Time Patrol
The mathematical description both of instantaneous transportation and of travel into the past requires infinitely discontinuous functions.
The theory of time travel involves infinite-valued relationships in a 4N-dimensional continuum.
The search for a means of instantaneous transportation generated time travel as a by-product.
Logically, an event cannot both happen and not happen. If there are multiple timelines, then, logically, an event cannot both happen and not happen in a single timeline. However, a Time Patrol instructor says that an event can both happen and not happen if logic is Aleph-sub-Aleph-valued. I do not know what this means and suspect that it does not mean anything.
Mathematically, world lines can have finite, if not infinite, discontinuities and can be multi-valued functions.
"'In many ways, time travel is equivalent to faster-than-light travel, which the physicists also declare is impossible.'" (V, p. 47)
Time travelers can travel uptime in slower-than-light spaceships and time travel might lead to faster-than-light spaceships! We want to read a novel set in that future.
Might world line discontinuities and multi-valued functions lead after all to a mutable timeline, enabling Havig eventually to meet Everard?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm FINALLY nearing the end of rereading Michael A.G. Michaud's book CONTACT WITH ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS. I've been slowed down not only by things like going to work, but also I admit to finding Michaud's book heavy going, reading much like a text book. But it really engaged my attention sometime after page 179. So much so that I wrote many glosses on the margins.
My chief complaint with Michaud's extremely useful book was how he made no mention, despite citing many other SF writers, of Poul Anderson! This puzzles because not only was his IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? one of the earliest non fictional books examining the idea of non human intelligences existing elsewhere, many of his stories were pertinent to points made by Michaud. Some of which I noted in those marginal glosses.
Next will come Sandra Miesel's AGAINST TIME'S ARROW. I am rather sorry not to have been reading much FICTION lately, by both Anderson and other authors.
Ad astra! Sean
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