Time Travel Logic Strikes Again

In James Blish's Midsummer Century (London, 1975), when John Martels falls into a new radio telescope, the apparatus accidentally generates a field that projects Martels' personality to 25,000 AD, when it is picked up by a suitable receiver. When Martels has helped the men of that era to defeat their evolutionary enemies, the Birds, he is told that:

(i) they can return his personality to his body the moment before it fell;

(ii) his knowledge acquired in the future will return with him;

(iii) he will not slip (because he will know not to try to climb down?);

(iv) but " '...your additional knowledge will last only a split second...'" (p. 104);

(v) "You will never come to our century, and all the gains you have made possible will be wiped out.'" (p. 104)

But he is in their century! I think that (i)-(iii) make sense if Martels is returned to the past of a divergent timeline (timeline 2). In timeline 2, there is no reason why he should not retain his knowledge so (iv) is wrong. (v) is true in timeline 2 but not in the original timeline (timeline 1). In timeline 1, he did come to the future and help humanity against the Birds. It is in that timeline that this conversation is taking place.

Like The Time Machine, Midsummer Century is a good short novel or long story about travel to the future but it would be conceptually better, in my opinion, if this conversation were to be revised somehow.

The Best Of Times

I envisage a single collection of the very few very best works of time travel fiction, which I suggest are:

The Time Machine by HG Wells;
"A Stitch In Time" by John Wyndham;
"By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein;
"The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" by Poul Anderson.

These happen to comprise two British literary works and two American genre stories.

Wells implies but otherwise avoids the issue of causality paradoxes. The other three works are circular causality stories although the last is set in a causality violation scenario. The four works present a good balance of past, present and future -

Wells: nineteenth century to 702,601 AD, then the furthest future of Earth, and return;
Wyndham: time travel within a character's life time;
Heinlein: twentieth century to far future;
Anderson: twentieth century to the Dark Ages.

The Time Traveler interacts with Morlocks and Eloi. Anderson's Time Patrolman interacts with Goths and Huns. The Time Patrol's mass produced, streamlined, futuristic timecycles are conceptual descendants of the Time Traveller's elaborate nineteenth century contraption. The time traveler sits on, instead of being enclosed by, each of these vehicles. Both Wyndham and Heinlein instead envisage a machine that sends people through time instead of moving past- or future-wards, taking them with it.

The Cleverest Kind Of Time Travel Story

The cleverest kind of time travel story is one in which the past seems to have been changed but then turns out not to have been. Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis (London, 1977) is one such. Erissa remembers that, before the catastrophe, she and Duncan were together on Crete where he became the father of her first child.

However, the catastrophe occurs while Duncan is still en route to Crete. So why does Erissa remember events that cannot have occurred and who was the father? By the time Duncan arrives, Theseus has raped the teenage Erissa but the adult Erissa, accompanying Duncan, hypnotises her younger self with spurious memories. Thus, the causal circle is completed.

When the older Erissa and Duncan meet - the second time for her but the first for him - they resume a physical relationship that they had not in fact had when she was younger. Parting from the hypnotised younger Erissa, Duncan says, " 'Know that in the end I'll call you back to me.' " (p. 166)

We last see Theseus swaggering away - not a usual last scene for the villain of an action-adventure novel. However, by rescuing young Erissa, Duncan and the mature Erissa prevent Theseus from using her to consolidate his power through the Goddess religion. To that extent, they thwart his plans.

The high priestess called "the Ariadne," conspiring with the invader Theseus, had ordered that a thread of lamps be lit to guide his men through the main halls of the Minos' palace, called "the Labyrinth." Thus, very understatedly, Anderson presents a possible origin for the myth of Minos' daughter Ariadne helping Theseus to escape from the Labyrinth that had housed the Minotaur.

Duncan and Oleg, stranded in 1400 BC but knowing that futurian time travelers will probably observe the imminent Atlantean eruption, build anachronistic ships to sail nearby in the hope that the futurians, seeing the ships, will deduce the presence of stranded time travelers and rescue them. It works:

"A shining shape descended from the clouds."(p. 167)

- while the anachronisms burned in battle.

