Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

You conceal-carry a loaded .357 magnum into the book depository and blow away Lee Harvey Oswald as he ascends the stairs. Just empty the damned thing into him. Turns a lengthy novel into a short story.

/yes, I know...
//what about the other shooter on the grassy knoll?

Wouldn't happen. You'd be hit by a car on the way there, or a fat guy would be blocking the stairs, the time machine would spit you out five minutes too late, etc.

I'm a sucker for time travel books.
They have to be really bad for me not to like them.
The worst one I read doesn't exist now, because it sucked so bad I went back and strangled the author when he was a baby.

0Icky0: The worst one I read doesn't exist now, because it sucked so bad I went back and strangled the author when he was a baby.

Footnote. Goddamn Lindbergh thought just because he had a famous father that he could write crap like that. Showed him.

I've been working on a time travel book for about three years now.

Problem is, I've already come up with about a zillion different ways the story can go, and each one makes a better book. Damned multiverse ;)

Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

BS. Completely ignores the reality that is the butterfly effect. Talk to the guy on the corner and everything changes. Talk to him far enough in the past and there is no President Kennedy. The world is managed by small events.

Hawking basically IS a haunted wheelchair.

/yeah yeah, I know I'm going to hell...

What if some guy wanted to go back in time to shoot JFK before Oswald?
Same result, just... faster?

FastJeff: What if some guy wanted to go back in time to shoot JFK before Oswald?
Same result, just... faster?

But then we'd have some crazy conspiracy about a second shooter from some other locatio... ooooooooh

moothemagiccow: BS. Completely ignores the reality that is the butterfly effect. Talk to the guy on the corner and everything changes. Talk to him far enough in the past and there is no President Kennedy. The world is managed by small events.

I know, right? The slightest change in the life of a single person will ripple downtime and affect thousands, then millions of people and their subsequent sexual relations, changing which sperm cell fertilizes which egg. A whole new world of people will result.
It would be fun to observe though.

And here I thought he was just going to say "timey-wimey stuff".

FTFA:
King: It's another ratio: The further back you go, the more precautions you have to take. It would go right to the language-you'd have to be careful about the way you speak; the accents would be different. If you were to return to, say, 1858, you'd really have to prepare ahead of time.

Connie Willis already wrote that book.

So what Stephen King is saying is that time is in and of itself aware of someone trying to change it's course and will actively try and stop the person(s) intent on the change? Fair enough, although you might as well just have it running around in a blue police box and achieve the same thing.

sarah_t_s: So what Stephen King is saying is that time is in and of itself aware of someone trying to change it's course and will actively try and stop the person(s) intent on the change? Fair enough, although you might as well just have it running around in a blue police box and achieve the same thing.

The universe shouldn't care about the life or death of one man any more than it cares about not blowing our entire civilization away with a randomly exploding star. To that end, if time travel was even possible because time itself didn't stop you from building a machine or going back, then it probably wouldn't stop you from doing something in the past to change the future.

...altho I more prescribe to the Madoka-verse theory of time travel.
Some events just can't be changed because the lead up to them is massive and complicated and our understanding is rife with ignorance. By simply being there you are also adding a new layer of chaos and making the future unpredictable again.
Even assuming you can go back and you do change something, there is no way for anyone beyond yourself to observe the change. Maybe not even that much, as your memories are from a future that doesn't exist.

You'd just have a feeling that something was odd, but no way to prove it.
The time traveler would be working to save Kennedy based on a dream or deja-vou like feeling. Not a red arrow pointing to the Book depository and a detailed outline of exactly who was standing where.

/and wouldn't it be fun if you killed Oswald the day before, based only on a hunch, to then see some guy on the grassy knoll take the shot.
/"But I'm a time traveler, and Lee Harvy killed the president in my universe!" isn't a good defense at a murder trial.

Not impressed.

Lightening by Dean Koontz was a great time travel book (at least the 10 year me liked it).

Top Ten South Park: Goobacks who time travel using "Terminator rules, and not Time Rider rules that don't make any sense at all."

moothemagiccow: BS. Completely ignores the reality that is the butterfly effect. Talk to the guy on the corner and everything changes. Talk to him far enough in the past and there is no President Kennedy. The world is managed by small events.

THIS

Take it two steps further --

1. all weather is mathematically chaotic -- take a single breath and all world's weather changes from then on (really noticeably in about a year)

2. all human reproduction (which sperm meets an egg) is mathematically chaotic and dependent upon environment (including weather)

Therefore -- take a single breath and a year later, no child who was conceived before will be conceived in the altered timeline.

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?

