...And Time
This chapter deals with the many theories of Temporal Physics both real and fictional that exist.
- Paradoxes (Assumes Fixed Time with one past, present, and future.)
- The Grandfather Paradox
- The Free Lunch Paradox (also known as the Ontological paradox The example is taken from The Eyre Affair and has the time traveler give Shakespeare a book detailing his plays which Shakespeare copies. The result is no one actually writes the plays!)
- Plastic Time (past can be changed but there are dangers to doing so)
- Traveler at Risk (Example: Back to the Future)
- World at Risk (Examples: Back to the Future II, and New Twilight Zone Episode "Portrait in Silver")
- Past or Traveler at Risk (Combines Traveler at Risk and World at Risk)
- Returned Blocked
- Chaotic Time (extreme version of Plastic Time where small changes can result in big alterations. Example: short story "A Sound of Thunder")
- Plastic Time with High Resistance (It is very hard to change history and the larger the event the more difficult it is to change. Examples: Twilight Zone episode "Back There", The Time Machine (2002 film)
- Paradox-Proof Time (Extreme version of Fixed Time where the past cannot be changed and any attempt to do so snaps you back to your present.)
- New Timelines
- Parallel Worlds (Time travel is really parallel universe travel. Examples: Timeline (novel), James P. Hogan's The Proteus Operation and the Parallels (Star Trek: The Next Generation) episode all use the Parallel Worlds mechanic for alternate timelines (Data calls them Quantum Realities).
There are some other ideas provided to make things either easier or more difficult for your intrepid travelers such as Linearity Principle, Oscillating Time, Recency Effect, and Temporal Exclusion as well how communication works.
Read more about this topic: GURPS Infinite Worlds
Famous quotes containing the word time:
“Absence, hear my protestation
Against thy strength
Distance and length,
Do what thou canst for alteration:
For hearts of truest metal
Absence doth join, and Time doth settle.”
—John Hoskyns (1566–1638)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)