Time Travel Paradox...

[NateSean]

My advice when writing about time travel is the same as writing about vampires.

Figure out the rules in your universe before you start writing. Work out everything you're going to use in the context of your story. Ignore what everyone else has done and don't think too much about it.

Stick with those rules.

If you break those rules for any reason, make sure the audience knows why.

Pretty simple, really.

[MoppingBear]

My favorite idea about time travel is that it cannot exist, because we know from our own history that there were not thousands of spectators from the future at every key historical event!

What little serious work that his been put into travel suggests is that if time travel is possible, it is linked to the machine, and as such, you cannot travel to a point before the machine existed.

[NateSean]

By "serious" I assume you mean scientific. In which case, without said machine to prove the point, it is superfluous.

[Josh (J)]

Traveling to the past could take place from a limited free-will view, perhaps, that way it would be as though you weren't truly there, but only watching it. But that would stink. No character interaction, something I'd really want. Traveling to the future...if I do that in what I'm working on (assuming I stick with it!), the time traveler will most likely not remember the whole thing, since it really didn't happen, and that way he wouldn't be able to make great predictions in time and so on.

[invisiblecake]

All I have to say here is wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey.

Time travel is confusing.

[~]

To aswer the first question, the animorphs were actually taken from the original timeline, Crayak and the ellimist kept them excluded from any further changes in the timeline including v4's erasure from existance. Also you have to remember that the time matrix isn't a time machine as much as a reality warper, hence the mashup world and lauren's 'I'm 18 now' in TAC. That wouldn't have worked with a delorean, BttF rules don't apply. Which brings me to the bit about the future. Yes you can see the future, but then you change it just for having seen it. Flashforward, the book more then the show, explains the concept pretty well using quantum physics.

[Josh (J)]

Just a question as to not get off subject...does anyone know where there's a thread for Time Travel?

[Nar Klawip]

I found this company some time ago. Some of their stuff works and is pretty cool, but I have never been bored/crazy/reckless enough to buy any of their time travel stuff

Future Horizons-Advanced Technology- is a small research and developtment group dedicated to making secret, supressed and controversial information accessible to interested individuals. Our goal is to develop new advanced technologies and concepts and help move mankind into the 21st century and beyond.

http://www.futurehorizons.net/

http://www.futurehorizons.net/time.htm

[Phoenix004]

My advice when writing about time travel is the same as writing about vampires.

Figure out the rules in your universe before you start writing. Work out everything you're going to use in the context of your story. Ignore what everyone else has done and don't think too much about it.

Stick with those rules.

If you break those rules for any reason, make sure the audience knows why.

Pretty simple, really.

Agreed. I don't care which rules you go with as long as you stick with them. It really annoys me when they establish rules and then break them without explanation.

A classic scenario being the idea of going back and changing something to affect the present; fair enough. However, you can't do that and also have things affect the present BEFORE you go back and change them. I know time travel tends to make cause and effect confusing, but you can't just alternate between the two without at least trying to explain it.

We do actually have a http://animorphsforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=6671.0 thread in General, so unless anyone has anything to add that's Animorphs related, we should post there. Or I could merge the threads if you prefer.

[TobiasMasonPark]

     Do whatever you'd like, Phoenix. You're the boss.

     As a little side note, it's funny how the Animorphs go back in time like...three times? (The Forgotten, Megamorphs 2 and 3?) But rarely change anything. Sure, in Megamorphs 2, they end the Mercora race, but that's not exactly changing anything since the asteroid/meteroite/comet (I honestly don't know the difference, so excuse my ignorance) collided into Earth and wiped out the Dinosaurs. So really, all the Animorphs books with Time Travel were just a slap in the face

[NateSean]

Actually, if you want to go super technical, the future hasn't happened yet so one can't travel into it.

There's a story I read in an anthology once that was really funny. It was based on the idea that if you travel into the future, once you return to your own time you'll have no memory of the trip since paradoxically the trip could never have happened.

I won't spoil the story because if you ever get a chance to read it, it's actually quite funny.

Found it. I owe someone on a writing forum for helping me find this and here's the link.

http://books.google.com/books?id=1M0Y2RYqffIC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=The+Business,+as+Usual+Mack+Reynolds&source=bl&ots=T2v8Dfx-to&sig=rd87mjTIz4d2Kja1YGjDjask5L8&hl=en&ei=HcaYTYX-OPO90QGC77XwCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Business%2C%20as%20Usual%20Mack%20Reynolds&f=false

[Blazing Angel]

OK first off a comet is a piece of flying ice/metal/dust in space that's in an orbit so unless something goes wrong comets don't hit anything. I think asteroids and meteoroids are the same thing just that one is still in space and one is in orbit. And the solution that some writers come up with is a time machine that you step inside and teleports not only you but it self to said destination. And in theory time travel is completely possible but if we made a machine it would take so much energy that the entire world would be drained of resources. The power needed at my guess would require a nuclear reactor the size of the moon. But then again I don't trust theory so we may find some unique energy source to power one. Now discuss my minions.

[saamoz610]

What little serious work that his been put into travel suggests is that if time travel is possible, it is linked to the machine, and as such, you cannot travel to a point before the machine existed.

I just don't get that.  When traveling to the past, isn't the machine taken with the traveler?

[Blazing Angel]

Yes, but one small malfuntion would cause you to be stranded with andrew jackson. The risk is completely insane.

On a different note, time travel is impossible. At least, the changing of events is. You cannot change history, because it is set in stone.

[NateSean]

Not Andrew Jackson. That guy is such a jerk. Your best bet is to find Winston Churchill, he rocks.