Sunday 28 July 2024

Basic Problems With Time Travel

One problem with time travel fiction is that readers or viewers think that the order in which events are presented to them is necessarily also the order in which they are experienced by the characters. 

Example:

In Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," the Wanderer, secretly a time traveller, periodically visits a particular Gothic family. On one occasion, approaching their thorp, he enquires about Tharasmund and his kin. He has to be reminded that he himself had attended Tharasmund's funeral. Stunned, he withdraws but quietly asks a cowherd about the details of Tharasmund's death.

A friend read that and said that he did not understand why the Wanderer had forgotten Tharasmund's death! I pointed out that he merely visited at intervals. My friend insisted that he had been seen at the funeral...

Me: "But he then went back and attended the funeral."
Friend: "Ohh!"

It is a time travel story. Poul Anderson wrote that incident expecting his readers to understand that the Wanderer time travelled. With misunderstandings at such a basic level, it is no wonder that discussions of time travel become confused.

5 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

That seemed obvious to me at the time. But I've been reading SF for a -long- time...

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I think I understood, the first time I read "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," the point you made here. Carl was visiting these Goths at non-sequential intervals.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Though if I was doing it, I'd make the visits sequential from my own POV -- just to avoid problems like that.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Tharasmund could still die between two of your scheduled visits, though.

S.M. Stirling said...

Yes he could.