Science fiction was always a genre that appealed to me and for some reason time travel stories really got me hooked. The concept of time is intriguing to start with. Is it akin to a fast flowing river where we are forever carried forward, or perhaps every instant is actually the same moment in time and there is no past or future, just now.
Just like comprehending infinite space, philosophising over the structure of time can do your head in. Better still are the time paradoxes. You go back in time, prevent your parents from meeting, you aren't born, so how could you go back in time, so your parents meet, you are born, you go back in time ...
Favourite time travel book has to be Bob Silverberg's Up The Line, with a wonderful image of the scene of the Cruscifixion becoming ever more crowded with gawping time tourists. Another fun book is The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison.
Just thinking about the Cruscifixion for a moment, there's a neat short story by Garry Kilworth called Let's Go To Golgotha! Again it concerns time tourism and focuses on the moment when the Roman's offer either Jesus or Barabbas to be spared. The tourists are told that obviously they must shout for Barabbas so as not to change history, but one chap realises that the crowd consists entirely of tourists and they are creating a self fulfilling prophesy.
Ah, the joys and complexities of time travel. On that note, I've run out of time. Perhaps if I just reset this dial, maybe ...
Q: How many time travellers does it take to change ... oh. Do you know, I could have sworn that lightbulb needed changing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment