When Poul Anderson's mutant time traveler, Jack Havig, visits, then revisits, the future, he is confident that it is the same future on both occasions whereas the same author's Time Patrolmen have no such assurance. Whereas Havig inhabits a continuum of four-dimensionally static world-lines, Patrolmen refer not only to world-lines but also to macroscopic quantum events. The literary ancestor of Havig, the Time Patrol, the Doctor and other fictional time travelers is HG Wells' Time Traveler whose narrative is ambiguous. He begins by expounding a continuum of static world-lines but then "time travels" in a manner that is incompatible with such a continuum. His outer narrator refers to:
"...the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), 3, p. 17 -
- suggested by "time travelling."
So does the Time Traveler fail to return because he has disappeared into an alternative or divergent timeline?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Only the Time Traveler could answer that question, if he came back!
And Jack Havig's time traveling along an immutable "time path" is conceptually easier to grasp than the all too mutable time lines the Patrol tries to guard.
Ad astra! Sean
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