Time Travel

[Jahoclave]

wolfbynight

Teh Jeicen

Time travel is impossible. It it wasn't, we'd be beseiged by tourists from the future.

*snickers*

be careful with it. lots of people do it; lots of people do it poorly.
einsteins relativity concerning time and space gives credence to time travel as i recall...
do you really need to use it?

Gives credenance to, but doesn't make it entirely possible. One, we'd have to get faster than the speed of light. Assuming that I know what the ******** I'm talking about. This would only allow you to look upon light that has left some place from a long time ago. Sort of like looking at a telescope to distance galaxies. But to be fair, I don't really have a ******** clue what I'm talking about. But I can almost gaurantee that if anybody was coming close to figureing it out, or doing very major research, you'd have a dozen activist groups trying to get it banned, another dozen trying to make the goverment control it (which is probably a good idea considering the implications), and another dozen trying to get it massed produced. Either way I see it, time travel ******** everything up. YOu go back and time and well lets face it, no matter what you do you've ******** something up thanks to chaos theory. And if you go forward in time you'll pick up new technology, bring it back to the present and then it will be invented too soon.

[Supraman]

Time Travel can be good whenver it's done well. For instance, I just read Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which was done really well. It all really depends on whether or not you actually think a long time about it, and whether or not your audience is smart or not.

[666_blackraven_666]

Time travel.
Ugh... terrible plot element, especially if it's used incorrectly. For example: A character goes back in time and changes something. Well in reality that would never work as the character would have already gone back in time and made the change. So there is not change. Not to mention it's close to impossible for anything living to travel through time.

[AndroidMechanica]

I enjoy writing time travel stories, as long as they are somewhat confined to reality, as far as time travel can go though. mostly I write about the dire consiquences of changing something in the past. As to being IMPOSSIBLE, i don't see how that's true, it's like, "oh, we don't have it now, we can't have it EVER!". how do you know "crazy" bums and other people that claim to be from the future are not?! Think about that domokun

[Anorae]

LOL 'oh, what now? punk? what now? ooohhhhhh!' ROFLMAO xd

ok ok, the fact that it's impossible is irrevelent. we are writing fiction! Although this is a funny discussion... blaugh

[Sherlock221b]

Time travel, eh? I must admit I've used it. sweatdrop However, I use it SPARINGLY. I despise stories where a character is walking through a dark alley and then suddenly when he/she exit the alleyway he/she is in another time. Those types of time travel stories grate on my nerves LOL! And are, in my opinion, over done.
In my current novel, I have a character find a book of spells and she decides to try a spell to see if it works. of course, my character is skeptical until she finds herself in another time...
Is it cliche? I won't deny that my plot probably is! wink LOL! However, I like the usage of a spell more then the idea of RANDOM time travel.
This probably makes no sense, because I am tired LOL! But that's just my two cents. blaugh

[EsileKiulyn]

I just finished reading a book that had time travel in it, and it worked out well, mainly because there was this whole thory "You can not change time if you go back, its like throwing a tiny pebble in to a great river, it creats a few ripples but time moves on. if you die in the past, it will be as if you died today."
but then there is this catch!
"but Dwarfs, Kender, and gnomes may not time travel, as they are races created by acccendent. the only races allowed to time travel are Humans, Elves, and Ogers."
see thats when the troble starts in the book...a kender goes back in time...

[MaemiKurotoku]

time travel is soo possible
enstien discoverd that
eventually wed be able to travel thru time

[Uzumakuko]

Aug ... time travel is so confusing. There is the grandfather Paradox, then going back in time to make sure something happens, then going back in time to prevent something, then there is bringing people from the past, bringing people from the future... The list goes on and on. I really don't care if someone uses it as long as it fits into the plot line.

