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| The Reference Library |
Don Sakers |
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Time travel has been around at least since the eighteenth century, but it took Charles Dickens (in A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843) to introduce the concept into general consciousness. Even then, time travel was always accomplished by supernatural means: angels, demons, spirits of one kind or another.
It wasn’t until 1881 that an author came up with a method of time travel linked to a machine: that was Edward Page Mitchell in The Clock That Went Backward. H.G. Wells deserves credit for being the first author (in English, at least) to use a true “time machine”—and it’s not in the story you’re thinking of. Wells’ short story “The Chronic Argonauts” appeared in 1888, and tells the story of an inventor named Dr. Moses Nebogipfel and his invention, a machine that travels in time. In the end, Dr. Nebogipfel departs, searching for an era more suited to his abilities. (And admit it, haven’t we all wanted to do the same, at one point or another?) Wells revisited the concept of mechanical time travel in 1895, with the much more successful short novel The Time Machine.
Science fiction in the Gernsback age (before 1939) did not concern itself much with time travel. But in the Campbell “Golden Age” and later, authors such as Heinlein, Asimov, and Poul Anderson took up the theme and wrote some of the seminal works of temporal journeying—many of them in Analog’s predecessor, Astounding.
With a background like that, it may seem heretical to raise the question of whether time travel is truly science fiction at all.
One quick and dirty distinction between science fiction and fantasy is this: sf deals with things that are possible, while fantasy is the realm of the impossible. And despite a few promising loopholes in quantum physics, time travel is very probably not possible, at least in the universe as we currently understand it.
Yes, but: loopholes aside, time travel is one of those concepts that has been, as they say, grandfathered in. Sure, the laws of physics make it most unlikely that a real time machine could ever exist—but the same can be said for faster-than-light travel, miniaturization, psionics, and other staples of science fiction. In truth, this is one of those questions that prove that science fiction and fantasy are more a continuum, rather than mutually exclusive categories.
There’s a fairly pragmatic rule of thumb that helps draw the line in most time travel stories, and it’s based on the exact method used for moving through time. If the temporal displacement is carried out by supernatural forces, magical spells, or sheer force of will, then the story is presumed to be fantasy. If the time travel takes place using a machine, vehicle, gadget, or some other technological-sounding method, then you’re most likely dealing with science fiction.
There are many very fine time travel fantasy tales (as well as a great many more dreadful ones, especially since Diana Gabaldon’s excellent Outlander series established the field of “time travel romances”). Among them are Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Jack Finney’s Time and Again, Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), and even Audrey Niffeneggar’s recent The Time Traveler’s Wife. But we’re here to talk about science fiction, not fantasy.
In sf, there are two basic ways to approach time travel, and both of them revolve around what’s called the Grandfather Paradox. For those who aren’t familiar with this situation, here’s how it goes: A time traveler goes back into the past and kills her own grandfather in the cradle. But if Grandpa dies before he gets together with Grandma, then the time traveler will never be born . . . so she won’t be able to go back and kill Gramps. But if Gramps lives, then his granddaughter will be born after all, will grow up to become the time traveler, and will go back to kill him.
One way out of the Grandfather Paradox is to assume a multiverse of many different parallel and divergent universes. (I talked about the multiverse and alternate universes in more detail a while ago, in the October 2009 issue.) Our hero kills Grandpa and instantly an alternate timeline branches off: one that contains both dead infant Gramps and the adult time traveler. Unless she can cross universes, the traveler is marooned in a world in which she will never exist. Sometimes there is only one timestream, with previous alternate histories erased.
Various authors have played with this basic notion, perhaps the most definitive being David Gerrold in The Man Who Folded Himself.
This approach leads naturally to a much grander concept, that of a corps of time travelers on a mission to police the multiverse and steer the timeline(s) in the direction that seems best to them. Among the classic examples are Jack Williamson’s Legion of Time, Poul Anderson’s Time Corps series, Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity, Kage Baker’s Company series, Heinlein’s later “World as Myth” novels, and the Time Lords of Doctor Who.
