Copied from the Logic of Time Travel blog:
Rereading
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series reopens the issues of the two "Logic
of Time Travel" articles at the beginning of this blog.
In
the standard science fiction causality violation scenario, a time
traveler originates in timeline 1 and travels to the past of that
timeline but then "changes the past," thus generating timeline 2. One
way to picture this is to represent timeline 1 by a horizontal line and
timeline 2 by a second line emerging at an angle from the point
representing the moment of the causality violation but this entails
that, at that moment, the time traveler disappears from timeline 1 and
creates around himself an entire new universe for timeline 2! I do not
think that either the functioning of a time machine or the actions of a
time traveler would be able to create all that organized matter and
energy.
I think that it makes more sense to model
temporal change on experienced change. Thus, in experienced change, a
single temporal dimension connects states changed from to states changed
to. Each of these states is a configuration of the entire three
dimensional universe. Similarly, in temporal change, a second temporal
dimension connects changing states. Each of these states is an entire
four dimensional continuum with its own internal temporal dimension. It
is these temporal dimensions that we call timelines 1, 2 etc.
A time traveler originates in timeline 1 but either transforms timeline 1 into timeline 2 or
causes timeline 2 to succeed timeline 1 along the second temporal
dimension - these are alternative descriptions of a single process. In The Shield Of Time, Poul Anderson presents another scenario: a quantum change in space-time-energy transforms timeline 1 into timeline 2.
If
a story were set in the timeline 2 of the quantum change scenario but
without time travelers, then readers would recognize an alternative
history or parallel universe story. However, "parallel" implies
simultaneity or co-existence whereas I argue that timeline 1 does not
coexist with timeline 2 but preexists and causes it along the second
temporal dimension. In that dimension, timeline 1 is not contemporary
with but earlier than timeline 2 and therefore is inaccessible to a time
traveler who can either remain in timeline 2 or advance to timeline 3
but not return to timeline 1. That is how Anderson describes the relationship between the current and deleted timelines in the Time Patrol series.
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