The folly of time travel in fiction

[Vendikarr]

I'm trying to write a story (not Star Trek) where the heroes chase a villain back in time. This guy is trying to change history in his favor and the heroes are trying to stop him. By the end of the story, the heroes do stop him and they go back to their future.

But I'm having troubles because I can't overlook the butterfly effect. To me, there is no way that all these characters could go back to the past and not have it affect what happens in the future. When they return to the future, things should logically be altered, but I don't think I want that to happen. Hence, I'm blocked from writing the story.

Any suggestions?

I wrote a story where the description of DC's Hyperverse worked to explain time travel. Time flows like a great river. There are branches off from time to time that form their own river, but there can also be branches that feed back into the main river.

If the changes to the timestream are minor, or far enough back, they can merge back into the main timeline with little effect. If a major event is changed, it may create a new timeline, or it may just leave a permanent alteration on the main timeline.

My story said you created a second timeline the nanosecond you arrived, breathing in air that wasn't breathed at that time before. As a story constraint, I said without major alterations, a person could be in the past 96 hours before the cumulative changes form a permanent divergent timeline.

My advice is to find a reason for their alterations to be minor or non existent. But reveal that concept early, and remain consistent throughout the story.

 

[Klaus]

My favorite take on this is Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, where the hero gets a time-travel belt as a present and discovers that every use creates another universe -- but that it also means there is another version of him also running around with a time-belt causing more divergences and eventually he starts running into other versions of himself.

 

[captcalhoun]

do what Doctor Who does: have people time-travel and fight bad guys and just don't go into great detail. it's the easiest.

 

[Icemizer]

So the heroes go back in time and fail to stop the villian. In a last ditch effort they go back in time again and alter the villians birth so he is now a she. When they return to their normal time the she is now the leader of the team and they are wanted criminals for disturbing the time stream. This will set up a nice series of books where our hero team is chasing through time to try and set things right.

 

[Sephiroth]

better yet, our criminal is about to enter the time portal on his way to fuck history up, when the portal opens up our heroes step out and shoot the villan in the head

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It is my firm belief that there is no "good" way to write a time travel story, only less bad ways, but that any time travel logic can be made to work as a story (I think I've seen or read successful examples of every sort, although I haven't bothered to list them out). First you need to choose your poison - which variety of time travel are you opting for? Then you need to understand the drawbacks and work around the drawbacks.

For instance, I read a novel that uses the "parallel reality" version of time travel, where you don't travel through your own time (grandfather paradox prevents that) but to a parallel reality very close to your own. The protagonist ended up in a reality where WWII is not going as advertised and the Nazis might win. The author solved the who-cares problem by making the characters in that reality very sympathetic and relatable. It doesn't matter that they're not from "my" reality as long as I can relate to them and care about their troubles. And all fictional characters are unreal anyway, so when you think about it, this approach to time travel shouldn't be any barrier to a good story.

Twelve Monkeys is another example of a successful approach. It uses "predestination" time travel logic - nothing the protagonist does can change anything. But instead of this resulting in a frustrating and pointless story, the movie is rather beautiful and tragic, thanks to the writing, directing and Bruce Willis' performance.

The other way to do time travel that frequently works well is to turn it into comedy, and make the inherent absurdity of time travel the focus of the comedy, turning a negative into a positive. Futurama has done this several times, resulting in some of their best episodes.

 

[Mistral]

Villain kills the heroes,set alls sorts of wheels in motion to change his future, returns and discovers nothing has changed.

The Men Who Killed Mohammed

Its been done.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

All the plots have been done many times. That doesn't mean writers should give up!

Star Trek XI was another example of parallel-reality time travel, just like the WWII story I mentioned above, and I still enjoyed it just fine. And it used a similar "solution" - giving us likeable characters who were reminiscent enough of the TOS originals to immediately win our sympathy (excepting the haters of course), plus throwing in some variations (Kirk and Uhura especially) that promising interesting things to come, for the good of the sequels.

