pretty much the same age is multiplied - all his possible selves if things had gone just a little bit differently. Yes, they do travel in time, but that's a distant second to the main theme.

I've thought about reading "Replay" but I thought that seemed as if it would be too derivative. Apparently it wasn't, so I might get it. The reliving of a life has been done so many times. One of the best was a horror story where a guy makes a deal with the Devil to go back in time. The catch is he can't change anything, he's just along for the ride as he does the same things over & over. All he can do is watch in horror for eternity.

I see your points.

I agree that in Dark Matter they moved linearly forward in time, just like we do, thus not TT

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Time travel is also there in The End of Eternity, where the Eternals go around finding the most minute ways to change a certain event to have enormous ramifications. Like, I remember ..."

You should definitely read Stross's reply in "Palimpsest"!

Oleksandr wrote: "I agree that in Dark Matter they moved linearly forward in time, just like we do, thus not TT"

I thought they traveled back & forward in time some, too. Or was it just across it? Sigh. I didn't read it all that long ago, either.

I would classify the horror story I mentioned as a 'Deal With the Devil', not TT. TT is used, but again it is secondary to the main point of the story.

Peter, you definitely need to link "Palimpsest". I tried looking it up through the book/author link & there were dozens.

I've never thought much of the Fermi Paradox - too much space & time to think that we would have. Alfred Bester explained why we've never met time travelers in "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed", a short story. The why of it is a spoiler for the story, so I'll hide it. (view spoiler)[Our timelines are individual continuums that stretch before we were born, so changing the past only changes us, not others, IIRC. (hide spoiler)]

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "That is so not true. Changing the timeline of one person ..."

LOL! That's why it's listed as a fiction story. Anything can happen in fiction land.
:)

Jim wrote: "I thought they traveled back & forward in time some, too. Or was it just across it? Sigh. I didn't read it all that long ago, either."

If the protagonist were able to move in time, he'd get to the moment before his doppleganger entered the life of his family, not way after

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Will do, Peter. Wait. Is that a chat on the group, or is Palimpsest a book?"

Novella. Here's where I read it:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Look @ISFDB for more reprints.

Oleksandr wrote: "If the protagonist were able to move in time, he'..."

Ah! Right. OK, it's coming back to me.

Cheryl, why do you equate it with TT?

Cuz the TT group read it? I don't remember it very well myself... which is another reason to give it a lower reading.

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "It could be equated with TT, if the liner travel was non uniform. "

It is impossible to determine from the book if we are still talking about Dark Matter. We know that the protagonist returned to his world later than left it and that it was also so for the antagonist. But if one assumes just three parallel worlds time going (measured i base world time) as 1:1, 1:2 and 2:1, now spend 1 month in both other worlds and return to the base - you'd have the same time passed as if all were 1:1

I think 'true' TT should have travel to the past. For example SF novel with time dilution due to approaching light speed (Tau Zero or The Forever War) aren't TT as well as different deep hybernation stories without return, from Sleeping beauty to reboot of Captain America by Marvel in the 60s. And this means that living in a parallel universe with 2:1 time speed isn't true TT either

Oleksandr wrote: "I think 'true' TT should have travel to the past. For example SF novel with time dilution due to approaching light speed (Tau Zero or The Forever War) aren't TT as well a..."

I understand your point & was thinking about it, too. I've decided it is TT. It goes back to the point of the story. In The Forever War, traveling through time & how it alienates them from their world is one of the main themes, so I don't think the ability to go back is necessary. Nor is any special tech needed since A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court also uses that theme effectively without any good explanation. For that matter, so does The Time Machine.

Cheryl wrote: "Cuz the TT group read it? I don't remember it very well myself... which is another reason to give it a lower reading."

I gave Dark Matter 4 stars, but am obviously not remembering it as well as I should. I just read it 6 months ago, so maybe it is only a 3 star read or maybe I'm just slipping. Tough call. So many books over the years that they tend to blur together.

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "look at it from a physics point. Rate of travel is a vector quantity, right? Both magnitude and direction."

In Newtonian physics reversibility is present, but not in Einsteinian IIRC

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Einstien didnt consider reversibility because the magnitude of enrgy required to go back even a second is staggering, even by theoretical standards, because it is always easier to accelerate a body..."

erm, I'm not a physicist, but from what I understand there is no finite amount of energy that reverses system wide entropy. See here https://www.sciencealert.com/what-is-...

OK, I would not consider relativist time dilation as TT. But in multiple Star Trek episodes and movies they have utilized the Enterprise in conjunction gravitational bodies to time travel. Does anyone know their basis for this?

Gregg wrote: "OK, I would not consider relativist time dilation as TT. But in multiple Star Trek episodes and movies they have utilized the Enterprise in conjunction gravitational bodies to time travel. Does any..."

I think it's based on Einstein's equations with space-time with a Hollywood twist. If gravity & light speed can make time slow to a crawl, pushing a bit further can make an object skip through time forward or back.