SHUT UP HITLER !

sarah_t_s: So what Stephen King is saying is that time is in and of itself aware of someone trying to change it's course and will actively try and stop the person(s) intent on the change?

Richard Feynman got a Nobel prize for the concept of "sum over histories". There are multiple worlds, just like in all those parallel world books, but they aren't separated. They all overlay each other and what we experience as "reality" is what you get when you smoosh them all together.

If you go back in time to save Kennedy, you are establishing a world where you wouldn't go back in time to save Kennedy because Kennedy wasn't killed. That combination of timelines is what is known as an "excluded collapse state" meaning it can't be "real". Whatever combination of events that is most (large scale) probable that AVOIDS you going back in time and saving Kennedy, becomes real when all the timelines are smooshed together.

Time isn't aware of itself, but the paths of the particles through space-time have to resolve into a stable solution -- and that pretty much comes down to the same thing.

Rules?

*sigh*

Time Travel doesn't WORK that way!

/Closer to Sliders than any writer is happy to entertain, because it makes for a harder story
//Paging Dr. Turtledove

Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

You conceal-carry a loaded .357 magnum into the book depository and blow away Lee Harvey Oswald as he ascends the stairs. Just empty the damned thing into him. Turns a lengthy novel into a short story.

See, that's the thing I don't get. We have an infinity of timelines, even more if time travel is involved...does every single one of them have to have Hitler trying to take over the world and JFK being shot?

There's the folly, you don't have to kill Hitler to change the outcome. All you'd have to do is redirect him. If he had left Paris instead of Vienna for art school things may have been very different.

almandot: FastJeff: What if some guy wanted to go back in time to shoot JFK before Oswald?
Same result, just... faster?

But then we'd have some crazy conspiracy about a second shooter from some other locatio... ooooooooh


I didn't even think of that, I'd read that book.

OhioKnight: 1. all weather is mathematically chaotic -- take a single breath and all world's weather changes from then on (really noticeably in about a year)

[Citation Not Needed Because This Is BS]

Because People in power are Stupid: It sounds like a Quantum Leap episode

The entire series is on Netflix streaming except for those episodes.

0Icky0: 0Icky0: The worst one I read doesn't exist now, because it sucked so bad I went back and strangled the author when he was a baby.

Footnote. Goddamn Lindbergh thought just because he had a famous father that he could write crap like that. Showed him.

0Icky0: 0Icky0: The worst one I read doesn't exist now, because it sucked so bad I went back and strangled the author when he was a baby.

Footnote. Goddamn Lindbergh thought just because he had a famous father that he could write crap like that. Showed him.

You should have seen that awful dreck that Kaylee Anthony was going to write. Time travelers don't sparkle!

Because People in power are Stupid: It sounds like a Quantum Leap episode

[img.photobucket.com image 142x201]

Who do you think gave teenaged Stevie King the idea?

Boobies!

//reverse time travel

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy: Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

You conceal-carry a loaded .357 magnum into the book depository and blow away Lee Harvey Oswald as he ascends the stairs. Just empty the damned thing into him. Turns a lengthy novel into a short story.

/yes, I know...
//what about the other shooter on the grassy knoll?

Wouldn't happen. You'd be hit by a car on the way there, or a fat guy would be blocking the stairs, the time machine would spit you out five minutes too late, etc.

No, the CIA would stop you from killing him.

Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

You conceal-carry a loaded .357 magnum into the book depository and blow away Lee Harvey Oswald as he ascends the stairs. Just empty the damned thing into him. Turns a lengthy novel into a short story.

/yes, I know...
//what about the other shooter on the grassy knoll?

Knowing Steven King, I think you just ruined the ending.

farking boomers still obsessed with the Kennedy assassination? EBOD, write about killing Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot you hack.

The rule of time travel is you can't go further back in time than the point at which the time machine was turned on.

0Icky0
I'm a sucker for time travel books.
They have to be really bad for me not to like them.

Well, since this is post van $K, "really bad" is a given.

No one else? I lol'd for a good minute over the headline.

moothemagiccow: Fark Me To Tears: FTFA: Stephen King: There's a kind of a rule that you'd express as a ratio: The more potential a given event has to change the future, the more difficult that event would be to change. If you wanted to go back and speak to somebody on a street corner so that they were five minutes late to an appointment-that might not be too hard. But if you wanted to stop the assassination of a president, that would be really difficult.

BS. Completely ignores the reality that is the butterfly effect. Talk to the guy on the corner and everything changes. Talk to him far enough in the past and there is no President Kennedy. The world is managed by small events.

Butterfly effect is wrong IMO.

Ripple in a fast moving stream is a better analogy.

