Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that I have restated a particular argument about time travel several times. In its simplest form, the argument is as follows: if a time traveler departs into the past intending to prevent your birth, you need not fear that you will cease to exist a moment after his departure because, if your birth had been prevented in the past of this timeline, then you would not exist now. You would not somehow exist into adulthood, then cease to exist. There may be only one timeline or there may be one timeline in which you were born and exist and another timeline in which you were not born and do not exist but there cannot be a composite timeline in which you were not born but do exist but then cease to exist.
Why keep repeating an argument especially when, as yet, no one has disagreed with it? Because the argument always seems fresh and relevant, especially when reading or rereading Time Patrol stories. And these stories deserve our respect unlike, e.g., Isaac Asimov's
The End Of Eternity. No doubt the blog will move on as it has from previous preoccupations or obsessions but, right now, SM Stirling's Time Patrol story, "A Slip In Time," is a major focus, to be followed by his second Draka novel,
Under The Yoke.
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