# Time Travel in fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 5, 2025, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240 "2025-06-05T18:00:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/81 "2025-06-06T03:47:01Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > One explanation for this I’ve seen somewhere is that time is a helix - and you can only travel to a location that is directly opposite you in the helix. This means when you go back to your side of the helix, exactly the same amount of time has expired there as on your side of the spiral. > > I’m sure I’ve seen this in some old-time science-fiction story or other - maybe someone on this board remembers it. Or maybe there are numerous examples of this trope. I’ve read a story like this, but unfortunately have no idea who wrote it, or when I read it ('70s?), or what the title was. Don’t even remember if it was a novel or something shorter. But the time spiral was wound so that jumps were IIRC 28 years, so while time travel was possible, travellers could only move 28 years, or 56 years, or 84 years, or any other multiple of 28 years. Hmmm… Maybe @Andy_L can identify the story. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/82 "2025-06-06T03:54:17Z")
There’s an episode of the original _Star Trek_ called “All Our Yesterdays”. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy visit a planet who’s sun is about to explode, and they discover that all the planet’s inhabitants have escaped death by travelling into the past. That wouldn’t work. If someone travels back in time and has kids, and those kids have kids, that makes the whole problem worse, and not better. There is mention of a process which prepares people to live in the past. It would have to sterilize them. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/83 "2025-06-06T04:06:38Z")
In the Trancers movies time travel is not physical. People in the future use a drug to take control of an ancestor in the past. This allows them to affect the past future without some types of anomalies. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/84 "2025-06-06T04:08:22Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > Or, free will is an illusion. I am totally on board with the idea that free will is an illusion, and have argued that. I struggle myself, every day, with how much of our choices in life are even any tiny part free will; or are simply dictated by genes, upbringing, and random circumstance. But, how does that relate to time travel? I don’t know when I might get to reading your sources, so a ‘Cliff’s Notes’ version would be welcome. I guess, if you travel to the past, you are barred from changing it, because of your lack of free will? I don’t buy that though, because your very existence once you travel to the past has changed things irrevocably. Every step and movement you make, every molecule of oxygen you breathe in changes the past. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/85 "2025-06-06T04:31:09Z")
One of my favorite time travel movies is the Japanese _Summer Time Machine Blues_. Very funny, and great depictions of time travel. [The whole thing is on the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/summer-time-machine-blues-2005), I strongly recommend it. Expanding from that, there is a very weird anime series called _The Tatami Galaxy_ (available on Crunchyroll) where each episode involves alternate timelines where the main character has joined different college clubs in each episode (but it really defies easy explaination). Years after both _Summer Time Machine Blues_ and _The Tatami Galaxy_ came out, an anime remake of _Summer Time Machine Blues_ came out called _Tatami Time Machine Blues_ that takes the characters and style from _The Tatami Galaxy_ but uses them to fairly closely tell the story of _Summer Time Machine Blues_, which is kind of weird, it is a little like when _Family Guy_ remade _Star Wars_, but played absolutely straight. _Tatami Time Machine Blues_ is available on Disney+. If you go only partly down this rabbit hole, at least try the (live action) movie. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/86 "2025-06-06T06:19:31Z")
> [@solost](#): > > I guess, if you travel to the past, you are barred from changing it, because of your lack of free will? I don’t buy that though, because your very existence once you travel to the past has changed things irrevocably. Every step and movement you make, every molecule of oxygen you breathe in changes the past. But it doesn’t change anything, because _you always traveled to the past_. There is no past-in-which-you-had-not-traveled, no change in the timeline, and indeed your “choice” to travel to the past was no choice at all because there was no free will involved. And when you are in the past, everything you do had already happened that way - it’s already part of a fixed timeline. Consider _The Terminator_. The T-800 appears at Griffith Park observatory next to a garbage truck. There is no “initial timeline” where this didn’t happen - Skynet sends him back always, that sending cannot be stopped by anything that happens between the two events. Kyle Reese appears later that same night in an alleyway, as he always had done. Events happen as you see them in the movie, and forward to the point when John Connor sends Reese backward in time to close the loop. He knows that Reese is essential, and perhaps even knows Reese is his father, but he has no choice in the matter - not just figuratively, but literally. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/87 "2025-06-06T06:36:51Z")
