# 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:** 9
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/161 "2025-10-26T01:37:46Z")
BTTF does show futures getting “locked in” so to speak so I’m prepared to give Doc a pass on that one. ---
**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:** [October 26, 2025, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/162 "2025-10-26T06:54:17Z")
Does it? At the very end of the trilogy, Jennifer shows Doc the ‘You’re Fired’ message which has now been erased and he says (paraphrasing): ‘of course it has! Your future hasn’t been written yet, so make it a good one!’ ---
**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:** [October 26, 2025, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/163 "2025-10-26T15:07:57Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Why would there be such an urgency to get back to the future right then when you have a time machine? Ah, you know Doc. He’s just an excitable boy. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/164 "2025-10-26T22:02:24Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > I always like the idea of Time Travel in [Roger Zelazny’s _Roadmark_s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadmarks). I dimly remember that I thought the book was excellent until toward the end where apparently 100 pages had been left out. > [@Chronos](#): > > He was trying to show off how ridiculous racism was by portraying a society where blacks were on top, and whites were discriminated against. But yeah, it didn’t work as well as he intended. > [@Zakalwe](#): > > I will fully admit that I have read all of RAH’s work, but not deeply studied the commentary about it. Is there some evidence that he was doing this or is post-hoc justification? What was going through Heinlein’s head in those days has long been mysterious. The most favorable possible answer is Chronos’ response. The problem, obviously, is that one has to know a subject to properly satirize it and no evidence exists that Heinlein had an understanding of modern black or women’s cultures or the larger issues of racism and sexism. Some quotes from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham's_Freehold). > The SF Site described Farnham’s Freehold as “a difficult book”, and stated that “At best, [it] is an uncomfortable book with some good points mixed in with the bad, like an elderly relative [who] can give good advice and in the next breath go off on some racist or sexist rant. At worst, Farnham’s Freehold is an anti-minority, anti-woman survivalist rant. It is oftentimes frustrating. It is sometimes shocking. It is never boring.” The critical work The Heritage of Heinlein describes Farnham’s Freehold as not “an altogether successful novel” and that the book’s sexism “may be a crucial flaw.” > > Charles Stross has rhetorically asked whether “anyone [has] a kind word to say for … Farnham’s Freehold”, and then described it as the result of “a privileged white male from California, a notoriously exclusionary state, trying to understand American racism in the pre–Martin Luther King era. And getting it wrong for facepalm values of wrong, so wrong he wasn’t even on the right map … but at least he wasn’t ignoring it.” > > The New Republic, while conceding Heinlein’s desire to “show the evils of ethnic oppression”, states that in the process Heinlein “resurrected some of the most horrific racial stereotypes imaginable,” ultimately producing “an anti-racist novel only a Klansman could love.” ---
**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:** [October 26, 2025, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/165 "2025-10-26T22:10:10Z")
It wouldn’t be the first time Heinlein tried to combat racism, but did so horribly clumsily. John Campbell, one of Heinlein’s most frequent publishers, was absolutely definitely racist, and so Heinlein deliberately trolled him by including evidence in Tunnel in the Sky that the main character was black, but making it subtle enough that Campbell wouldn’t notice it until after the book was published. Except that the “evidence” was something that, itself, wouldn’t work unless one approached it from a racist point of view. Specifically, one of the secondary characters was clearly African, and the main character at one point mentions that she reminds him of his sister, ergo his sister is also black, and ergo so is he. But of course, if you’re not racist, there’s no reason why someone can’t remind you of someone of a different race. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/166 "2025-10-27T02:01:40Z")
At least with _Sixth Column_ RAH had the excuse of having to follow an outline by Campbell for the novel. Still racist as hell. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/167 "2025-10-27T09:22:54Z")
Anyone who wrote for the magazine _Astounding Science Fiction_ had to obey some bad rules that the editor John Campbell had. The fiction had to imply that men were better than woman, that whites were better than blacks, that humans were the most intelligent people in the universe, that humans had an optimistic future, that homosexuality was wrong, and perhaps some other rules too. The authors often knew how wrong these rules were. Some of those authors weren’t great people either, but they often obeyed Campbell’s rules while knowing they were bad. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/168 "2025-10-27T13:10:16Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > Because time travel into the future is trivial [I’m Feeling Lucky](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kaganov_07_21/) by Leonid Kaganov, is a short story that deals with a world where cheap and easy time travel into the future exists. The results are harrowing for the society, but seem very real. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/169 "2025-10-27T15:28:46Z")
I will admit Heinlein’s efforts to address race, class, and gender were clumsy. But I think the venom directed at _Farnham’s Freehold_ is misguided. He was not saying “This is what they will do to us if we let them vote.” He was saying “This is what we will do to them if we continue to treat them as subhuman.” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/170 "2025-10-27T20:26:13Z")
“I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.” –Old Joe, Looper ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/171 "2025-10-27T20:34:02Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > One time travel thing I’ve seen quite a bit in movies and TV, but can’t think of an immediate example, is where time travel is just like travelling to a different country - and where there is still a sense that events are still unfolding in the time you departed, at the same time as in the time you travelled to. > This means that, even though you have a time machine, there’s some sort of weird urgency because you have to get back before something runs out, back in the future. You apparently can’t just travel back to the moment you left - if you spend an hour in the past, an hour has somehow also passed in the timeframe you departed. I think **The Tomorrow War** was kind of like that. Also every episode of **Doctor Who**. Like they can never go back and redo shit or travel to a tactically more advantageous point in time. Subverted in **Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure** to the point that the were getting out of trouble by planning what they would do later. I like how time travel (really time “inversion”) was done in **Tenet**. You didn’t just disappear and show up in the past. They actually reversed time so everything looked like it was travelling backwards. If you wanted to travel back a few days you went through the device and had to wait a few days. The “temporal pincer” battle at the end was also pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/172 "2025-10-27T21:51:31Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Also every episode of **Doctor Who**. Like they can never go back and redo shit or travel to a tactically more advantageous point in time. Well, every episode of Doctor Who except the ones where they do change the past or return to the second after they left or whatever the plot calls for. Even the New Who has had 200 or so episodes and the writers’ brains are drained. ---
