The Paradox Factor

[Therin]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here:

Hypothetical scenario. Say a guy wants to stop the Civil War from being so deadly, and he plans to do this by routing the Confederate armies at the first battle through the use of a fighter jet. He returns to his time, but discovers that he's messed up a whole lot of stuff. He then goes back to the Civil War again in order to stop himself by using an EMP to disable the electronics controling the fighters weapons.

Here's the question. The first time he did it, would he or would he not encounter a guy stopping him with an EMP? If he did would that not cause him to fail, which would mean the future wouldn't be messed up and he wouldn't come back to stop himself, but then he would not have failed. In that case, he would have come back to stop himself... and here we have a classic example of a vicious cycle.
On the other hand, what if he had not encountered himself the first time around? I can't even come up with anything to say here. Picture this timeline of his life: on a graph y=time and each unit of x is one person (that doesn't really matter though, we're zeroing in on just one). A vertical line is therefore someone's life. After a certain amount of years, the time traveler goes back in time to the Civil War. Thus his line goes from the modern day to the 1860s. When he's done, he goes back to where he left off. (I know that his actions in the past would require the implimentation of the "Grandfather Effect", but lets just ignore that for a while.) He finds that the world is worse off than it was before, so he goes back to the same instant as he had earlier. Thus his line jump backs there again. This is where it gets tricky. We don't know what would happen. Would there be two of him at the same time? More than that, when he stopped himself, would the timeline just reset to where it was if he hadn't done anything? If so, what stopped him in the first place.

Man, this stuff is so confusing that I don't even know how to write it down!

Anyway, I guess theres my attempt at working out a paradox for the day. Anyone else have some explanation?

[Therin]

Hmmm... that was just speculation stuff, but I like what I called the thread. Maybe I could make a story out of it, using the basic theory of a guy having to stop himself from doing something drastic to the timeline.

[Jeff Gerke]

It sounds very cool, therin (and welcome to The Anomaly!).

There might be some quantum physicists who could help you noodle this out, but in my opinion you should just write it the way you think it would be coolest. No one really knows, and therein (as opposed to therin) is the magic of writing speculative fiction: you can speculate.

Jeff

[Therin]

OK, I think I have an idea.
[dusts out back corners of brain]
There's a group of people who found a time machine in the shape of a flying saucer. In this story, one of the people is facing severe discrimination and racism, and then accidentally travels back to Bull Run. Something snaps, and he routes the entire Confederate army, ending the Civil War. When he gets back home, however, things have run amok. There had never been an Emancipation Proclamation (the war was already over), so now all the stuff done by African Americans was no longer there, and a bunch more people entered the timeline, meaning that others died. His friends are being wiped out by the alteration (except for one who was in their timeline alteration proof fortress) as the timeline advances, and therefore they start to lose their corporeality (the up side of this is that they can time travel without the machine). I haven't figured it all out, but the guy will eventually have to do some daring stuff to correct his mistake.
Anyone have some suggestions?

[Jeff Gerke]

Sounds awesome.

My only suggestion would be to try to steer clear of what other time travel stories have done. With the people losing their corporeality, watch Back to the Future...was it 2 or 3 where this happened? For modern war machines in the past, watch that episode of Twilight Zone in which a Sherman tank went back to Little Big Horn and also that movie in which a fighter jet went back to WW2.

I don't mean you should use these movies as your guides or your anti-guides. It's just good to be aware of when you're coming close to what others have done.

Also check out Brian Reaves' Timeslip trilogy, beginning with Portal, which is book 1.

Jeff

[fluke]

Therin,

I love the title. A nonChristian take on changing the civil war is Guns of the South where near future white supremacists supply AK-47s to Lee in an attempt to change the past and thus their present (ca. 2014).

Ironically, after winning the war, Lee becomes a proponent of emancipation.

I have not read that book. I have read other books by Turtledove, but not this one. You either love them or hate them. I didn't like Sentry Peak (or a short story collection) enough to read others. People have said I do myself a disservice, but oh well.

However, his two short stories exploring world history if Mohamed had been a Christian were very enjoyable.

Frank

[myrthman]

There was a movie a while back based on a Crichton book. Timeline I think it was called. I never read the book (I'm sure it was better than the movie), but the "paradox factor" (loving it as a story title!!) was solved quite nicely in my opinion. Might be worth a viewing to help out.

[veritasseeker90]

Ugh, reading this, alone-- much less to try and comprehend it-- is enough to make my head hurt.

But since Timeline was brought up, here's another question on time travel paradox's that I don't understand the theories of: if they found the tomb for the Lady and her husband BEFORE they traveled back, then why would it be there?