Presumably with that interpretation, it means that the Grandfather Paradox just cannot happen, i.e. something, anything, will happen to stop you from killing your own grandfather? I think _Futurama_ (_Roswell That Ends Well_, if my memory serves) sort of did this in a way, although Fry was trying desperately to **not** have his grandfather die. And then it turned out that Fry was the cause of (who he had thought was) his grandfather’s death anyway and he was in fact his own grandfather. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/88 "2025-06-06T07:11:10Z")
> [@iamatractorboy](#): > > Presumably with that interpretation, it means that the Grandfather Paradox just cannot happen, i.e. something, anything, will happen to stop you from killing your own grandfather? I recall a story where a time traveler made a point of ensuring that his own death would create a time paradox; and when someone tried to shoot him the bullet slowed and stopped in midair, turning red-hot as its kinetic energy spontaneously turned into heat “as the universe itself intervened to save him”. In that setting a time paradox was physically impossible, so by making sure his death would cause one he made it so it was literally against the laws of physics to kill him. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/89 "2025-06-06T10:59:03Z")
Asimov wrote a story called “The Cosmic Corkscrew” with that premise, but I think it’s a “lost story” - but a fellow named Michael Burstein wrote a story with that title in the 1990s, which might have used that idea (taking inspiration from Asimov perhaps, who talked about the lost story several times)s. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/90 "2025-06-06T12:10:05Z")
It occurs to me that the title of this thread is kind of funny. Time travel in _Fiction_? Are there non-fictional time travel stories? ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/91 "2025-06-06T12:20:21Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > But it doesn’t change anything, because _you always traveled to the past_. There is no past-in-which-you-had-not-traveled, no change in the timeline, and indeed your “choice” to travel to the past was no choice at all because there was no free will involved. And when you are in the past, everything you do had already happened that way - it’s already part of a fixed timeline. > [@iamatractorboy](#): > > Presumably with that interpretation, it means that the Grandfather Paradox just cannot happen, i.e. something, anything, will happen to stop you from killing your own grandfather? @SunUp, ok, sure, I’m well familiar with the ‘causal loop’ time travel plot, à la _The Terminator_. And I’ve enjoyed _The Terminator_ and other entertainments with similar plots. But, it’s really its own paradox- a causal loop paradox, in which a situation or thing is created out of nothing- or, as you say, has always existed with no initial impetus to its creation- similar to the "Somewhere in Time’ pocketwatch. It’s kind of the inverse of the Grandfather Paradox-- something exists that shouldn’t, instead of the GP, where something no longer exists that should. That’s why, again, I like the alternate timeline theory of time travel to the past. Take the old Grandfather Paradox-- it’s no longer a paradox at all, because the instant you travel into the past you’ve created a new branching timeline. If you kill your grandfather, you don’t cease to exist because you came from the original timeline. You simply are now in a timeline where a second you will never be born. > [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > It occurs to me that the title of this thread is kind of funny. Time travel in _Fiction_? Are there non-fictional time travel stories? Sure. I linked to this article upthread. Kind of a fascinating story of a theoretical physicist who for years secretly researched the possibility of time travel, because his dad died when he was young and he wanted to see his dad again and try to save his life. He kept it secret for years because he didn’t want his peers to ridicule him. He didn’t actually travel back in time though (that we know of…). > **[Back to the father: the scientist who lost his dad – and resolved to travel...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/01/back-to-the-father-the-scientist-who-lost-his-dad-and-resolved-to-travel-to-1955-to-save-him)** > > After losing his beloved father when he was 10, Ronald Mallett read HG Wells and Einstein. They inspired his eminent career as a theoretical physicist – and his lifelong ambition to build a time machine ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/92 "2025-06-06T12:46:54Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > Are there non-fictional time travel stories? Well, this is awkward. I’m sorry, but we decided not to tell you the truth because ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/93 "2025-06-06T12:56:40Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > But, what if later, they decide it all worked out so don’t bother to do all the tasks needed to arrange their now past? They didn’t do that, so it doesn’t matter. But if they hadn’t, then the keys wouldn’t be there. > [@solost](#): > > Sure. I linked to this article upthread. Kind of a fascinating story of a theoretical physicist who for years secretly researched the possibility of time travel, because his dad died when he was young and he wanted to see his dad again and try to save his life. He kept it secret for years because he didn’t want his peers to ridicule him. He didn’t actually travel back in time though (that we know of…). I suspect that physicists who entered the field because they wanted to invent a time machine, and who quietly did research on the topic, are not at all rare. