Why Time Travel?

[Cheryl]

Good question. I've been pondering it lately myself. I wish I had a good answer. I find myself nodding at your entire post.

I think maybe part of the appeal for me can be articulated as 'the ultimate what-if' - that is, science fiction deals in the 'what-if' we could explore other worlds, 'what-if' we met aliens, 'what-if' the key to immortality were discovered....

Time Travel takes this basic idea to the extreme. It often takes something very personal, an ordinary human life, and putting it into something that is so implausible that the imagination isn't bound by conventions or notions of plausibility. It's even more magic than fantasy. If you haven't read the other Twilight by Nicholas S. Stember I recommend you do so.

And the 'puzzle' of it is key, too. It does have to have an intact internal logic. Watching a hero trying to get the timeline 'fixed' or the future 'right' is a lot of fun. I liked Replay and The Man Who Folded Himself for that.

I also like some TT that is not SF because I like the idea of learning about the world the hero(ine, often) is transported into through (her) more modern perspective. Straight historical fiction and history seems to me to be about the boring stuff, the intrigue and the battles etc. Time Travel romance (at least by the two books I read) is about the interesting (to me) stuff like how the people actually lived. I think the one I read & enjoyed more was by Jude Deveraux.

[John, Moderator in Memory]

I think the idea that you could go back and change your own life for the better is one of the strong appeals of time travel fiction.

Personally, I like the idea that I could go back and actually view historically significant events. Even better is the possibility that I could go back and live in an era when life was so much simpler.

[Tej]

I like the idea of using time travel as an investigation tool. To solve crimes, mysterious events, and rewriting history books with time travellers observations replacing distorted historical ones. But travelling to the past for whatever good intentions can just muck the whole universe up.

So I think a good use of it will be to just monitor the immediate future to prevent any bad things that are about to happen. That way, paradoxes cannot occur because the past is intact and the future is not set in stone. Minority Report had such a concept. I think it would be the best balance of safety and usefulness.

[Cheryl]

ok - but wasn't the point of Minority Report to warn us of the high liklihood of this ability to see the near-future being a Bad Thing?

[Tej]

Not really (maybe for that poor person cursed with the visions), Minority Report had a system where you are prosocuted for doing bad things before you have comitted the crime. That was the controversy because you can never prove you are innocent given that there is no physical crime scene to analyse apart from the vision of the future. The peeping into the future caused no paradoxes.

I didnt really say it was completely safe though. Its just the best balance of safety and usefulness compared to travelling to the past :)

Flash Forward had a similar theme which again does not cause any paradox but could potentially be used as a warning. The negative impact shown in that series was a psychological one where knowing your future can do all sorts of things to your sanity!

[Keith]

I think what appeals to people regarding time travel is having prior knowledge of an event, place, race, culture etc. and then being able to visit that particular time in history and viewing that event with their own eyes, rather than reading about it or seeing a dramatised hollywood movie about it. To watch as the allied Paratroopers jumped in over Normandy in 1944 would be far more adrenalin pumping then reading about it in a book, sipping a coffee.

Just my take on it anyway :)

[John, Moderator in Memory]

I also like the idea of sightseeing through time. The problem is being able to do it safely. And as we learned in reading Up the Line, if you get too many people going back to witness the same event, it starts to get crowded because even though all of these time travel tourists come from different places/eras, they are all converging on one time and place. I think the better alternative would be to send back holographic cameras that could record historic events in real time. This would allow us to view the event without interfering or putting ourselves in danger.

[Vicki]

John,
I agree, I love the idea of a holographic camera recording the events in real time! Especially since, theoretically, we don't know how we would change the timeline by being there.

[Jena]

Time travel appeals to me on three levels. First, there the tourist in me who wants to experience the "simpler place and time." I want to know if ice cream sodas really did taste better coming from the soda fountains in the 1950's, or if that's just nostalgia. I want to feel what it was like to listen to Elvis Presley when he was "new." Second, I'm intrigued by the what-ifs on a global or historical level. Would it be possible to stop Presidential assassinations, plane crashes, etc., and with what effects? But finally, and maybe this is the most appealing aspect for me, is the personal level. I'd like to go back and talk to my great-grandmother when she was young, see how her thoughts and ideas matched with the older lady I knew, etc.

[Tej]

I really like those levels Rachel. The third one is especially interesting. I too would like to know what my parents and grandparents were like. But I have a feeling that in most cases, one might feel dissapointment. The reason is we are always wiser when we are older, so if you are accustomed to the wisdom of the older counterparts, the younger counterparts may disspoint. On the other hand, our younger minds are more free spirited and potentially at the peak of our achievements. That may be nice to catch as a time traveller :)

The first level, is also so interesting. Our perception of our own past can be distorted. If we do visit the past era we would most probably be swept by nostalgua but then there may well be a sense of "its not really as great as I remembered it" :)

[John, Moderator in Memory]

I also think we would be a little disappointed to meet our grandparents because I think we all have an idealized image of them based on what little we know and from the heroic/positive stories that are shared by those who knew them.