Or did it center on the knowledge of what could have happened? Did that thread of thought even make sense to anyone outside my mind?

[renblack]

I've toyed with the idea of a group of people deciding that the only way to right the wrongs of their racist ancestors is to go back and ensure "fair diplomatic proceedings" for the underdog cultures of the past. For instance, look at the Native Americans and Black Americans. They demand all sorts of privileges in order to level the current playing field. The idea that the actions of the past set modern groups of people at a disadvantage today. Well, are you just in making the descendants of those "bad guys" pay for the sins of others? So, in the end, modern people go back to make those rascals pay for their crimes BEFORE they commit them and cause the problems we still haven't managed to correct. Except how can you punish someone for sins that you know that they WILL commit if they have not yet committed them? Is that just either? So it ends up as sort of comedic "court" with the group of the future playing mediators and trying to appease everyone and correct "problems" without causing more unjustice. Meanwhile, half the time I'm sure that the people of the past deem their so-called "descendants" as certifiable loons. Consider for a moment the first ship of Africans brought to the Americas, destined to be slaves. This timetraveling group seizes control of the dock and declares that the ship cannot unload until a "fair" deal is reached that protects the rights of those Africans. If they won't be slaves, then why not take the Africans back and leave them in their homeland? Well, except that such would mean really slow development of America and reserve it for those horrible Western Europeans (since other countries don't have the means to reach the "new world"). Such may be fair to the current set of Africans, but it means that none of their descendants would ever see America - if be born at all. Then set the Africans free in America, but I assure you there will be no more coming since there is no benefit for the sailors...

Don't know if it's just me but I can see it ending in chaos. I think it's more suited to a short story and then just allude to the group heading off to "save" the culture a different way, or a different culture.

[Paul Baines]

My favorite paradox scenario has to be the Terminator films. John Connor sends his friend back to become his dad? So how was he born in the first place to be able to send anyone back?

In 'Salvation', Sarah Connor admits to this being a problem but doesn't even attempt to explain it.

[waldenwriter]

Nov 30, 2007 11:36:10 GMT -5 Jeff Gerke said:

My only suggestion would be to try to steer clear of what other time travel stories have done. With the people losing their corporeality, watch Back to the Future...was it 2 or 3 where this happened?

Actually it happened in the 1st Back to the Future movie. When another guy tried to get Marty's mom to dance with him instead of with Marty's dad, Marty began disappearing.

Actually Marty had a situation not unlike the situation proposed by Therin - in Back to the Future Part II he has to go back to 1955 after he's already been there, and Doc warns him not to cross paths with the Marty who went to 1955 in the first film.

There are a gazillion paradoxes associated with time travel, the "Grandfather Paradox" being one of the most well known.

Speaking of Back to the Future, when trying to think of topics for the series I mentioned here recently, I borrowed the "parents-wouldn't-have-fallen-in-love-if-this-didn't-happen" idea from Back to the Future to make a story about the Beatles seem more interesting (that particular story idea was based on a PBS "Ed Sullivan Show" special I saw recently, where they said Ringo Starr almost didn't make it in time for the Beatles' US debut on the Ed Sullivan Show because he was mobbed by fans backstage...and I thought, what if he DIDN'T make it at all? But that didn't sound worth sending the kids to the past to fix, so I put in that their mentor's parents fell in love while in the studio audience of that performance, and also a subplot involving the time guardian lady, who is tentatively named Tempea, after the Latin word for time, tempus).

[journeyman]

Poul Anderson wrote a series of "Time Patrol" stories that look at a number of issues. Also, L. Sprague De Camp wrote Lest Darkness Falls, which looks at an accidental time traveler who alters history mainly for his own survival.

I did find a Poul Anderson and time travel essay that you might find interesting at www.zen118085.zen.co.uk/general/timetravelandpoulanderson.htm. It has a great bibliography of time travel stories.

[renblack]

Come to think of it, X-Men do some serious time travel layering that I found interesting. In one where someone offs the professor, creating an alternate "present" where Storm and Wolverine are married and working for Magneto. A good time traveler has to get their help because he's unable to access the "true present". Then they go back, but they fail the first time around...

[firestorm78583]

Here's a classic movie from the '80s

www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/

Long story short; An aircraft carrier mysteriosly gets transported back in time right before the events of Pearl Harbor. The crew wrestle with the idea of whether or not they have been sent back to stop the event from happening.

I won't spoil the rest for you. Sufficed to say it fits with some of the topics discussed here.