The Guardian of Forever - a question

[JoeZhang]

In City on the edge of forever, Spock says about the Guardian of Forever

"A time portal Captain, a gateway to other times and dimensions if I am correct" and the guardian replies "As correct as possible for you..."

Now the Guardian could be indicating that he's only correct about the first aspect of his reply but maybe not.

Has anyone within the books ever used the angle that the Guardian can be used for transport to other dimensions rather than to just to travel in time?

 

[Paris]

In City on the edge of forever, Spock says about the Guardian of Forever

"A time portal Captain, a gateway to other times and dimensions if I am correct" and the guardian replies "As correct as possible for you..."

Now the Guardian could be indicating that he's only correct about the first aspect of his reply but maybe not.

Has anyone within the books ever used the angle that the Guardian can be used for transport to other dimensions rather than to just to travel in time?

I think Christopher hinted at this in his latest DTI book...

 

[Stevil2001]

Time for Yesterday by A. C. Crispin features the Guardian's creators coming back from the other dimension they built it to travel to.

 

[Christopher]

"Yesteryear" treats it as a given that the different timelines coexist side by side rather than overwriting each other (Spock wishes Thelin prosperity in his timeline even as he goes back in time to restore his own, suggesting he didn't think the timeline would be erased), so maybe that could qualify as other "dimensions," if you use the term loosely enough (or if you're referring to mathematical dimensions in Hilbert space, though in that case timelines would really be vectors rather than dimensions).

 

[shanejayell]

Well, the Guardian does say "As correct as possible for you..."

That might be Guardian for 'You're a idiot.'

 

[SchwEnt]

But if time itself is a dimension, is it redundant to say "other times and dimensions"?

 

[Christopher]

But if time itself is a dimension, is it redundant to say "other times and dimensions"?

Technically, yes, but "dimension" is routinely used in fiction to mean parallel universe/reality -- I guess in the sense that such things might exist adjacent to ours in a higher-dimensional n-space and you'd have to move through a fourth, fifth, etc. dimension in order to reach them, so it's sort of a synecdoche.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Has anyone within the books ever used the angle that the Guardian can be used for transport to other dimensions rather than to just to travel in time?

Greg Cox's Q-Continuum trilogy does, at least in the first book

 

[zarkon]

I loved that bit, always wondered

Spoiler: Q-Space

where that was and why the guardian was needed to get there.

 

[RPJOB]

"Yesteryear" treats it as a given that the different timelines coexist side by side rather than overwriting each other (Spock wishes Thelin prosperity in his timeline even as he goes back in time to restore his own, suggesting he didn't think the timeline would be erased), so maybe that could qualify as other "dimensions," if you use the term loosely enough (or if you're referring to mathematical dimensions in Hilbert space, though in that case timelines would really be vectors rather than dimensions).

However, that is different from how it was treated in the origina COTEOF. The Guardian says "Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before." It's interesting that D.C. Fontana wrote both versions (re-wrote in the case of the original) and yet she wrote it in two fundamentally different ways.

 

[captcalhoun]

wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey, dimensiony-wensiony...

 

[F. King Daniel]

Since the Guardian can put someone in any place, in any time, I doubt there's much of anything it can't do.

Time for Yesterday by A. C. Crispin features the Guardian's creators coming back from the other dimension they built it to travel to.

I loved that book. IIRC we get a very brief and blinding glimpse at where the creators were when they finally find their way back.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think Christopher hinted at this in his latest DTI book...

AFAIK, he said this:

Spoiler: DTI

the DTI treats the Guardian with extreme caution and won't allow its use, because they believe, or at least suspect, that the Guardian is insane - or at least operates on such a different level that most people can't use it properly anyway.

 

[Christopher]

I think Christopher hinted at this in his latest DTI book...

AFAIK, he said this:

Spoiler: DTI

the DTI treats the Guardian with extreme caution and won't allow its use, because they believe, or at least suspect, that the Guardian is insane - or at least operates on such a different level that most people can't use it properly anyway.

No, that's not what I said at all.

Spoiler: ditto

I said that the Guardian isn't used in the 24th century because the spacetime turbulence around the Guardian planet has worsened to the point that it's impassable. Not to mention that its use is prohibited on general principles anyway, and Forgotten History shows the circumstances that led to that policy.

Dr. T'Viss did express the opinion that the Guardian may be damaged or deranged -- since what the hell kind of "Guardian" actively invites people to wander around in the very fragile thing it's supposed to be guarding? -- but that's just her personal view.

 

[David F. Weisma]

But surely the concept of other dimensions would't be beyond Spock's capability to understand, so unless the guardian underestimated him or enjoyed snark, it doesn't explain the comment.

 

[DonIago]

Or the Guardian knows something we don't.

 

[Ian Keldon]

But surely the concept of other dimensions would't be beyond Spock's capability to understand, so unless the guardian underestimated him or enjoyed snark, it doesn't explain the comment.

You have to remember, this stuff was first written back in the 1960s, when science itself was just starting to really wrestle with the idea of dimensions, etc outside of pure physics.

We're looking back at science fiction written for a far less-advanced science, as it were.

 

[Christopher]

You have to remember, this stuff was first written back in the 1960s, when science itself was just starting to really wrestle with the idea of dimensions, etc outside of pure physics.

We're looking back at science fiction written for a far less-advanced science, as it were.

Uhh, no, the concept of higher dimensions was well understood decades before then. Edwin Abbott popularized the idea of varying spatial dimensions, including a possible fourth dimension, in his 1884 novella Flatland, while H. G. Wells treated time as a dimension in The Time Machine in 1895. And they were building on work mathematicians and physicists had been doing for some time before then. And of course Einstein's General Relativity, published in 1916, incorporated the idea of a 4-dimensional spacetime.

As for the usage of "dimension" in its vernacular sense of a parallel reality, it's been around in fiction since at least 1930. And that's the crux here -- the fact that the SF-vernacular usage of "dimension" is distinct from its mathematical/physical usage (in which time would be treated as a dimension). When Ellison (or Roddenberry or Fontana) wrote Spock's line about "other times and dimensions," they were naturally enough using it in the vernacular sense. That may have been a bit out of character for Spock, but Spock can only be as precise as the people writing his dialogue.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And of course Einstein's General Relativity, published in 1916, incorporated the idea of a 4-dimensional spacetime.

Before that, Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, published in 1905 in "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", incorporated the idea of a 4-dimensional spacetime.

 

[RPJOB]

But surely the concept of other dimensions would't be beyond Spock's capability to understand, so unless the guardian underestimated him or enjoyed snark, it doesn't explain the comment.

You have to remember, this stuff was first written back in the 1960s, when science itself was just starting to really wrestle with the idea of dimensions, etc outside of pure physics.

We're looking back at science fiction written for a far less-advanced science, as it were.

I don't imagine Ellison was wrestling with any deep ideas about the nature of spacetime. He was simply using the Guardian and time travel to tell a story about what someone would give up for love. If it were a Twilight Zone episode Kirk could have simply walked through a mysterious cloud of fog and found himself in the past. The Guardian's just a mechanism to make it science-fictiony.
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