Erissa's Cretans celebrate the death and resurrection of the god, Asterion. While it is true that Paganism included such myths, I wonder if Anderson had to invent some of the details for novelistic purposes? Lastly, I would like to read a time travel story in which the hero is told of a happy summer that he spent in Crete and ends the story by beginning that summer exactly as it had been related to him!

Doctor Who

Doctor Who will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in November, 2013. Like Superman, Star Trek and Flash Gordon, it is a story that needs to be retold from the beginning, getting it right this time. The Time Lords should be:

not aliens but our future;
not extraterrestrials but extra-temporals;
our evolutionary successors, like Poul Anderson's Danellians.

The originals of the Doctor and his companions fighting the Daleks are the Time Traveller and Weena against the Morlocks.

On a Doctor Who fan's shelves, I saw:

a boxed set of CD's of the first three Doctor Who stories - the beginning;
a boxed set of DVD's of the two feature films starring Peter Cushing - an alternative beginning;
a "Doctor Who: Lost in Time" CD collection of episodes of early stories that no longer exist in their entirety - truly "lost in time";
the DVD of the television film starring Paul McCann in his single appearance as the Doctor;
CD's of various stories featuring different Doctors;
thus, television and cinema history.

The TV series is Doctor Who but the first feature film is Doctor Who And The Daleks and the second is Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD so the Daleks take over the titles. In the TV series, the second story is "The Daleks". Curiously, the poster for the second film prominently features not a Dalek but a roboman with Daleks and other figures in the background.

I have stopped watching the TV series which cleverly presented the circular causality paradox in the first "Weeping Angels" story but mishandled causality violation when Rose tried to prevent her father's death. I advise Whovians to read The Time Machine, The Time Patrol and The Time Traveller's Wife.

Time Travel Memoirs Fragments

Sitting in the window of the cafe, I saw her turn into the street and walk along it towards me. As she got nearer, I realised that she was looking directly into the cafe and even making eye contact. I looked away. She came in, sat opposite and addressed me by name. I looked at her but didn't know her. Simultaneously, she started speaking and stopped making sense.

"We haven't met yet so it is alright for me to talk to you. I want you to deliver a letter for me."

She put it on the table, a sealed envelope with a name, an apartment number and an address in another part of the city.

"There are only two of them here. They are both watching his building. They don't know I am here and they won't recognise you. Go inside, press his buzzer, say you have a message from..." - she told me her name. "He will let you in. They won't know which apartment you have gone into."

I thought: Alright. She's crazy but I don't mind delivering a letter. This is sufficiently intriguing. Maybe the guy will explain more.

I asked, "How did you know to find me here?"

"You will tell me."

We spoke briefly but I could not keep track of the conversation. She said we would be friends, smiled and left.

He let me in but kept me away from the window. He read the letter, nodded and said, "Congratulations. You are the only person from this period to see inside this apartment while I am here. Only her name got you in. She must have wanted you to know something."

I was beginning to notice details like a very strange wall map of Europe with a "Wiser Federation" occupying the British Isles.

I asked, "When are you from?"

He did not tell me a date but said, "I'm from Solway City, there," pointing to the North West of England on the map. "She's from the High Ones period much later. She had some difficulty getting into the twentieth century..."

Seeing that I did not know what to ask next, he continued, "Several groups are operating in your period which is a crucial turning point but every period is, of course. They can't change definitely known events but they try to influence longer term tendencies. Our friends outside..." - he nodded towards the window - "...would prefer if the Irish were less willing participants in the Federation because that could affect events later, but they won't succeed."

"Federation?"

"...of Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English Republics. That is probably as much as I should say."

I thought he looked Irish but with something different. Neither North nor South but something else.

"If she said you will be friends, you will. Leave as you came."

I did. All I know now is that some day she and I will meet.

Historical Dramas II

(Because this post is about time travel, I have copied it from the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog.)

The child who would have grown up to be Cyrus the Great was killed as an infant. Later, a Time Patrolman, Keith Denison, was forced to play the role of the adult Cyrus returned from hiding to claim his throne. After sixteen years in this role and thirteen years before he is due to fall in battle, Denison is found by a colleague, Everard, and they discuss how to get him out of there. They are in a scenario where history can be changed, hence the need for a Patrol.

