Ok, so your characters gain knowledge of future events, either through a psychic vision of some sort or because some loudmouthed time traveler spills the beans. At this point we see the predicted future start to come true, except the only problem is that that particular future would never be possible if people in the present didn’t know about it, because their foreknowledge of the future turns out to be what spurs them to make the choices which bring about the predicted scenario – hence, a self-creating future.
I can think of two obvious examples. First, the **Terminator **series. In the second movie, Miles Dyson says that “all [his] work” in creating the AI that eventually turns on humanity was based on the remains of the assassin sent back in time by that same AI in the first movie. Granted, they walk this back somewhat in the third movie when the Schwarzenegger-bot claims that “Judgment Day is inevitable.”
Next, in the new ABC series FlashForward, everyone on Earth passes out and has a brief vision of themselves 6 months in the future. The investigation into what caused the titular event relies almost entirely on one FBI agent’s vision of his future self working on the investigation. That is, the only reason they know which leads to follow up on is because they know that, in the future, they’ve already decided that said leads are meaningful . . . except they’d clearly never advance the investigation in the direction they do if it weren’t for their foreknowledge of the future. In fact, they apparently wouldn’t even begin to investigate at all if they didn’t know that they wind up leading the investigation.
Anyway, other examples?
The absolute premium best example of this that ever has been written or ever will be written is Heinlein’s short story “By his Own Bootstraps”, which I can’t recommend highly enough (though, obviously, I try). Also by Heinlein and nearly as good is “All You Zombies”.
Really, though, this is a very common theme, and has, I think, been used in almost every example of good time travel fiction. It dates all the way back to the Greek myths, where someone gets a bad prophecy, and in an effort to subvert the prophecy, ends up setting in motion precisely those events which lead to it coming true (see, for instance, Oedipus).
In The Man Who Folded Himself the orphan protagonist is given a time travelling belt by an onld man. Later, he meets, has an affair with and two children with an alternate history female version of himself; they each take the child of their own gender with them when they break up. And it turns out, that child later grows up as an orphan who is given a time travelling belt by an old man/woman…
In James P. Hogan’s Giants of Ganymede novels, the Jevlenese turn out to be part of a stable time loop. Which is why they burst upon the scene apparently from nowhere with superior technology.
The **Doctor Who **episode “Blink” is a pretty good example of this. The Doctor knows what to say on the DVD easter egg because he’s reading from a transcript made by the people watching the video of him speaking.
There is Lester Del Rey’s " . . . And it Comes Out Here."
It’s about a man who meets someone with a time machine that takes him to the future so that he could steal the device he supposedly invented, which is used to power the time machine (among other things).
In one ST:TNG episode, “Time’s Arrow,” a 500-year-old version of Data’s severed head is found, so the Enterprise crew goes back to investigate.
In a similar vein, there’s Jasper fforde’s The Eyre Affair
Where the main character’s actions cause Jane Eyre to be rewritten – with the ending we know today
The protagonist travels back in time to warn himself to head for the bomb shelter…where he suvives, has other adventures, and then returns to warn himself before setting up his freehold deal.
Bradbury’s The Toynbee Convector has a twist in it.
The “time traveller” is actually not from the future, and his tales of the future world are imagined by him. However, the knowledge that this will happen drives the world towards the future he claims to have come from.
In Minority Report the precogs’ vision of a future murder has the direct consequence of setting the protagonist along a course of events leading to the viewed scenario.
In Paycheck the protagonist is given a series of clues which appear at critical moments, leading him down a pre-arranged path where he finds out that he had invented a time-viewing machine, and was able to leave himself the clues before the company he worked for wiped his memory of it .
Back to the Future sort of fits here and sort of doesn’t. I always thought they tried to have it both ways.
Marty is shown doing things that help lead to the future he already knows: He plants the idea in Goldie the busboy that he would be mayor some day; he influences Chuck Berry’s musical style; it’s implied that he’s actually named after himself…
But at the same time, he does things which alter the future he goes back to: He gives his father more self-confidence; he runs over the pine tree which changes “Twin Pines Mall” to “Lone Pine Mall”… I do still like the movie, but it’s always bugged me that the film is not consistent within its own rules.
In Compound Interest a mysterious man in odd clothes makes a small investment centuries ago, leaving advice that turns out to be uncannily prescient. A century later, he shows up again, unchanged for a report on his now much larger investment; and leaves more uncannily prescient advice. And again, the next century, and again…Eventually his investment has snowballed to the point that behind the scenes it is the major economic force in the world. And finally, he shows up 60 odd years, not a century since his last visit, in a period where his clothes are recognized as the modern style. and he announces the intent to liquidate the entire investment, most of the world’s wealth - because that’s how much money he’ll need to build his time machine.
“But six centuries of history have no more meaning than this?!”
“Are you implying that there have been other centuries with more meaning?”
An excellent and under-rated movie, Time Crimes, deals almost completely with the premise that a man witnesses what he believes to be a murder, then is somewhat accidentally sent back an hour. In said hour, he attempts to make sure that everything happened exactly as he saw it so that he can figure out what the hell actually happened to the murder victim. I can’t recommend the film enough. It’s engaging and very tight when it comes to trying to avoid paradox.
Marvel’s New Universe title Star Brand. The protagonist, Ken Connell, is given a weapon called the Star Brand (it takes the form of a movable tattoo that gives its bearer immense power) by a mysterious old man who claims to be an alien. It is later revealed that the old man is Connell himself, after having been thrown 500 years into the past by his own son. So, it appears that the Brand had no point of creation; Connell had it, and gave it to Connell, who would later give it to himself.
Again, not time travel stories as such, but Asimov’s Foundation series to some extent predicates that human knowledge of the existence of psychohistory and the Seldon Plan will influence their future behaviour. This is all part of the Plan, and particularly the ambit of the Second Foundation.
