 Fantasy: April 13, 2016 Issue [#7585] |
  Fantasy
This week: Out of Time, Part 2 Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?
-Stephen Hawking
Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.
-Jasper Fforde
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
-The Doctor |
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As I pointed out last week, time travel in fiction is not without its hazards, not the least of which is a distinct lack of verb tenses in human languages to describe it properly.
This time, I'm going to concentrate on just one aspect of time travel, something that we really need to think about when crafting stories about people traveling back in time: contamination.
You're not just you. Your body is host to an incredible number of hitchhiker organisms, from gut bacteria to things in your eyelashes that you really do not want to Google and potentially get a picture of, trust me.
Every organism on Earth has been evolving for the same amount of time. I'm not trained in biology at all, but from what I understand, we can get a pretty good idea of when two species separated by studying genetic drift in their DNA.
Now, here you are, a thought-having, tool-using mammal, and you decide to take a trip back to the Cretaceous to see you some dinosaurs. Your ancestors are there: small, darting, shrew-like creatures dodging the massive tread of dinosaur feet. But there you are, shedding skin cells, dripping with 21st-century bacteria, and maybe getting a few chunks bitten out of you by velociraptors. Hey, you're the one who wanted to see dinosaurs up close; don't blame me.
But then you go back - or parts of you go back - to the future, but what have you left behind?
Anachronistic 67-million-years-too-evolved organisms.
The fact that biologists aren't confused by DNA that's been evolving for 67 million years longer than everything else is pretty good evidence that time travel of that sort can never happen. And if you're writing a story about it, it would be best to consider this inconvenient fact, get around it, lampshade it, whatever - because nitpickers like me will notice.
Or hey, let's say you don't care about dinosaurs. First of all, what is WRONG with you? So you decide to travel back to the Victorian era, I don't know, maybe to get a glimpse of ankle when it was risqué to do so. You hop into your time machine and set it for "steampunk," and you go back 150 years - along with all of the modern germs and viruses to which your 21st century immune system has already developed antibodies.
The resulting plague could wipe out humanity. Well, except for those frozen in steampunk cryogenic pods. Because while you have natural immunity to all sorts of diseases that came about in the last century, the hapless Victorians don't. Didn't. Damn these tenses!
It would be like Europeans visiting the Americas, worse than the Black Plague (which totally could have been started by a time traveler; I'm just saying). The consequences of this depend on how you handle paradoxes, which I went into last month.
These aren't the only issues, of course, but all the time travel stories I've seen focus on humans. But we're more than just humans - we are legion. Keep these things in mind when designing time travel stories.
Next month: Back to the Future! |
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Last time, in "Out of Time" , I began this time-travel series.
Quick-Quill  : I love this Part 1 and am anxious for Pt2. I totally agree with you and love the way you lay it out. I love c) and d) The fact the child goes back to see its Grandfather, only to find the grandfather died just made me want to read this story. What if? is the biggest boost to a writer. What if the grandmother did in fact have a lover/2nd/3rd husband? The fact the Hero must now find where or who that person was would make a great story. I read a book (self published) Repeating History-Justus, started out so interesting. as it progressed the story faded for me. But the boy went back to relive his grandfather's life (as the grandfather. A bit like back to the future only if marty went back as his father.) There are some interesting time travel books out there. This one had a great idea but It didn't keep me interested all the way through. I lost interest in this genre as they seem to all be similar.
There are a bunch out there. None of them that I've read really address paradoxes to my satisfaction.
Elfin Dragon-finally published  [responding to "A New Force Awakens" ]: Regarding "A New Force Awakens". I'm one of those who also likes a good Space Opera and remembers that iconic slow crawl. I also remember standing in line to see the first Superman movie. Though the two couldn't be more far apart I think there's something to be said about your first (either science fiction or fantasy) film. It captures your imagination and if you're inclined to write, stirs your own stories.
Oh, I don't know. Both are fantasies that use science fiction props. Both involve a hero's journey. Both protagonists discover their immense power. And most importantly, John Williams did both scores. Yes, Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction. But I could make a case on both sides for Superman; as I've said before, comic books combine fantasy with SF.
And that'll do it for me for this month! See you next time for the third and final (for now) chapter in the Time Travel series. Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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