Death And Time Travel

Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers have a rule that, after they have heard of a colleague's death, they no longer travel to any time or place where they would meet him but how can this be avoided? An Unattached agent of the Patrol lives an indefinitely prolonged lifespan and exists at many times both before his birth and after his death. Therefore, the actual date of his death is almost an irrelevance. Everyone is alive at some times but not at others and time travellers are more acutely aware of this. In fact, although this is against their rules, a Patrol agent who learns that he had died on a particular mission in the past can decide not to embark on that mission. This will not prevent him from having arrived and died in the past but it will mean that the version of him who has decided not to embark on the mission will live on and die at some other time.

Because Audrey Niffeneger's Henry DeTamble and his daughter, Alba, are both time travellers, Alba knows and fully accepts the fact that she meets her father even though she has lived past the time of his death. Sometimes he visits her in her present. At other times, they meet in the past. Unlike him, she has some control over her chrono-displacement.

The Doctor Who TV series presented the absurd idea that the Doctor was the last surviving Gallifreyan and therefore was unable to meet any other Time Lords. Suppose that they had all died in 2000. The Doctor can travel to any time before 2000. They were time travellers so some of them will have travelled to times later than 2000. Some of them might exist now or, if not now, then definitely later. Bad time travel narratives are bad indeed.