[Xyex]

There are theories that get around the whole 'paradox problem.' For example, the pareallel time-lines theory, where altering the past creates a new time-line seperate and individual from the original. (ala DBZ)

There's the theroy that altering the past is impossible and that everything you'd do in the past would have already happened anyway, but things could still change when a paradox exists in the past, such as being in the same place as yourself or some such. (ala The Blood Omen Series, specificly SR:2)

And then there's the 'time slip' theory. In this theory alterations to the future do not effect those who have gone into the past. They go back, change something, create a new future, and continue to exist because they are outside the time stream. (ala 7 Days and Pastwatch Redemption of Christopher Columbus)

[Anorae]

MaemiKurotoku

time travel is soo possible
enstien discoverd that
eventually wed be able to travel thru time

Ok ok, I keep hearing this. I've heard both ways, though...

Correct me if i'm wrong, but Einstein, first of all, didnt proove anything, because of the limited technology of the time, he merely made a theory that makes sence.
Second, his theory says that you can STOP time for you, which in effect makes all other time go faster than you, thereby making you go FORWARD into the furture, not backward.

Am I right, or was the research I do for that school project end up being total b/s? LoL

[Xyex]

Yeah, I think that's the general idea to one of his theories. But I do believe he had one for going backwards as well, something about going faster than the 'flash point' as I've heard it called. The flash point is when time for you would freeze, it would slow up until that point. That's already been proven on air plane tests.

But, if I'm remembering this right, going faster than the Flash Point would mean you're 'traveling faster than time' and acutally put you outside the time stream allowing you to go backwards. Um... isn't there supposed to be some kind of natural particle or something that does this already? Or is that all still just theory still too?

[Kitsune_no_kiseki]

Ah time travel. Jahoclave is correct, if what I've learned so far in science is true. In order to move in time, you would have to find a device that makes you go faster than the speed of light. I can't remember the exact reason why, but Anorae's answer seems like it makes a lot of sense. But that's not the point of the thread, is it?

As far as reading time travel, I could take it or leave it. I would much rather the characters stay in one time period than them time-hopping all over the place, but I don't mind a good time travel book. If it has a story independent from the time travel, I personally would be more inclined to read it. An example would be The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (A recommended read regardless, but especially if you want to write time travel). And the back to the future movies really were pretty good, though the time travel was a minor wrinkle in the whole scheme of things, when you think about it.

I suppose it just gets on my nerves when the author writes themself into a hypothetical corner and then suddenly the character(s) are back/forward in time so that they don't get killed. I guess it's really a matter of personal preference. Though that is the point of opinion threads, right?

[pianoblack]

Xyex said:

Quote:

There are theories that get around the whole 'paradox problem.' For example, the pareallel time-lines theory, where altering the past creates a new time-line seperate and individual from the original. (ala DBZ)

There's the theroy that altering the past is impossible and that everything you'd do in the past would have already happened anyway, but things could still change when a paradox exists in the past, such as being in the same place as yourself or some such. (ala The Blood Omen Series, specificly SR:2)

Crichton's Timeline combines both of these... a group of people go back in time, and all they do to change time is actually make history happen. The reason they have to go back in time is because, on an archaeological dig, they find evidence that a friend of theirs is in a dungeon in the past razz

I would really like to go into this time thing because it's something I enjoy debating... but there are already too many ideas and theories up in the air in this thread and I'm not willing to write an essay ;o

[claymade]

Xyex

Yeah, I think that's the general idea to one of his theories. But I do believe he had one for going backwards as well, something about going faster than the 'flash point' as I've heard it called. The flash point is when time for you would freeze, it would slow up until that point. That's already been proven on air plane tests.

But, if I'm remembering this right, going faster than the Flash Point would mean you're 'traveling faster than time' and acutally put you outside the time stream allowing you to go backwards. Um... isn't there supposed to be some kind of natural particle or something that does this already? Or is that all still just theory still too?

That'd be the tachyon, I believe.

For my money, time travel's a nice plot element if used to good effect. (Like just about any other plot element.) Doesn't even really need to make total sense in a hard sci-fi kinda way, just so long as it helps the story instead of distracting from it. Good example is "Frequency", wherein the time travel cause-and-effect didn't really make too much sense when you sat down and thought about it, but made for a good yarn nonetheless.

Just gotta crank up that suspension-of-disbelief-meter...