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/94 "2025-06-06T12:58:54Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > > [@Czarcasm](#): > > > > As I (barely) understand it, as the universe expands the total amount of energy/matter expands. Does this mean that, temporarily, the size of the universe has grown ever so slightly when both widgets exist at the same time, and shrunk ever so slightly in the future when the widget is sent back in time? > > Mass is conserved, but only if you consider the fourth (temporal) dimension. Do too much time travel, and you could reverse the expansion of the universe by changing its instantaneous mass. Not recommended. If the widget going back in time has negative mass, then you have 1 widget + 1 widget - 1 widget = 1 widget. Or maybe it is not that kind of movie? > [@SunUp](#): > > he has no choice in the matter [https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a](https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a) ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/95 "2025-06-06T13:19:37Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > Are there non-fictional time travel stories? Oh, and speaking of supposedly ‘non-fictional’ time travel stories, many of us on the SDMB are probably familiar with the story of ‘John Titor’. But if not, it’s an interesting footnote from the early days of the internet: > **[John Titor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor)** > > John Titor and TimeTravel\_0 are pseudonyms used in communications and on internet forums between 1998 and 2001 by an individual claiming to be an American military time traveler from the year 2036. His posts discussed various aspects of time travel, and described future calamitous events, including a global nuclear war that he predicted would take place in 2015. > The story fascinated internet communities, but the increasing inaccuracy of the predictions and other inconsistencies led many to vi... > [@DPRK](#): > > > [@SunUp](#): > > > > he has no choice in the matter > > [What's expected of us | Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a) I successfully exercised my free will and did not subscribe at $199 per year, or even $3.90 per issue, to read the linked article. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/96 "2025-06-06T13:32:24Z")
> [@solost](#): > > I successfully exercised my free will and did not subscribe at $199 per year, or even $3.90 per issue, to read the linked article. If you choose not to subscribe, you still have made a choice! ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/97 "2025-06-06T13:33:37Z")
I don’t know wherefore the spurious paywall (all those stories except maybe the most recent week’s issue used to be freely available last I checked), but here is another link to the same PDF: [http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf](http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/98 "2025-06-06T13:35:58Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > > [@solost](#): > > > > I successfully exercised my free will and did not subscribe at $199 per year, or even $3.90 per issue, to read the linked article. > > If you choose not to subscribe, you still have made a choice! Right. You can just remain undecided, leave it up in the air, and make no decision if you really want them to feel it. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/99 "2025-06-06T13:40:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Right. You can just remain undecided, leave it up in the air, and make no decision if you really want them to feel it. I would say go back in time and tell your librarian not to order anything from Springer-Verlag, but we already _have_ been saying just that for at least 20–30 years. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/100 "2025-06-06T13:42:37Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > If you choose not to subscribe, you still have made a choice! Whoah…heavy maaan 🤔 😄 Good one! 👏 > [@DPRK](#): > > I don’t know why the spurious paywall (all those stories except maybe the most recent week’s issue used to be freely available last I checked), but here is another link to the same PDF: > [http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf](http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf) Thanks, fun story! It reminded me of a very real phenomenon, which has nothing to do with time travel but does point very strongly to the fact that we do not have free will-- brain scans show that we unconsciously make decisions several long seconds before we are aware of making the decision. So our unconsious is really running the show, it seems, and then retroactively we tell ourselves “I made the choice of my own free will!”. > **[Our brains reveal our choices before we’re even aware of them: study](https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/03/our-brains-reveal-our-choices-before-were-even-aware-of-them--st)** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240.md?page=6)