I would have hated for JJ Abrams to scrap that approach just because some novel whose name I can't even recall did it before (and certainly that novel wasn't the first to do it, either).

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Hitler is the obvious example to use to demonstrate this kind of stuff, but let's say he remains intact. You travel back in time in Florida and delay somebody getting home to bang his wife. A much less important person is born a different gender than they otherwise would have. Now, just think of all the people's lives that will be affected from one simple change like that. It might take longer to affect things on a global scale, but eventually the world will still be completely different than it would have been.

Of course, there's nothing to say that someone else might not have had similar ideas to Hitler and taken his place. The details are different of course, but the thrust of history would be the same. Then again, obviously, there's nothing to say it'll remain the same. Still, factors that shape so-called great men might still exist to shape other men into greatness.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Hitler is the obvious example to use to demonstrate this kind of stuff, but let's say he remains intact. You travel back in time in Florida and delay somebody getting home to bang his wife. A much less important person is born a different gender than they otherwise would have. Now, just think of all the people's lives that will be affected from one simple change like that. It might take longer to affect things on a global scale, but eventually the world will still be completely different than it would have been.

Of course, there's nothing to say that someone else might not have had similar ideas to Hitler and taken his place. The details are different of course, but the thrust of history would be the same. Then again, obviously, there's nothing to say it'll remain the same. Still, factors that shape so-called great men might still exist to shape other men into greatness.

I'd say it also attaches far too much importance to genetics. Had Hitler's mother died at birth and Alois married someone less enabling of Hitler's childhood predispositions, things would have been equally different.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Well, we could try and add the nature vs. nurture argument to this as well while we're at it (in addition to my "great persons vs. social history" argument).

Even without paradoxes (or quantum physics) time travel can be some complicated shit.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

The first time around, Abelard Von Braun led the Nazis to power. He was removed, and suddenly there was this Waldemar Klein! Now, suddenly HE had had this amazing climb to power. So we did our thing again, and G.D. it all, there's this Adolf Hitler guy standing at the top.

About this time we said screw it, and packed up and went back uptime. It wasn't worth the effort to get cheaper Bavarian waffles.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

lol, something like that.

Granted, there was something particularly charismatic and crazy about Hitler that might have been a perfect storm, but that overshadows the overwhelmingly popular sentiment many of his policies had and the ability of dedicated followers to crush the opposition of those who didn't support him.

 

[Myasishchev]

I wouldn't call it overwhelming. Even at its peak, I wouldn't exactly say the NSDAP ever received the mandate.

It was more that the left was disunited and stupid. Thank God the left in America is only stupid.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Well, we could try and add the nature vs. nurture argument to this as well while we're at it (in addition to my "great persons vs. social history" argument).

Even without paradoxes (or quantum physics) time travel can be some complicated shit.

I see value in both the individual as well as the social situation of the times. The Great Person argument does overplay how much any one person can do taken to extreme, however I see the social history creating a force of history belief which is an illusion created from hindsight. The future was as much up for grabs to the folks in the wake of the First World War as it is today. Lacking Hitler, the Nazi Party wasn't really fielding anyone who motivated the average German voter even at the height of their legal political power. A different right wing leader like Franz von Papen wouldn't necessarily have brought on a second unpleasantness.

And perhaps the failed artist might have emigrated to the US and taken up writing science fiction, as Spinrad imagined in 'The Iron Dream'

 

[Gotham Central]

I've never understood why people insist on using pure time travel. Parallel universes achieve the same effect without any of the headaches.

Time Trax is the only SciFi series to ever get this right and do it quite effectively. The antagonists travel "back in time" to change history with the knowledge that that time travel is technically impossible. One could not travel back to 1993. They could only travel sideways in time to a younger parallel universe where the "present" was 1993 instead of 2193. Thus the characters only THINK that they know how the future will turn out. There mere presence in the alternate 1993 means that there is a high probability that things will turn out differently. It also meant that the original 2193 was never in any danger.