If they simply proceed to the twentieth century, then they will arrive in a timeline where Cyrus, who is necessary for post-Exilic Judaism and thus also for Christianity, instead of dying in battle in the twenty ninth year of his reign, disappeared in the sixteenth or seventeenth year of his reign. That is acceptable neither to them nor to the Patrol.

Denison comments:

"Suppose I had not showed up? Mightn't Harpagus have found a different psuedo-Cyrus? The exact identity of the King doesn't matter. Another Cyrus would have acted differently from me in a million day-to-day details...But...if he was...reasonably able and decent...then his career would have been the same as mine in all the important ways, the ways that got into the history books." (1)

Here again is the idea of a historical role that could have been played by a different actor. Everard replies that it was Denison's mysterious appearance that gave Harpagus the idea of passing him off as a returned Cyrus.

The eventual solution is for the Patrolmen to prevent the murder of the infant Cyrus who then grows up to play his historical role. To check that history is still on track, they attend a winter solstice festival where they see Cyrus ride past with his courtiers, including Harpagus.

Denison comments:

"He's younger than I was...And a little smaller...different face entirely, isn't it?...but he'll do." (2)

Like seeing a remake of the film with a different actor but these guys are doing it with real history! He'll do? He's the right one!

Now something very strange happens to a legendary story. When Everard had arrived in 542 BC, Croesus had told him that Harpagus, ordered to kill the infant Cyrus, instead:

"...exchanged the prince for the stillborn child of a herdsman..." (3)

so that:

"...our lord Cyrus grew up as a herdsman." (3)

This story, the one told by Herodotus, is "...a typical hero myth...", told of Moses, Romulus, Sigurd etc, yet is sworn to by eyewitnesses. (4) Everard senses a mystery. Of course, he learns that the infant Cyrus was indeed killed and that the story of his growing up as a herdsman was devised in order to pass off the imposter, Denison, as the returned prince.

Later, he suggests to Denison:

"...all the scientific historians in the future are convinced that the story of Cyrus' childhood as told by Herodotus and the Persians is pure fable. Well, maybe they were right all along. Maybe you experiences here have been only one of those little quirks in space-time which the Patrol tries to eliminate." (5)

So a story that was a lie in the deleted timeline becomes a legend in the revised timeline. The scientific historians do not know what underlies the events that they study.

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Guardians Of Time, New York, 1981, p. 102.
(2) ibid., p. 123.
(3) ibid., p. 83.
(4) ibid., p. 84.

Historical Dramas I

It is commonplace that an actor can play the role of a fictitious character, like Hamlet, or of a historical character, like Julius Caesar, on stage or screen and that anyone who confuses the actor with the character misunderstands the dramatic process.

The idea of time travel raises the intriguing possibility of playing a historical role on the stage of real history. In a Superman comic, a time traveller investigating the identity of a twentieth century superheroine wound up playing the role of the superheroine, using futuristic technology to generate the superpowers of flight etc. (See "Getting Superman Right" on my Comics Appreciation Blog.)

In Michael Moorcock's Behold The Man, Karl Glogauer plays the role of Jesus in first century Palestine. The stage is set but no one else comes forward to play the role so a time traveller does. He tells parables when he remembers them. The idea is not that he is completing a causal circle but that he is making Christianity as real as possible. Without him, the New Testament would have been entirely mythological but the subsequent history would not have differed. First century Palestine is a stage on which he can do what he wants but he opts to play the role.

Time travellers would be able to get away with a lot. According to Leon Trotsky's History Of The Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, on the run, attended a crucial Bolshevik committee meeting in disguise, wearing a wig and with beard shaved off (what a sight)! I cannot help imagining that that disguised Lenin was really a time traveller playing a historical role: kidnap Lenin; take his place at the meeting; hypnotise him with spurious memories as of having attended the meeting; put him in his bed to wake up the following morning. Simple. A group of time travellers could do this to the entire committee.

In Last Men In London, Olaf Stapledon envisaged a different kind of time travel intervention in the life of Lenin, one that connects with our earlier reference to Jesus. The Last Men time travel mentally, not physically. One of them performs a psychological experiment by inducing a mystical experience in Lenin who, after an hour of ecstasy, whispers, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword," and continues writing...

This line of thought started with reflections on two works by Poul Anderson which I will discuss in "Historical Dramas II" on www.poulandersonappreciation.blogspot.co.uk.