Small changes might have small, localized effects in the future, that tend to be muted and even reversed over time. Killing grandpa might screw you, but the rest of the world gets by. Hell, even killing Steve Jobs might change some things, but someone is going to come along with the iPod and tablet's eventually.

Of course if you throw a boulder big enough, that touches enough lives, and it stops the stream completely.

I just think it's highly unlikely that the weight of history is all on one persons shoulders, or one bugs DNA. If Hitler decided stuck with being a crap artist, the social and political climate was ripe for someone else to step up in his place. Adolf Himmler.

I'm pretty sure Mr.King is not talking about the real world as he is in fact in case some did not notice, an author of fiction.

That said, I'm fairly certain that hes referring to how time travel works in his Fictional metaverse world setting.

tomcatadam: Boobies!

//reverse time travel

golf clap

PluckYew: farking boomers still obsessed with the Kennedy assassination? EBOD, write about killing Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot you hack.

Fornicating Aye!

JFK probably would have died anyway from all the different strains of VD coursing through his veins.

Kennedy screwed over an entire nation of people and condemned them to live under the boot of a dictator. What happened to JFK was happening every day in Cuba....only it was nameless faceless Cubans so nobody cared.

DNRTFA, but I was curious if anyone knew of any time travel stories that deal with a time travel paradox I've never really seen used before:

Say you could travel in time in such a way that you could alter your own timeline by going back in time. Wouldn't any explicit attempt to alter the timeline in a certain way end up creating an infinite loop of taking that action and not taking that action?

Say you traveled back in time to kill a serial killer before he began his life of crime. If you failed and killed the wrong person there is no paradox; history is changed because of that person's death. If you kill the right person however there was no way for you to know that the person you went back to kill would be a good target if you wished to fix history. As such, there would be no motivation for them to travel back in the first place so they wouldn't have. That would mean the person would not have been killed, giving you the motivation to travel back in time, etc.

I mean, if someone actually killed Hitler with a time machine, how would they know to go back to kill some random Austrian art student? The "you remember because you're a traveler" explanation isn't really satisfying from a logistical standpoint.

Go back to like 3,000,000 BCE, take this (new window) and a few tools with you, and bring like 8 hot women. Then, make sure to kill all the early hominids, they can be really nasty. Create your own laws and moral code and populate the Earth.

/at least that is what I would do.
//Maybe a few more supplies, but you get the idea

Grungehamster:
...I mean, if someone actually killed Hitler with a time machine,...

Like heave it onto him? Drop it from a high spot and squish him? Install a flamethrower?

moothemagiccow: ... the butterfly effect. Talk to the guy on the corner and everything changes. Talk to him far enough in the past and there is no President Kennedy. The world is managed by small events.

People say this all the time but it's true. Once I was cursing an injury that I got from twisting my ankle in a pothole 10 years ago, and how it made martial arts much more difficult for me. But after I thought about I realized my introduction to Tai Chi was in the first place was actually due to the injury (via physical therapy). For that matter I would have never gotten with my significant ex. If you compared the two timelines they would be worlds apart.

A timetraveller would only have to do something to effect my movements by a mere fraction of a second that day to make huge changes in my life. People think of the obvious stuff, like the timing if someone might be almost hit by a bus, but this shows that even seemingly innocuous day-to-day events can have huge implications. Imagine any given conversation you may have recently had in a social setting and how different it would have gone had the timing in part of if been off by half a second. Who said what when could all be different, and of course different repercussions which might affect how people view future events.


FTA: When you go through it, you always come out at the same time: two minutes before noon, on a day in September 1958.

I hope the "reset" thing at least somewhat addresses why the timetraveller would not instantly explode in a squishy and/or space rending mess when he arrived in the exact same space and time as his previous self.

Remember, people, never set your time machine to the same coordinates twice!

KnowEyeInnTeem: Grungehamster:
...I mean, if someone actually killed Hitler with a time machine,...

Like heave it onto him? Drop it from a high spot and squish him? Install a flamethrower?

I like to imagine a steampunk time machine landing on him (somehow leaving only black and white stockings and ruby red slippers) but whatever works.

By the way I recognize most of what I'm suggesting falls into the same logic behind the grandfather paradox. My thing is I've never seen an author try to address this difficulty when having someone travel back in time with a mission. If the timeline reacts to your actions you would need to find a way to ensure you would take said actions or there won't be a stable timeloop.

I honestly would enjoy a book trying to show the "first attempt" at changing the past where the character has to figure out how to convince himself to take the steps necessary to create a stable loop while not revealing himself as a time traveller to anyone else. Could also provide an explanation of how bootstrapping could work hypothetically. Just seemed like an unexplored area based on my (limited) experience with the genre.