Spoilers DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

It is usual, when a Time Policeman return to his own time after correcting a change in the past, that there are no duplicates of him in his own time.

Yes, that's the cliche, which is exactly why I didn't want to do it that way. It's a contrivance for story convenience (or to avoid split-screen effects) and there's usually no explanation offered for it. Whenever that happens in a time-travel story, I find myself asking what happened to the version of the person that should be there, and I almost never get a satisfactory answer. That's my inspiration: as with so much else in DTI, it's a response to my frustration at the usual nonsense of time-travel stories, to come up with answers for the open questions they tend to leave me with.

Spoiler: hopefully not a story idea

Or maybe I am missing something and every time a FTA agent returns to the 31st century he/she has to merge with the local version?

Maybe, maybe not. I'd have to think about it in terms of a specific situation.

 

[Idran]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.

Off-topic, but what about BTTF1? The Marty that our Marty sees at the end must be the "local" Marty, not himself, after all. (And things are conveniently set up in BTTF2 so as to avoid the question entirely of if the "local" Marty and Doc are around or not in the Hell Valley timeline; I've always assumed so, myself.)

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^That's right. BTTF's changed timeline is similar enough that it still has Marty going back in time at the same moment. It stands to reason that if the timeline were radically different, he wouldn't go back at all and both Martys (Marties?) would still be there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.

Off-topic, but what about BTTF1? The Marty that our Marty sees at the end must be the "local" Marty, not himself, after all. (And things are conveniently set up in BTTF2 so as to avoid the question entirely of if the "local" Marty and Doc are around or not in the Hell Valley timeline; I've always assumed so, myself.)

The "alternate 1985" version of Doc is, IIRC, in an insane asylum (judging from the newspaper headlines) and Marty is in some kind of boarding school.

 

[Idran]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.

Off-topic, but what about BTTF1? The Marty that our Marty sees at the end must be the "local" Marty, not himself, after all. (And things are conveniently set up in BTTF2 so as to avoid the question entirely of if the "local" Marty and Doc are around or not in the Hell Valley timeline; I've always assumed so, myself.)

The "alternate 1985" version of Doc is, IIRC, in an insane asylum (judging from the newspaper headlines) and Marty is in some kind of boarding school.

Yeah, that's what I meant; it was set up so that we don't know if BTTF2 used the time travel trope of the local versions vanishing at the same moment the original versions appeared or not. Probably not given BTTF1, but neither one contradicts the movie, so you can go by whichever you want. (And then there's Jennifer, of course, but we don't know if there even exists a local version or not.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^ It's implied that there *is* no local Jennifer.

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Off-topic, but what about BTTF1? The Marty that our Marty sees at the end must be the "local" Marty, not himself, after all. (And things are conveniently set up in BTTF2 so as to avoid the question entirely of if the "local" Marty and Doc are around or not in the Hell Valley timeline; I've always assumed so, myself.)

The "alternate 1985" version of Doc is, IIRC, in an insane asylum (judging from the newspaper headlines) and Marty is in some kind of boarding school.

Yeah, that's what I meant; it was set up so that we don't know if BTTF2 used the time travel trope of the local versions vanishing at the same moment the original versions appeared or not. Probably not given BTTF1, but neither one contradicts the movie, so you can go by whichever you want. (And then there's Jennifer, of course, but we don't know if there even exists a local version or not.)

Actually, I would say that there is no great problem with BTTF1 ending.
As you say at the end 2 Martys meet, but it is Marty Prime and Marty Alt past, that is to say that there is a 10 minutes difference between them.
Marty alt then travels into the past and I would say that now a stable timeloop has been created.

In general BTTF trilogy however funny and entertaining films are bad examples of temporal mechanics.
Think Biff returning to the future and it did not change, photos as indication of timeline change, Jeniffer moving through timelines by herself...

I suppose that there may be a temporal inertia, but that is not here nor there...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Oh, and about Jennifer: She is, while sleeping, placed on the front porch of what they seem to be GUESSING is her house, in the crime-ridden hell hole of alternate 1985, ALONE. On the assumption that the time stream will reshape itself around her and she won't know the difference. Oh yeah, that'll end well.

 

[Quimby]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

In Today's Cracked article about fictional Spin-offs there was a reference to DTI and a shout out to Christopher by name. Link here.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

In Today's Cracked article about fictional Spin-offs there was a reference to DTI and a shout out to Christopher by name. Link here.

That is awesome!

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

In Today's Cracked article about fictional Spin-offs there was a reference to DTI and a shout out to Christopher by name. Link here.

Wow, that's really neat! I've left my mark...

Would I warrant a "Created by" credit, though? Probably just a "Developed for Television."

Of the hypothetical spinoffs in the overall piece, the ones I'd most like to see are Turanga Leela, Private Eye and September, followed by The War Doctor and The Black Widow Diaries.

 

[Mjolnir2000]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Always nice to see a Banks orbital make an appearance (though the whole tilting it thing never made much sense to me - the angular width of the opposite side shouldn't be large enough to block the sun), and the visit to the 31st century Federation was wonderful. If you ever decide to write more stories set in either of those time periods, as a part of the DTI series or otherwise, I'll buy them without hesitation.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

A quick question, Christopher, related to a topic from last week. When you wrote that Temarel could resist Lirahn's influence, did you intend that the Chenar were actively psi-capable or was Temarel just a strong-minded individual?

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

As I said, I consider them to be descended from the Vulcans. Thus, presumably they have the same mental abilities.

 

[Relayer1]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Having started to read through the recent Trek e-novellas, I've not liked them very much, with the exception of Lust's Latinum Lost.

However, I've got a way into this one, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it !

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Having started to read through the recent Trek e-novellas, I've not liked them very much, with the exception of Lust's Latinum Lost.

However, I've got a way into this one, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it !

Yeah, the Collectors really raises the bar for great Trek eNovellas. I wish more of them would be like this than the TOS eNovellas, which aren't much in the way of substantive.

 

[foxmulder710]

Hey Christopher, any chance we might be getting more DTI soon?

 

[Defcon]

There will be another novella in September called Time Lock.

Here are all blog posts by @Christopher tagged with TIme Lock:

https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/tag/time-lock/

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . a ruddy desert populated by gray-brown, shaggy-maned hummanoids with suckerlike mouths and sunken eyes . . . . attacking a herd of rodentlike creatures . . . placing their suckered hands on the animals' heads and apparently draining them of life. Oddly, the rodents seemed unafraid of them, approaching them willingly . . .

Salt Vampires? The Collectors saved the Salt Vampires?

(Although in my own short story, the prey animals were more sheeplike than rodentine.)

 

[Christopher]

Salt Vampires? The Collectors saved the Salt Vampires?

Some of them. And it didn't last.

(Although in my own short story, the prey animals were more sheeplike than rodentine.)

No reason they couldn't have more than one prey species.