While I am sitting here, a time traveller sets off into the past intending to prevent my parents from meeting. In this timeline, we know that he did not succeed because I exist now. But suppose he did succeed. Do I cease to exist now? No. His success generates a timeline in which I never existed, not a timeline in which I somehow existed into adulthood, then ceased to exist!
We have been through all this before but, as with analysis of Poul Anderson's Technic History, the issues always seem fresh and new. I am just passing the time over breakfast before going out for a bus ride and a walk. CS Lewis imagined a bus route between Heaven and Hell. Imagine a time travel bus route.
3 comments:
A bus could have run in THE CORRIDORS OF TIME.
Yes. I thought of that after I had posted.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Both: Or in Damte's DIVINE COMEDY he has Charon ferrying the souls of the last across the Styx River into Hell. And Niven and Pournelle, in their SFnal treatment of Dante's work,* has Charon upgraded to using a far larger boat!
Ad astra! Sean
*INFERNO and ESCAPE FROM HELL.
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