A Brief History of Time Travel

A Brief History of Time Travel

John Rasor

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 John Rasor

Cover design by Matt Rasor

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Foreword

I had saved this space for a nice foreword from Stephen Hawking (as you do), because my book has almost the same title as his. (What a coinkydink!)

However, I am now forced to conclude that:

THIS IS THE BOOK THAT STEPHEN HAWKING DOESN’T WANT TO READ!

How do I know this? Because I wrote, asking him to* – and he hasn’t responded – even though I wrote him on my birthday!

What does his strange silence imply?

Is Stephen Hawking afraid of learning something in my book that might disprove his deduction that time travel cannot exist?

Is Stephen Hawking so busy that he can’t be bothered to learn about time travel as I have explained it?

Is Stephen Hawking afraid that my book is better than his?

YOU decide.

If you answered: No; Yes; and Don’t be ridiculous!", then you are correct – but please read my book anyway – it has pictures.

*If you want to read the letter, I’ve included it at the end of the book, in the About the Author section.

Preface

Why a book about time travel – there is no such thing, is there? Actually there is, and you’re doing it right now. As the seconds and minutes and hours tick by, you are traveling forward in time – in fact, you can’t not time travel – it’s impossible. And going forward is not the only form of time travel. You can travel backwards in time as well, through memories and dreams and media. Memories are usually not as accurate as we’d like, and dreams are all over the place – so media is your best bet. Events in time are chronicled on audio and in videos, and through written accounts by first person observers. Time traveling through the use of media has a name – it’s called history.

I’m sure you know this, but maybe never took the time to look at it quite that way. And what about the type of time travel depicted in books, movies and TV – what’s that all about? Well, that’s why we’re here – to talk about that kind of time travel.

Time travel in that sense is strictly science fiction. It’s science fiction because it’s not a real thing. Scientists have already deemed time traveling to the past – to alter or just to observe it – impossible. I’ve known this ever since I was a kid, because I promised myself that as soon as time travel was invented, I would travel back to some moment when I was still a kid, and tell myself all about it. Well, I never showed. Then I thought – if time travel is invented after my life is over – what then? I figure I’m not the only one who has wondered about this; it hasn’t happened so far, and I’ve been alive quite a while.

I recently discovered a wonderful TV documentary by Stephen Hawking called Into the Universe, which is in three parts of one hour each (one TV hour, that is, which is roughly forty-three minutes); the second part of which is devoted strictly to the concept of time travel. In this portion, Hawking takes the little experiment I did as a kid to a higher level. He puts together a time travel party, and invites anyone from the future to attend – and he doesn’t make the invitations until after the party is over, to avoid any possibility of a hoax. Well, nobody showed (as he knew they wouldn’t), because Stephen Hawking – brilliant physicist that he is – knows that time traveling to the past is impossible. In this section of the documentary, he explains exactly why it is impossible. He spends the rest of the hour explaining how time itself works, and how it is possible to take a one way trip to the future. I’d like to point out here that I did read Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time, and while I didn’t understand everything, I did get quite a bit out of it. I probably know more about String Theory than Jim Parsons – though certainly not as much as his alter-ego Sheldon Cooper.

So, in this book I am going to talk about literary time travel, rather than scientific time travel. Time travel is a very popular sub-genre of science fiction, and sometimes is just plain fantasy. Time travel is also very complicated, and a great subject for discussion among fans. As a fan for most of my life, I feel I’m qualified to write a book such as this, because exposure to certain passionate topics over a lot of years sometimes makes you a bit of an expert on them. Am I the world’s foremost authority on literary time travel? Nah. But it is a subject I’m passionate about and, as Mr. Spock would say, It’s fascinating.

Science fiction differs from fantasy in that science fiction is based on science, but with corners cut or gobbledygook substituted for true scientific facts. An excellent example of this is the good old starship Enterprise. We know it can travel upwards of warp 10 – or 15, based on some schools of thought – which is the speed of light (warp 1) multiplied exponentially to some ungodly condition of really hauling ass. The Enterprise accomplishes this by using anti-matter processed through dilithium crystals in the warp core, and makes nuclear power seem like a bicycle by comparison. As science fiction fans, we accept this through the process known as suspension of disbelief – we know this just ain’t so, but it sounds good and it’s pretty cool, so we go with it.

With fantasy, the story’s the thing. If something like time travel or faster-than-light travel is employed as a plot device, it’s usually either poorly explained or not explained at all. A good example of this is most of The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is a series of unusual morality plays with little or no explanation as to how the weirdness evolved; that weirdness is simply the vehicle for the story, with irony at its core. A quarter tossed into a cigar box landing on its edge – and inexplicably the man who tosses it can suddenly read minds until that quarter is knocked over – stuff like that. The Twilight Zone had a few stories involving time travel, and we will revisit the Zone often, as it is good contrast to some of the other time traveling stories we will discuss.