Back to the Grandfather Paradox. There’s another answer, and that’s to assume that the timestream is absolutely invariant. Everything that has happened will always have happened. No matter how hard our intrepid hero tries, she will never succeed in killing the infant Grandpa. Her gun will jam, her garrote cord will break, the stresses of time travel will have rendered her poison harmless. Even if she does kill Gramps, it will turn out that Grandma was having an affair with someone else, who (surprise) was her real grandfather. Anything that seems to be a paradox will inevitably have a logical explanation. In this sort of tale, people are always becoming their own ancestors or descendants (or both), or taking the place of some actual historical figure whom they’ve accidentally removed from history.
As near as I can tell, the first person to explore this idea was Heinlein, in the story “By His Bootstraps” (in the October 1941 issue of Astounding). He later refined the notion in a shorter and tighter story called “—All You Zombies—” in which a whole raft of seeming paradoxes turn out to be nothing more than a matter of perspective. In The Door Into Summer, Heinlein explored the question once again; his hero traveled both forward and backward in time and tied up every loose end. Quite a while later, Michael Moorcock’s powerful Behold the Man showed a time traveler who went back to first-century Jerusalem in search of the historic Jesus, with shattering consequences.
In recent years, the multiverse theory of time travel has become almost the default in science fiction. Part of this, I’m sure, is due to the physicists prattling on about parallel universes and alternate timelines as if they invented them, once again stealing our best ideas and transforming them into banal but respectable talk about strings and branes and itty-bitty particles doing bizarre things to one another in the odd corners of spacetime. When Anderson and Heinlein and Doctor Who were exploring the multiverse, it was “just science fiction”—but let a few cosmologists get into a drunken gabfest on a train, and suddenly the idea is respectable, thank you very much.
Ahem. In any case, it’s refreshing to see a major sf writer going back to the “invariant timeline” concept. Which brings us to:
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Time Travelers Never Die is another “young man’s life changes completely when he receives an unexpected gift from a relative” book. Nothing wrong with that; it’s the pattern of many a fine story.
Michael Shelborne, physicist and renaissance man, vanishes one day. His adult son, Adrian Shelborne (“Shel”), is given a package from his father: in the package are three small devices with cryptic controls and handy belt clips. An accompanying note from Dad instructs Shel to destroy all three devices at once. Like that’s going to happen.
Instead, Shel experiments with the devices (wouldn’t you?) and finds that they are—you guessed it—time machines.
Shel at once goes back in time a week and catches Dad before his disappearance. When asked why he wants Shel to destroy the machines, Dad explains that he and an assistant found out that the invariant timestream does not allow paradoxes. When they tried to force one, going back to alter a trivial recent event, the assistant died of a heart attack. Dad calls this the Cardiac Principle: the continuum does not allow paradoxes.
Shel, back in the present, has one problem left: where did Dad disappear to? He enlists the aid of his friend Dave Dryden, and soon the two of them are off on time-spanning adventures.
Shel and Dave’s various journeys are the real meat of the book, and they’re quite a bit of fun. They head for the Library of Alexandria and bring back copies of lost works by Sophocles and others. They participate in the civil rights march on Selma. They talk to Galileo and track down Dad living happily in Renaissance Italy.
Although they have both agreed not to attempt to travel into the future, both of course do so—privately. Dave brings back race results and makes a killing at the track; Shel establishes an identity and an alternate home at the end of the twenty-first century. But then Shel learns something he shouldn’t know: the date and circumstances of his own death.
From there the book unwinds along an inexorable path, all loose ends fusing together to eliminate any hint of paradox. And even though any halfway-experienced sf reader will know at once where the story is going, it doesn’t matter . . . getting there is the best part.
Time Travelers Never Die isn’t just a clever and enjoyable time travel adventure. It’s also a philosophical and moral meditation on one of the great unanswerable questions. You probably noticed, in the discussion of multiverse vs. invariant timeline, that the dichotomy is essentially the same as that eternal struggle between free will and determinism. This is the real issue that Time Travelers Never Die tackles.