As a side note, I anyone familiar with the GURPS role playing system? They also showcased an interesting interpretation of time travel. In the "Stopwatch" campaign there are two competing parallel versions of the present/absolute now. They share a common past. The problem is that both presents are viable and time travelers from each world cannot travel to the other present. its described that time is like a flipped coin...it either comes up heads or tails but both sides are probable outcomes. Even more mysteriously, there is a 20-100 year blackout period around the present to which travelers from either present cannot visit. Something during that blackout period is what determines which present is which. Thus the travelers can travel back to any other point in time to take actions that make their own present more probable.

 

[Broccoli]

Time Trax is the only SciFi series to ever get this right and do it quite effectively. The antagonists travel "back in time" to change history with the knowledge that that time travel is technically impossible. One could not travel back to 1993. They could only travel sideways in time to a younger parallel universe where the "present" was 1993 instead of 2193. Thus the characters only THINK that they know how the future will turn out. There mere presence in the alternate 1993 means that there is a high probability that things will turn out differently. It also meant that the original 2193 was never in any danger.

Even in that series, they sidestepped the premise when a story needed it. In particular, I remember one episode when they, surprisingly, got a message from the future saying that lots of people were dying from some plague that was caused by one of the criminals in 1993. Lambert stopped the bad guy and the future was saved. Or something like that.

 

[theenglish]

Hitler is the obvious example to use to demonstrate this kind of stuff, but let's say he remains intact. You travel back in time in Florida and delay somebody getting home to bang his wife. A much less important person is born a different gender than they otherwise would have. Now, just think of all the people's lives that will be affected from one simple change like that. It might take longer to affect things on a global scale, but eventually the world will still be completely different than it would have been.

Of course, there's nothing to say that someone else might not have had similar ideas to Hitler and taken his place. The details are different of course, but the thrust of history would be the same. Then again, obviously, there's nothing to say it'll remain the same. Still, factors that shape so-called great men might still exist to shape other men into greatness.

I'd say it also attaches far too much importance to genetics. Had Hitler's mother died at birth and Alois married someone less enabling of Hitler's childhood predispositions, things would have been equally different.

Or maybe people just aren't as important to history as we would like to think. If Hitler did not exist, maybe the time and circumstances were just right for the Nazis to arise. Somebody else would have been Hitler instead.

Like I mentioned before, if Edison had not lived maybe the time was just right for the light bulb?

It is just as likely that the ebb and flow of events in time is less influenced by individuals and more influenced by sociological patterns of entire societies.

The truth is we don't know, because their is no way to test it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Time Trax is the only SciFi series to ever get this right and do it quite effectively. The antagonists travel "back in time" to change history with the knowledge that that time travel is technically impossible. One could not travel back to 1993. They could only travel sideways in time to a younger parallel universe where the "present" was 1993 instead of 2193. Thus the characters only THINK that they know how the future will turn out. There mere presence in the alternate 1993 means that there is a high probability that things will turn out differently. It also meant that the original 2193 was never in any danger.

If that's true, how do you explain the fact that Darien Lambert can leave messages in the personals section of the paper which his colleagues in the future will later read?

 

[Gov Kodos]

Of course, there's nothing to say that someone else might not have had similar ideas to Hitler and taken his place. The details are different of course, but the thrust of history would be the same. Then again, obviously, there's nothing to say it'll remain the same. Still, factors that shape so-called great men might still exist to shape other men into greatness.

I'd say it also attaches far too much importance to genetics. Had Hitler's mother died at birth and Alois married someone less enabling of Hitler's childhood predispositions, things would have been equally different.

Or maybe people just aren't as important to history as we would like to think. If Hitler did not exist, maybe the time and circumstances were just right for the Nazis to arise. Somebody else would have been Hitler instead.

Like I mentioned before, if Edison had not lived maybe the time was just right for the light bulb?

It is just as likely that the ebb and flow of events in time is less influenced by individuals and more influenced by sociological patterns of entire societies.

The truth is we don't know, because their is no way to test it.

History isn't biology.