Destiny: Events that never did happen and now never shall, will cast their conclusions and occurrences out into the worlds.
Destiny: Cause and effect will jostle, unable to tell quite which came first. The event horizon will come closer and closer. Wrecks and mirages of time and occasion...
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (New York, 1996), Part 11, p. 15, panel 1, panel 1, panel 2.
Sounds like the Time Patrol?
Guion reminds Wanda Tamberly that causality:
"'...can double back on itself, can even annul itself.'"
- and that the source of a disturbance:
"'...perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART THREE, 31,275,389 B. C., p. 135.
Events that have not happened can have effects.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Hard to grok that, events which have not happened can or will affect us.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
In the Time Patrol universe, an effect can prevent its cause. Thus, the cause does not happen but has an effect.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Ugh!!!! That affronts my sense of what should be logical.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is counterintuitive but not contradictory. The only contradiction would be to say that an event both happened and did not happen.
Paul.
Time travel plays hob with causality.
Kaor, Paul!
It still seems contradictory to say "...an effect can prevent its cause. Thus, the cause does not happen but has an effect." How can an effect come to exist without its preceding cause?
Ad astra! Sean
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