You see, Shel and Dave have two different ideas about interacting with history. Shel believes that they must do nothing to interfere with the events and people they witness. Dave, on the other hand, wants to participate in history . . . even knowing that he is powerless to change things in any substantial way. And in the end, Dave’s belief in free will comes into direct conflict with Shel’s acceptance of determinism . . . a conflict that will have enormous impact on both men.
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The Return,
by
Ben Bova
Tor,
$25.95,
432 pp.
ISBN: 9780765309259
Genres:
Adventure, Alien Beings
Series: Voyagers 4, Grand Tour Universe
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There seems to be a tendency, in some venerable science fiction writers, to unify their various works into one great multiverse. Poul Anderson was perhaps the first, linking the Polesotechnic League of Nicholas van Rijn with Dominic Flandry’s Terran Empire in one future history. Asimov did it when he brought the Foundation and Positronic Robot series together; Heinlein’s later books pulled together everything he’d ever written and threw in the Oz, Barsoom, and Lensman universes for good measure.
Now Ben Bova is apparently feeling the urge, bringing characters from his Voyagers series into the universe of his Grand Tour.
The Voyagers books (Voyagers, The Alien Within, and Star Brothers) tell the story of astronaut Keith Stoner, first explorer of a strange alien starship that entered the Solar System. Stoner acquired the abilities and memories of the long-dead alien pilot, and eventually built his own starship. With his wife and children, he fled to the stars.
Now, a century later, Stoner and his family return to Earth. But it’s not the Earth they left; somehow, they have crossed over into the Grand Tour universe. And Stoner’s not happy about it.
In the Grand Tour series (as we most recently saw in Mars Life), Earth is no longer an attractive place. The anti-science and anti-technology kooks are winning the day, and ecological disaster looms.
If anyone’s going to save humanity, it’s got to be Keith Stoner. And the rest is pure Bova: careful scientific and cultural extrapolation, well-drawn characters, and interesting philosophical underpinnings. While I’m still not convinced that bringing these two universes together was the best idea ever, Bova certainly makes it work.
It’ll be interesting to see where he goes next.
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As long as there’s been science fiction, there’s been science fiction art. And at the very beginning of science fiction art, there was Frank R. Paul.
Shashta/Phoenix has produced a magnificent coffee table book (9 x 12 inches) showcasing the life and work of Frank R. Paul. Paul has been called “the father of science fiction art,” and if anyone can lay claim to that title, it’s Paul. Among the thousands of pieces he created were some of the most famous and iconic images of science fiction—including the cover of Amazing Stories number 1, early issues of Astounding, and the first book covers of such classics as The Skylark of Space and John W. Campbell’s The Mightiest Machine.
When you think of pulp sf, you’re probably thinking of Frank R. Paul illustrations. Bright colors, fantastic air– and space-craft, futuristic cities, magnificent planetary vistas, odd aliens—he did it all, and inspired countless others to follow his lead.
There’s plenty of textual information in this book: biographies of Paul, an appreciation by Forrest J. Ackerman, a preface by Arthur C. Clarke, and a detailed bibliographical index. But the best part of the book is the pages upon pages of Paul magazine covers and paintings, reproduced in full gorgeous color. I can’t imagine an sf reader who could walk by this book without picking it up, or leaf through it without getting snared for hours.
The book comes in three different editions. The Hardcover Trade Edition has 128 pages and costs $39.95; it is a limited edition of 1,000 copies.
The Deluxe Edition has 160 pages, including much more art, and has a slipcase. This one costs $59.95 and is limited to 874 copies.
The Ultra Deluxe Edition is leather-bound and slipcased, and signed by Sir Arthur as well as editor Stephen D. Korshak and contributors Jerry Weist and Robert Hill. There are 126 numbered copies, and the cost is $395.00. All three editions are available from the Shasta/Phoenix website listed above.
Whether you want to relive the nostalgia of those long-ago days, or you’re a young whippersnapper who wants to see what all the excitement was about, you ought to treat yourself to this volume. If you’re going to spring for the Hardcover, take my advice and scrape up the extra twenty bucks for the Deluxe Edition: it’s definitely worth it.
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Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.
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"The Reference Library" copyright © 2010, Don Sakers
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