I wrote this book because I’ve spent many hours on many internet chat boards discussing and debating Lost and Fringe, time travel and timelines, and alternate universes – and I have found that notions about most of these things vary from person to person. I think I have come to understand how most of this stuff works. I hope this book can become a time travel reference of sorts – possibly to clear up some questions people have on the subject, and maybe even to help settle a bar bet or two.

There are a couple of caveats, though. I certainly won’t be discussing every time travel story ever told – mainly because I don’t know of them all. And, the ones we do discuss will contain spoilers. So, if there’s something you’ve been meaning to see or read, you might just want to skip the discussion of it until you’ve done that. Most of these movies and TV shows are available on Netflix, by the way.

In this book we will discuss types of time travel stories, paradoxes, the various means of achieving time travel, what timelines are and a comprehensive – but brief – history of time travel stories. We must first understand that everything we do has rules – whether imposed by man or nature – and that we need to know the rules, man. Time travel, since it’s not a real thing, has no given rules.

If there ain’t no rules, let’s get started, a wise man named Butch Cassidy once said – after kicking his opponent squarely in the nuts to illustrate the point – so let’s get started.

Chapter One: Time to begin

My first experience with time travel was sometime in the late 1950’s, probably between the ages of seven and ten. I was already a fan of the weird and unusual, and had a passion for comic books. Super heroes were cool, though I never dreamed they would attain the popularity they have today. You’re going to poison your mind with that crap, the adults in my life would tell me – with the exception of my mother. My mother was a bit of a free spirit and an artist, and I think she thought it was pretty cool that I was passionate about something while still so young. She never cast aspersions on my hobby, and once a month or so would give me money and let me take the bus the three miles into downtown Glendale, California, to the used book store, where they also often had a nice selection of used comic books. My mother didn’t drive, but she had taken my sister Judy and me into Glendale many times on the bus to shop, so when she decided I could handle it alone, she let me go.

Comic books sustained my passion most of the way through high school, and then, as life sometimes goes, I gave them up for a woman – which didn’t work out, I might add. I also gave up my collection, which was pretty impressive even way back then – if I still had it today it would probably be worth well over a million dollars. I even had Flash #104, which was the last golden age Flash, printed in 1948; and I also had Flash #105, which was The Flash’s rebirth in 1959 – and for which I paid 10 cents – eat your heart out, Sheldon Cooper.

I should point out here, for those of you who don’t know – both of you – that Sheldon Cooper is a character on the hit TV show, The Big Bang Theory, played wonderfully by Jim Parsons. It is one of the best TV comedies of all time – or so says its popularity. One of my favorite episodes was when the guys went in together on an eBay auction, and bought what they thought was the miniature time machine from the 1960 George Pal Film The Time Machine. Due to a communication foul-up, they wound up with the full size prop from the film – and who knows how much that thing is worth? Although it was pretty cool, the prop time machine was not conducive to life in a fourth-floor walk-up – and also created problems when it came to sharing the thing – but the guys somehow managed. There were several great fantasy time travel sequences in the episode, and it was all great good fun. Stephen Hawking has appeared on Big Bang a couple times, and seems to be a very cool person who can laugh at himself. His brilliance seems to combine with his humor and self-deprecation into a really wonderful personality.

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My first time travel experience was the Classics Illustrated comic book version of the H. G. Wells classic, The Time Machine. This was probably a couple years or so before the George Pal film version was released in 1960, and oh, it was wonderful. I saw it in the theatre at least seven times. The movie starred Rod Taylor, Alan Young – whoa Wilbur – Yvette Mimieux, and Sebastian Cabot. It stuck to the book – which I read when I was a little older – fairly well. The story is pretty tame by today’s standards, but it’s still a classic.

H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine is a pretty good place for us to start, because it is a straightforward story about time travel, with no noticeable paradoxes. It was a straight-on trip to the far distant future, with some observation-only stops along the way, followed by a return trip to tell the story back in the traveler’s own time. When H.G. gets to the future, he finds that life as he has known it no longer exists, and he is very disappointed. He gets involved with the people there – the Eloi – and is quite taken with a young girl named Weena. The Eloi do nothing for themselves, and spend their days in lackluster leisure, being cared for by unseen underground creatures known as the Morlocks. The Morlocks do this because the Eloi are their cattle, so to speak; there are no old Elois, because they’ve all been eaten. Surprisingly, the Eloi are quite fit – considering their lifestyle – and there’s not a spare ounce of flesh in the whole bunch. Oh, that Hollywood.

H.G. becomes distracted, and having previously removed the operating handle – much like not leaving your keys in the car – is surprised to find his time machine gone upon his return. From the tracks on the ground, he can see that it has been pushed into an apparently impregnable structure. Soon after, sirens blare. The Eloi immediately stop what they’re doing, and all walk dazedly into a similar structure until the necessary count is reached – whereupon the doors close and the remaining Eloi resume their nothing lives. As H.G. frantically searches for Weena, he finds that the doors had closed just before she was to enter – so she is saved for the moment. Angry now that he realizes just exactly what’s going on, H.G. urges the Eloi to fight instead of going calmly to their deaths. He leads a group of them underground; through the portals the Morlocks have built to access the surface world. Before they go, however, he has them throw fire down many of the other portals so as to wreak havoc with the Morlocks and even the odds a bit. When they all get down below, he teaches the Eloi how to kill, and a battle ensues between the Eloi and the Morlocks. As the battle rages, H.G. finds himself inside the impregnable structure and reunited with his time machine. He quickly re-inserts the handle, and as Morlocks grab and pound at him, manages to get his machine going backwards in time, thus escaping the Morlocks.

