Is there any documentation (i.e. fiction) on the topic of what would happen if someone killed their ancestor?
My friends (typical grade 10’s, though these 2 were a bit less intelligent than me… not to sound arrogand :p) and I were discussing the idea that the mere act of time travel would remove you from the linear sequence of events, thus rendering you immune to changes in any timeline, since though the one you lived in no longer exists, you have stepped out of that into a sort of “Planeswalker” mode…
Hmm…good question, unfortunately I’m too tired to come up with an intelligent answer at this point, My emmediate response would be that one would still be affected in my opinion
check back again tomorrow and I’ll try to explain, heh heh
Well, if your story embraces the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, you can back up and change anything you want. The timeline you vacated by firing up your time machine is still there, but you’re no longer in it. You backed up to a specific point in “the” past and caused an event (the death of your grandfather) that marks a branch point between the world you grew up in and the one you will subsequently inhabit, but they both exist, side by side in a manner of speaking. Sci-fi author Larry Niven took a stab at this kind of idea in his short story “All the Myriad Ways.” I’m sure there are others.
The very best time-travel story IMHO is Robert Heinlein’s “The Door into Summer,” though this story does not directly explore the Grandfather Paradox.
Well “Roadmarks” by Roger Zelazny sort of deals with this. People who have mistakenly or deliberately taken themselvouse out of sequential space are no longer directly effected by alterations in past events.
The main charachter keeps going back to give guns to the Greeks at Marathon because he remembers them winning that war, even though history tells us otherwise. There are effects though, because of certain events not taking place, then some places never come to exist and therefore you can’t go there.
Like all time travel books, this one has a lot of problems but I did like the idea of linear time paralelling a road and that by being on the road you were out of bounds of time.
Well, if your story embraces the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, you can back up and change anything you want. The timeline you vacated by firing up your time machine is still there, but you’re no longer in it. You backed up to a specific point in “the” past and caused an event (the death of your grandfather) that marks a branch point between the world you grew up in and the one you will subsequently inhabit, but they both exist, side by side in a manner of speaking. Sci-fi author Larry Niven took a stab at this kind of idea in his short story “All the Myriad Ways.” I’m sure there are others.
The very best time-travel story IMHO is Robert Heinlein’s “The Door into Summer,” though this story does not directly explore the Grandfather Paradox.
merit? you don’t really get “merit” on time travel theories. but, then, that is one of the three possibilities that are commonly considered to be the possible result of a developing “grandfather paradox”, namely the one known as “birth of black jesus”, or alternate timeline in a consistently moving, linear timeline. as in, the act of time travel eliminates you from the “effect” portion of “cause and effect”.
another would be that the act of time travel causes a new timeline to form, so you are exempted from the consequences of your actions, though your original timeline has not been eliminated, as in theory one. this theory is the staple of most all time travel Sci-Fi.
the last thery would be that your actions follow though, and the paradox ripples outwards via a reexpansion to a primordial superposition, and reality ends. the superposition may later collapse into a universe, but that end juyst complexifies things. this is the “ACES! YOU KILLED TIME!” theory.
of course, all three theories rely on the universe not conspiring against you to prevent the formation of a paradoxial condition.
Well “Roadmarks” by Roger Zelazny sort of deals with this. People who have mistakenly or deliberately taken themselvouse out of sequential space are no longer directly effected by alterations in past events.
The main charachter keeps going back to give guns to the Greeks at Marathon because he remembers them winning that war, even though history tells us otherwise. There are effects though, because of certain events not taking place, then some places never come to exist and therefore you can’t go there.
Like all time travel books, this one has a lot of problems but I did like the idea of linear time paralelling a road and that by being on the road you were out of bounds of time.
“The Door Into Summer” is great, but Heinlein really tears into the GP in “By His Bootstraps” and “All You Zombies”.
These are both short stories found in various Heinlein collections.
In short Heinlein says something like: “The past always was, and always will be. Any attempt to change whatever has already occured will fail despite the most desperate intentions of the protaganist.”
e.g. if you try to kill your Grandfather, the gun will jam.
I was thinking of something like that, though more (:o) Hollywood-esqe. You know, as you fire a bright blue ripple in the Space Continuum forms and the bullet wraps around your grandfather.
