Tuesday 18 August 2020

The Time Machine And Guardians Of Time II

See The Time Machine And Guardians Of Time.

I missed the main difference.

"...I don't think any of us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incrediblness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 3, p. 17.

Wells coined the term "time travelling," since shortened to "time travel." Twain, pre-Wellsian, had written "transposition of epochs." Wells also wrote:

odd potentialities
plausibility (?)
practical incrediblness
curious possibilities
anachronism
utter confusion

More precise discussion has generated the terms "circular causality" and "causality violation." Wells introduced circular causality in "The Chronic Argonauts." Anderson's Time Patrol series is all about causality violation although it does not use that term.

My point here is that, whereas Wells merely hints at "curious possibilities," Anderson thoroughly explores both paradoxes. This is a conceptual connection but also a definite difference between these two authors.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Other writers tried their hand at time traveling stories as well. Such as L. Sprague De Camp's LEST DARKNESS FALL. Or Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee." Altho some say they are better called alternate worlds stories.

Ad astra! Sean