Time Travel…

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I commented on something in another site, that got me thinking about time travel, instantaneous travel, and relativistic travel. Some heavy thinking for this late in the day, but I’m here now.

Time travel has been in our collective stories for centuries. The early stories were all using magic or wishes to go back in time. This was used to correct mistakes, make different choices or somehow get something you missed out on. I don’t have any of the myths and stories available to me at the moment, but I seem to remember a common theme. It generally didn’t work out the way it was planned. That doesn’t always mean bad things happened, just not the planned things.

In 1895 H. G. Wells published a book where a machine was used to travel back in time. The Time Machine was one of the early science fiction works on time travel. Many other authors have written works on time travel, and there have been many movies and even a TV show or two about time travel. As these stories progressed, the time travel paradox was brought up. What would happen if you went back in time and prevented your birth sort of thing. This stuff can get deep quickly, so I’ll leave it for another topic. I was just thinking about the time travel stories..

Then we have instantaneous or faster than light travel. Used in almost every Space science fiction story known this type of travel was invented by the story tellers out of need. They needed to get from one end of the Galaxy to the other without writing about long voyages or worse yet relativity. Transporters on StarTrek were made to save money on the effects of a shuttle craft landing. If you ever noticed the when a shuttle craft was used in the original series, it was always a plot device, and that justified the cost.

But of course, Einstein said that the Universe has a speed limit, the speed of light. That gets rid of the instantaneous/faster than light travel, but again brings back the time travel story. Space ship captain goes away an some high fraction of the speed of light, comes back to earth and finds out many many years have passed on earth and his twin brother is now a very old man…. I remember a story or two like that, but I don’t recall them at the present.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head, so I can relax and get some rest….

7 thoughts on “Time Travel…”

  1. I don;t recall that movie at all, so I don’t think I saw it. I even looked it up on IMDB, didn’t ring any bells.

  2. Some of my favorite Star Trek episodes dealt with time travel. City on the Edge of Forever perhaps being the best of the the original series.

  3. Now you guys did it, I’m going to have to concentrate and try to remember all the time travel movies/TV shows I have seen….

    And speaking of that, while not exactly time travel, anyone remember the TV show “The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything”?

  4. I really disliked Primer- it was quite the snoozer. Sorry L. I just recently watched all of the first season Journeyman, which is sort of like Quantum Leap. However, the main character, Dan, jumps from the present to the past (uncontrollable ala QL) to help someone or other then jumps back. He may have to jump to several periods of the person’s life before he is finished. It was interesting, but a second season is up in the air.

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