Thursday 8 October 2020

Escapes Into Time

See Four Vehicles.

With guardsmen shooting at them, Wanda Tamberly pulls Keith Denison onto her timecycle and they escape into time.

A slug fired by one of the men in black penetrates the wall of the time projector just before Martin Saunders throws the main switch and escapes into time.

The Doctor escapes in the TARDIS innumerable times.

The Time Traveler feels the Morlocks clutching at him and escapes into time. Later, he puts a month or so between himself and a giant crab.

However, I think that the Time Traveller's so-called motion through time - in fact time dilation - should make him not invisible and intangible but immobile and perhaps indestructible? He would be a monument that everyone would know about like Wells's Sleeper. The Time Traveler explains that he moves too fast to be seen or felt but he does not move and a bullet or a propeller moving too fast to be seen is certainly felt by anyone who occupies the same space as it.

See further philosophical discussion here.

11 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I like that idea, that it would make more sense for the Time Traveler and his machine being immobile, SEEN, and indestructible while in use. That makes sense if he was "dilating" to the future or the past.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Philip Jose Farmer wrote a time-travel via dilation story in which the protagonist becomes and indestructible statue and wakes in the very far future to find himself an idol in a temple being worshipped by highly-evolved intelligent raccoons. It’s quite good, sort of a new-pulp planetary romance with some wildly inventive world building.

S.M. Stirling said...

Ah, memory restarts: the Phil Farmer book is THE STONE GOD AWAKENS, or something very close to that. It’s entertaining — I rather recommend it.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Thanks for recommending Farmer's book. Alas, I've never read it--but it will now become one of the many books on my mental back of the mind list of reading!

One thought I had was wondering what happened to the human race before the "the stone god" woke up in that intelligent raccoon world?

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: that’s revealed, but I won’t spoil the plot-point for you.

S.M. Stirling said...

Farmer’s probably my second-favorite SF author, after Poul. THE STONE GOD AWAKENS isn’t his best, but it’s very competent. He did some boffo alternate histories — THE GATE OF TIME/TWO HAWKS FROM EARTH for example, which involves three alternate worlds, mainly taking place on one where there are no American continents — everything that’s below 6000 ft. In our world is underwater in theirs. It’s hugely entertaining. My favorite of all is the “World of Tiers” series, which starts with THE MAKER OF UNIVERSES, though like many of Farmer’s series they tail off in the later books.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

I thought that RIVERWORLD was a brilliant idea but tailed off.

S.M. Stirling said...

Paul: I agree. Farmer was much better at starting series than keeping them going at the same level.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Many thanks for your comments here. NOW I'm definitely interested in Farmer's works.

And it would seem very strange for there to be an alternate Earth where everything below 6000 above our ocean level is under the sea.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: just in the Western Hemisphere; the rest of the world is more or less similar (though there’s more glacial ice — no Gulf Stream).

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Noted. Many thanks! And before this recent discussion about Philip Jose Farmer, the Farmer I knew most of was the Biblical scholar William R. Farmer, who challenged and criticized the Q/Markan Priority theory. A theory I no longer believe is true.

Ad astra! Sean