Logic And Literature

I am not qualified to discuss the physics of time travel. The logic becomes abstract but that is the nature of logic and it is necessary for consistency. In fact, logic is consistency. People who do not understand "logic" or who get their idea of "logic" from Mr. Spock instead of from Aristotle, or who think that being logical means being unemotional nevertheless acknowledge that they should not contradict themselves in conversation. Someone who states that Socrates was executed in 399 BC, then that he was executed in 299 BC, accepts, when it is pointed out, that this is inconsistent and corrects what they have said, giving only a single date. If they did not do this, then they would not succeed in telling us when Socrates died. In fact, they would not succeed in giving us even an inaccurate account of when he died.

An inconsistent time travel story recounts a sequence of events that cannot happen even if some kind of time travel is possible. But this is no surprise. An inconsistent non-time travel also recounts impossible events.

However, Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is infinitely more than just an exercise in logic. Many of its instalments are very detailed and concrete works of historical fiction. The time travel paradoxes are made real in this context:

Carl Farness investigates the origin of the Volsungasaga story that Odin appeared and betrayed his followers and learns that he himself, mistaken for Odin, must appear and enact the betrayal;

Manse Everard and Janne Floris travel backward through time to find the mysterious event that had launched the prophetess, Veleda's, campaign against Rome only to learn that that event was their own dramatic arrival and unplanned intervention at a crucial moment;

Everard and Whitcomb fight and kill the time criminal, Stane, in post-Roman Britain and retrieve the time shuttle that he had stolen but leave its fuel chest because that will be buried with Stane, thus becoming the mysterious contents of an ancient British barrow that will put them on his trail.

The Time Patrol is embedded not only in history but also in classical literature.