Robert Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (London, 1970).
Not really. Not at the moment. Heinlein's causal circles hang together and he makes them work just as Poul Anderson, Audrey Niffenegger and some others do in their time travel novels. Heinlein makes the point that some events that could have happened did not happen:"...the very existence of that line of print depended on my not seeing it; the apparent possibility that I might have seen it is one of the excluded 'not possibles' of the basic circuit design." (p. 188)
If the narrator had read that line of print, then he would have done something that would have prevented its existence but it does exist, therefore he did not do anything that would have prevented its existence.
James Blish thought that all previous circular causality narratives were limited. He proposed at some time to write a finite-spinning-universe-theory-of time-travel novel with its entire plot and characters based on the paradox. That is one of the might-have-beens, like Stieg Larsson's seven further Millennium volumes.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
But I believe alternate/parallel worlds to be more scientifically plausible than time dilation/traveling. Which is why I rather favor Anderson's THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, the OPERATION books, A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST, etc. Or Stirling's Draka books, THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, CONQUISTADOR, or his Antonine books, etc. Or simply Anderson's straight forward hard SF.
Ad astra! Sean
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