[Jena]

I wouldn't be disappointed in meeting younger versions of my family, because that's half the reason I'd want to travel back in time, to meet the "people" beyond the idealized images. I'd love to witness the formation of the character that I so admired about them. It would almost be a reverse of watching children grow up. You'd already know the outcome, but a chance to witness firstand the experiences that gave them the wisdom and compassion they ended up with would fascinate me. I also wonder if I might not see where I inherited some of my more "colorful" traits like being stubborn. As a child, you may have missed some of the lesser appealing personality traits in your grandparents or great-grandparents, but in meeting them as one adult to another, it might be like looking in a mirror. An added bonus that just occurred to me is that you might be comforted and encouraged about your own personal/character development, to realize that your great-grandparents weren't perfect, but they ended up leaving a wonderful legacy to their offspring. It might give you a sense that you're on the right path in the things you try to teach your children or grandchildren.
And I would LOVE another chance to talk to my family about the historical events they witnessed, or better yet, to see how they lived them. My Grandma read voraciously, and she gave me my love of books and writing. We had many long talks about the books we loved, but I would treasure the chance to go back and talk books with her, now that I'm an adult and have read more.

[John, Moderator in Memory]

I also would jump at the chance to meet my grandparents or great-grandparents. Perhaps disappointed was not the right word. Maybe disenchanted or disillusioned is better.

[Tej]

Rachel, if you were a saleswoman, you would be brilliant at selling time travel trips, you have me completely sold on it. Loved your last post. It even sounds like a lovely synopsis for a novel. You completely turned around my thoughts on visiting my immediate ancestors now. I want to go now and appreciate their lives in the way you described.

[Jena]

WOW, thank you so much, Tej!!! That's one of the most meaningful compliments I've ever received!

[Tyler]

Replay Exultant 11/22/63 Doomsday Book Time Travelers Never Die

A lot of my favorite books involve time travel. There's really no limit to the imagination when time travel is involved. You can visit the beginning and the end of humanity, go back in time and change something in your life, or see your life will be like 15 years in the future.

[Scott]

I also agree with Rachel about the fascination with visiting grandparents at a younger age. I'm not sure disillusionment would come in to play for me. I have great respect for them but never thought of them as anything other than elderly matriarch and patriarch until I stumbled on old photos of them as teens full of so much life. They looked like they had a lot of fun. Even a photo booth shot of my grandmother at 17 shows her with a sly knowing smile. I just want to step into those photos to get more of the context.

For me the biggest fascination about Time Travel is how it can unchain us from our linear existence. I feel nostalgic about many things. Moments and feelings I want to re-experience or people no longer around I would like to visit again. I can relate to characters who have a similar longing to experience another time and place, familiar or unfamiliar. A fish out of water is also a favorite story element for me when that person out of time or place is our perspective on a foreign environment or gives us an outsider's perspective on our own environment and things we take for granted.

[Howard]

I think there's another, more basic reason why the idea of Time Travel interests people.

The concept of time & its implications (time passing) is how humans relate to each other & relate to our shared existence, it's how we define ourselves.

When you ask someone "How are you?" or "What's new with you?" it's implied "Since the last time we connected."

When we wonder at the condition of society, or humanity as a whole, it's always through the prism of the passage of time; again it's how we can relate, how we do relate.

Such examples are endless & that's what History is all about.

So time as a concept is also a real thing & that's undeniable; anyone can see its effects, given enough time, that is.

As it's so ephemeral & so fixed, the idea of somehow changing it is & has always been a universal pastime, a fantasy in which most have indulged at some point.

The idea of Time Travel by extension is, I believe, also universal, a way of escaping our set & most people think, unchanging existence.

Yet it has always struck me that humans are the only life form that aren’t constricted by time, for we can all Time Travel & do so on a regular basis.

Anyone can travel to the past by thinking of his or her childhood (or anything in our past) & we all travel to the future whenever we plan our next vacation or trip to the store.

Time Travel, for most that is, is therefore a mental activity only & so, even if we don’t couch it in such terms, we’re intrigued by the possibility of doing it physically & that’s why most can get into such a literary genre.

We're already, you see, 'hard wired' to think in such terms & so it's natural.

Makes perfect sense to me.

[Frances]

A.K. wrote: "(Apologies in advance if there are similar topics already in existence - I didn't find any on a quick look.)

I was just wondering if anybody else had given any thought as to why time travel storie..."
Just looking through some old posts and thought i would comment. I think time travel stories began to appeal to me when watching the early Doctor Who series. To be able to travel anywhere through time and space just tickled my fancy. The fact the Doctor wasn't restricted to Earth was great too. I love aliens and strange planets. The TARDIS really frustrated me though. For such a wonderful machine, the Doctor could never get it to go exactly where he wanted it to. Still can't in the new series. I suppose the idea of an erratic time machine was so he could end up anywhere at anytime and it gave the series scope for countless new adventure.