**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:** [October 27, 2025, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/173 "2025-10-27T22:05:48Z")
It’s really hard to write good time travel fiction. And even harder when there are a whole bunch of different writers in the same continuity. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/174 "2025-10-27T22:07:05Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Well, every episode of Doctor Who except the ones where they do change the past or return to the second after they left or whatever the plot calls for. Even the New Who has had 200 or so episodes and the writers’ brains are drained. How about when the Doctor (or any time traveler from any show) is mourning over the grave of one of their companions (or their own for that matter)? Like you have the ability to travel the length and breath of the universe’s existence. Pretty much you and everyone you ever knew is going to be dead or not born yet through most of it. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/175 "2025-10-27T22:11:14Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Well, every episode of Doctor Who except the ones where they do change the past or return to the second after they left or whatever the plot calls for. It does happen sometimes; the program has some ‘time laws’ in place that are supposed to prevent too much timey-wimey discombobulation (like the Blinovitch Limitation effect) but these are just rules mean to be broken. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/176 "2025-10-28T01:11:11Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > How about when the Doctor (or any time traveler from any show) is mourning over the grave of one of their companions (or their own for that matter)? Like you have the ability to travel the length and breath of the universe’s existence. Pretty much you and everyone you ever knew is going to be dead or not born yet through most of it. Doctor Who makes huge points about the Doctor outliving his companions and his sorrow when one of them dies. It was the driving force of the show some seasons. Mere time travel is not fundamental to that reaction; the Doctor’s longevity is. He’s effectively immortal, partly because he can regenerate multiple times and partly because of plot. He can visit many more times and places than most of the human characters in the show, but an unchangeable reality is that he does so at his latest, oldest point, just as everyone here is now transiting through their latest, oldest points. He can travel back into the timeline of his friends only at the risk of causing paradoxes that he is supposed to avoid. It he travels to October 27, 2025 to talk to you and at another time travels to October 26, 2025 the story has to account for your not remembering that visit on October 27, 2025, providing an in-plot rationale for not haphazardly interacting with human lives. Clever writers can conjure workarounds for that memory lapse. One of the most interesting was his interaction with the time traveling character River Song. The first instance of their meeting in his timeline was the last instance of their meeting in hers. Therefore every subsequent episode with the two of them had to deal with his knowing events in her future he couldn’t tell her or events in his future that she couldn’t tell him. Except for the few occasions their timelines merged for extended periods, the relationship was a series of blips. The writers did a good, but certainly not perfect, job of correlating all this, even though it meant that viewers had to watch every show they were both on to figure out where in their lives they were. For all the complications inherent in time travel, character development and interaction is much easier than in books about immortals. I can’t think of any good stories around non-godly immortals that satisfy me, and the older I get the more immortals’ ability to seamlessly blend in with the worlds of their great, great… grandchildren irks me with its impossibility. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/177 "2025-10-28T02:34:50Z")
I always liked the approach Robert Asprin used in his “Time Scout” books. In that series, you could never exist twice at the same time, so Time Scouts especially kept track of when they visited the past and for how long, lest they “shadow” themselves and vanish. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/178 "2025-10-28T08:45:44Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I can’t think of any good stories around non-godly immortals that satisfy me I agree, but would make an exception for **[Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged](https://www.hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html)**. He was, _is_ in fact, meant as a joke. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/179 "2025-10-28T09:27:33Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > > > Well, every episode of Doctor Who except the ones where they do change the past or return to the second after they left or whatever the plot calls for. > > It does happen sometimes; > > the program has some ‘time laws’ in place that are supposed to prevent too much timey-wimey discombobulation (like the Blinovitch Limitation effect) but these are just rules mean to be broken. Yeah, when the BBC starts sending those commissions my way, things are going to get freaky. There are not going to be any time “lines”, either! More like a compound quantum inductive tetrasphenohedral polytope, at least in simple cases. If it seems hard to grasp, maybe training up to be a Time Lord is not for you. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I can’t think of any good stories around non-godly immortals that satisfy me One pretty much has to be immortal to live long enough to master all that stuff. Vishwamitra comes to mind— it took him thousands of years of yoga to learn ultimate wisdom and omnipotence. [NB if it takes ten thousand years of yoga to reach the point where you can pull off stuff like immortality, there is a lesson there for the rest of us.] IMO it is a great story. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2025, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240/180 "2025-10-28T11:05:09Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > I agree, but would make an exception for **[Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged](https://www.hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html)**. He was, _is_ in fact, meant as a joke. Marvin the Android was extremely long-lived, and not very happy about it. “The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-in-fiction/1019240.md?page=10)