A Case In Point

There is a particular kind of time travel paradox that is characteristic of narratives set in immutable timelines. Robert Heinlein presents this paradox very well in "By His Bootstraps" and The Door Into Summer and Poul Anderson in The Corridors Of Time, There Will Be Time and The Dancer From Atlantis as we have discussed here before but there are other examples.

In Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, thief lords, banqueting in a subterranean grotto beneath nineteenth century London, are surrounded by shabby men and boys and, beyond them, derelicts who will fight for the left-overs afterwards. The Gypsy King, Doctor Romany, is furious when a very old and disfigured man laughs madly and mocks something that he, Romany, has just said.

"'Can't you put this wretch out of his misery, Horrabin?' [Romany] asked quietly.

"'You can't because you didn't!' cackled the ancient man."

-Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates (London, 1986), 4, p. 105.

Horrabin merely has the man removed but, as he is being carried away, this ancient human wreck winks at Romany and stage-whispers:

"'Look for me later under different circumstances...'" (ibid.)

- then again laughs crazily.

The alert fan of time travel sf might guess (correctly) that, later in this narrative, Romany will time travel to a very remote past date, will live for a very long time, will become so disfigured as to be unrecognizable and will, of course, mock his much younger self at the thieves' banquet.

We can appreciate it but we can't all write it.