Time Travel: Theories, Paradoxes & Possibilities
https://www.space.com/21675-time-trav...
is a quick rundown of quite a few sorts & is in language I can understand.

If we ever got RL FTL starships, they would be time-machines of sorts, making causality violations on every voyage. Which was one reason Stephen Hawking ( if memory serves ) gave for the impossibility of FTL travel, other than violating Einstein. I think most physicists agree that FTL travel is vanishingly unlikely. I hope the're wrong!

Wormwhole travel idea in SF usually means that either
a space is folded in higher dimension (just like you fol a paper so its ends are right next to each other
or
there is another space with different laws (e.g. higher light speed) and you use gravity to break the border between worlds

Peter wrote: "If we ever got RL FTL starships, they would be time-machines of sorts, making causality violations on every voyage. Which was one reason Stephen Hawking ( if memory serves ) gave for the impossibility of FTL travel.."

I always remembered his great party for time travellers:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...

Leo wrote: "I always remembered his great party for time travellers:"

LoL. I haven't known that

Forthenco Pacino wrote: "He knew how to throw it down."

⏰ 😻 🇬🇧 🎆

I enjoy TT stories except when they start doing weird sorts of time loops and other timey-wimey Jeremy-bearimy sorts of nonsense.

You may not like to hear this, but I don't like the story "All you zombies" for exactly that reason! It don't make no sense!

Ed wrote: "I enjoy TT stories except when they start doing weird sorts of time loops and other timey-wimey Jeremy-bearimy sorts of nonsense...."

Interesting. Those are the ones I like the most. It's wicked the way story twists.

I'm with Jim on 'Zombies'

My favorite time travel story is '—All You Zombies—' by Robert Heinlein. In 1959 this story presented an amazing solipsistic time travel paradox that you need to draw a diagram to figure out what happened. when you have time travel you usually end up with a paradox related to it. Heinlein didn't try to minimalize or sidestep the paradox but let the paradox be the story.

Peter wrote: "Wikipedia's article is unusually good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_tr...
In particular, their discussion of whether physics permits real time travel is interesting, and thought-provoking. T..."

I like the attempt by Hawking to entice time travelers to his party.

June 29, 2009, was a Sunday, one day before pyramid schemer Bernie Madoff would get sentenced to 150 years in prison. Hawking sat in his wheelchair at a cocktail party at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, beneath a banner reading, “Welcome Time Travellers.” Invitations were only revealed after the party, so only the host showed up, though he did not provide any specific evidence that he was not himself a time traveler. It was at least partly a stunt for a television show, the sort of combination of serious and silly that Hawking was known for.

Jim wrote: "My favorite time travel story is '—All You Zombies—' by Robert Heinlein. In 1959 this story presented an amazing solipsistic time travel paradox that you need to draw a diagram to figure out what h..."

Do you remember "By His Boostraps" by RAH, too? I agree that 'Zombies' was better, though. It really creeped me out when I first read it. The ultimate incest!

"By His Bootstraps" was Heinlein's first take on the time loop situation and was considered by many at the time, 1941, to be the he ultimate "loop in time" story. That is until 18 years later when Heinlein took it to another level with "—All You Zombies—" in 1959. "By His Bootstraps" had a simpler structure and was a great story for 1941 and still a good story today. My recommendation to someone who hasn't read the stories is to read "By His Bootstraps" first and then "—All You Zombies—".

Then, after reading both stories you should watch the movie Predestination which is based on "—All You Zombies—".

Recursion by Blake Crouch surprised me. I've really liked some of his other books, but time travel has been done to death or so I thought. He actually came up with one that's going to make my top ten list of TT stories. Considering how many I've read over the years, that's quite a compliment. I reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm hearing very conflicting thoughts on that one. I have a copy, so will read it eventually.

I read it last year, after having read Dark Matter a couple of years earlier. I enjoyed them both. I wouldn't hesitate to read more by Blake Crouch, though I've read complaints by others.

I recently read two books that involve time travel: Philip K. Dick’s Valis and Richard Matheson’s Somewhere in Time. In both books, time travel is achieved without technology.

My review of Valis is here. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll review Somewhere in Time.

The Ars guide to time travel in the movies:
We picked 20 time-travel movies and rated them by scientific logic and entertainment value.
By Jennifer Ouellette and Sean M. Carroll

https://arstechnica.com/features/2023...

It's interesting & fun to revisit these movies. I didn't agree with them fully, but didn't expect to. Overall, I think they did a pretty good job.

Thanks for the link, Jim. It's interesting to see that Sean Carroll attached his name to the piece. I always figured him to be dismissive of time travel, with his arrow of time perspective, and he does note that Back to the Future is "a bunch of bullshit."

I'd agree that they did a pretty good job in this effort. 12 Monkeys is by far my favorite of the movies listed

You're welcome, David. Yes, it is cool when a scientist weighs in on things like this.