[Brenda]

What I am working on now is the idea of fixing your errors. You blew it, big time. Suppose you could go back and fix it somehow?
Allied to this is the idea of how you are remembered. If you blew it big time, people naturally loathe you for it. Suppose you could fix, not nedessarily your FUBAR, but how people remember you. Would that be sufficient? Elsewhere on Goodreads we are discussing DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey. It is not TT, but a mystery novel. It is about how history can be distorted, how a really good propaganda campaign can actually change not the historical events, but how people remember them.

[Howard]

Brenda wrote: 'Allied to this is the idea of how you are remembered'

Brenda, a long used human theme, to be sure.

The ancients believed that you lived as long as people spoke your name; that if you were known, you continued to live.

This is why they tried to do heroic things, so that songs & stories would be written about them & hence they would never die & so achieve eternal life.

By this reckoning, Zeus still lives, or even George Washington.

How they are remembered, as you point out, is a different matter, but sometimes their later-added deeds can alter how they are known to history, especially if they possessed great wealth.

For example, before he died Alfred Nobel was the most despised man alive, a war monger who amassed his huge fortune literally by death itself.

One day he saw the Future by reading his premature obituary, as it was his brother who'd died in an explosion the day before.

John D Rockefeller was loathed also, being held responsible for the deaths of many near-starving coal miners who were gunned down by hired goons after they had the audacity to strike against his interests.

He saw the handwriting too, after his Standard Oil Trust was sucessfully busted.

Both, of course, gave away lots of money.

So now both their Futures are assured, as great philanthropists who were selfless in their charity & who knows or cares how they started out?

Go figure.

They, by the by, are just two examples.

[Florian]

Brenda wrote: "It is about how history can be distorted, how a really good propaganda campaign can actually change not the historical events, but how people remember them. "

Tej wrote: "I like the idea of using time travel as an investigation tool. To solve crimes, mysterious events, and rewriting history books with time travellers observations replacing distorted historical ones..."

I think that your messages complement well each other. There is no such thing as objective or real history in our society, only political history being bend in different ways to match the need of a society at a certain period (better said the need of the rulers of the respective society) and one thing where time travel can help is to establish a better version of history.
However, I am skeptical that physical time travel to direct influence things from the past would be possible, "visioning" will be a more appropriate approach.

[Adriaan]

I find stories about the mechanics of time travel fascinating, though relatively few stories really dwell on this part. My favourite in this area is Thrice Upon a Time, or the movie Primer.

I'm really more of an alternate history fan than time travel per se. It's just a convenient trigger by introducing a a wildcard element that ripples through the lives of everyone in the 'present'. 1632 is a great example of this.

[Lincoln, Temporal Jester]

I love the idea of exploring history more deeply, I suppose I could read a nice period piece that has been richly researched but the idea of a protagonist being out of time forces him to describe the simplest of things which can be very entertaining or annoying. Also, nice little historical cues to let you know where a time traveler is based on your knowledge of history is very fun.

I also enjoy speculative what if scenarios. Going into the future to find dystopian societies or space faring other worldly dwellers, or just crazy future Earth with Iphone 83's its all fascinating stuff if done well.

[Amy, Queen of Time]

For me, it's the mind games of "what-if" that appeals to me the most when thinking about time travel. I like that it's still very much a speculative form of science fiction because we haven't ever experienced true time travel and are still only able to write from a theoretical standpoint. And since none of us have visited the future yet, theories abound about how humanity will evolve (or devolve). No 2 authors approach the problems of time travel in exactly the same way which means that 2 authors given the exact same plot to work with would create completely different stories.

[David]

The time-travel novel can be Socratic: the best of them seem to examine a moral dilemma, and the genre enables facile tweaks in reality to see if those tweaks change our perception of the dilemma. The problem with examining a moral dilemma real-time is that they happen too quickly, and reality is too complex. A novel reduces the universe into something small enough to be examined, yet complex enough for that examination to feel meaningful. An established genre (like time-travel) enables complexity through chunking elements that are standard within the genre.

[Paul]

For me, it's the sheer near-impossibility (because nothing is impossible) of the paradoxes that time travel invokes. Their resolution - such as the multiple worlds interpretation for the grandfather paradox - require reality even more complex and far-fetched than time travel itself. Which is precisely why I love reading and writing it.

[David]

Paul wrote: "For me, it's the sheer near-impossibility (because nothing is impossible)..."

Well, it's impossible until it's not.

[Paul]

Fair enough. But the paradoxes suggest it will be a long time if ever before we arrive at the not, and cut the circular knot.