The movie begins with a gathering of his friends for dinner, but H.G. doesn’t appear, as he is busy in the future. He arrives late, bloody but unbroken, and relates his adventures to his friends, who pretty much don’t believe him, except for his best friend Philby. Philby returns after everyone else is gone, and he and the housekeeper go into the study where the time machine had originally stood, and find the outside study doors flung wide, with tracks leading out into the yard. The time machine is nowhere in sight. Philby points out that the tracks first lead to where the Morlocks had pushed the time machine into the structure, and they further indicate where H.G. had pushed it back to where it had originally stood. Philby presumes H.G. did this so that when he returned to the future – and Weena – he and the machine would reappear safely outside the structure, and that he now had all the time in the world.

I assume that H.G. returned late for dinner for dramatic reasons, because having time at his fingertips he surely could have arrived on time – or even early enough to have gotten cleaned up. I do not consider this an error, because Hollywood does a lot of unnecessary things for dramatic purposes. And if I remember correctly, that’s the way H. G. Wells wrote it, too.

The Time Machine is pretty much the first big-time time travel story, and was a pioneer of the sub-genre. It was not, however, the very first time travel story by any means. Wikipedia lists some ancient time travel stories that I’m not familiar with, and they make me a bit curious.

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It should be noted that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, whereas H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine was published in 1895. But since A Christmas Carol contains observation-only fantasy time travel, and is primarily a Christmas story, I’d say H. G. Wells still gets the nod here.

There is another famous writer who slides in neatly between Charles Dickens and H. G. Wells, and who also wrote a great time travel story. Mark Twain wrote a story called A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Better known as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the story has been adapted to screen and radio many times, and as recently as 2001 in the film Black Knight. Although I confess I have not read the book, I have seen the 1949 musical starring Bing Crosby many times.

The story is about a Connecticut engineer named Hank Morgan who, following a blow on the head, is inexplicably transported back to 6th century England. He finds himself in quite a jam until he uses his knowledge of the future – and of an impending solar eclipse – in order to make himself seem magical and all-powerful. He is soon knighted as Sir Boss, and becomes a respected member of King Arthur’s court, surpassing even Merlin. As an engineer and an accomplished blacksmith, he is able to create many things from the future – including a .38 revolver – and becomes very influential, but he remains magnanimous and loyal to his king. If I remember correctly, in the movie he eventually wakes up back in his own time as if it had all just been a dream.

I understand that the book is quite different, being predominantly a satire of the whole cult of chivalry. It’s also a jab at some of the novelists of his time – who tended to make life in the Middle Ages sound like a day at the beach – so the whole time travel aspect is basically just a ploy to get our hero back in time so that Twain can commence to declaim. And, since both the book and the movie are examples of fantasy – whereas The Time Machine is considered science fiction – H.G. still gets the nod. To the best of my knowledge, Jules Verne did not write about time travel, in case you were wondering.

I said that time travel has no given rules, because it’s not real – and that is certainly true. Time travel stories, however, do have rules, and they are quite simple. The writer may make his own rules, and he is bound by them for that story or series of stories only. This is because there are different concepts involved. For instance, some readers and writers believe that a person cannot meet him or herself in another time, because such a meeting would result in some sort of cataclysmic paradox; others have no problem with that concept. An example of having no fears about such a meeting is found in J. J. Abrams recent 2009 film called simply Star Trek. In this time travel story we see old Spock and young Spock – from two different timelines, by the way – hanging out like old friends. As we go along, I will point out where rules differ in some time travel stories. I believe that some of the confusion with time travel rules probably stems from the first time travel story that each of us encounters in our life. I am drawn to machines of some kind, because The Time Machine was my first experience. My wife prefers the idea of walking through a door in an old house – or through the back of a wardrobe – because her first experiences were with Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis. But however we stumble upon it, the first time we see or read something that is conceptually different from what we have been taught to be empirically true, we think – hey, that’s not right. So it’s nice to know the basic rules which, as we’ve said, are the responsibility of the writer(s). We’re not quite done with H. G. Wells, however, so let’s press on.

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One of the better time travel stories is 1979’s Time After Time or, as it could have been named, H. G. Wells Meets Jack the Ripper. The movie stars Malcolm McDowell as H.G., David Warner as Dr. Lesley Stevenson (aka Jack the Ripper), and Mary Steenburgen as Amy. SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen this movie – and I highly recommend that you do – you might want to watch it before moving on, or at least skip the following discussion