Elizabeth Howell - The Science of Time Travel: The Secrets Behind Time Machines, Time Loops, Alternate Realities, and More!

Copyright 2020 by Elizabeth Howell, PhD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Daniel Brount

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Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4964-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4965-8

Printed in the United States of America

To my husband, J, whose love transcends time and space; Also, to my students, who show me what the future will really look like.

INTRODUCTION

What would happen if we could travel in time?

Most of us have probably thought about this in our lives. Who wouldnt want to go back to the past and erase that regret or horrible action, like the protagonist does in the Stephen King novel 11/22/63 ? Who wouldnt want to travel to the future, to see how our family turns out like in Back to the Future , or humanity in general like in The Time Machine ? This book explores time travel through science fiction, because storytelling is the way that we have explored everything through the agesfrom philosophy to history to creating a better world. We transmit information in the hopes that things will improve for our descendants and our society. It is a privilege to write this book, to know that these words I am writing in 2019 will be transmitted to you in some way in the future, so thank you in advance for taking the time to browse.

You can read this book in any order, although you might have better luck starting at the front. There we will be exploring the nascent stories of time travel, which dealt more in dreams than in actual machines. But as the Industrial Age shook our society, we did indeed use literal time machines in stories. All of this is covered in ).

), which nabs some of the stories of the 2000s and beyond. One small book cant cover all the time travel of the past twenty years, let alone the past three centuries, so we know there are some gaps in this list, but here we will show you a few stories of note, including the clever Looper that shows how to deal with paradoxes in time, the dark Deja Vu that previews our struggles with cybersecurity, and the X-Men franchise, which tackled time travel in Days of Future Past .

For each story, Ive presented a brief summary of the time travel used and (as scientifically as possible) discussed what was going on. I also delved into a related theme that I think might be interesting to younger readers, especially as they try to find their way in life. After all, whats a good story without trying to apply it to your workplace or family or to improve the world? I hope to give you some points to think about as you ponder these questions. And finally, I delve into the legacies of each work. Sometimes they appear small, sometimes they loom large, but overall, they each have a unique contribution in the time travel literature.

If you really enjoy the stories in this book, I invite you to learn more about the authors and the time periods in which they wrote. The summer I wrote this book (2019), I was lucky enough to have a paid-for business trip in the city of Dallas, the famous scene of the Kennedy assassination in 1963. Parts of the block are preserved just as they were on the day that he died. And people all over the world still flock to see it, overcrowding the famous Sixth Floor Museum that chronicles his life and times. On a weekend morning, I wandered the area and it sure did bring to mind the book 11/22/63 . But it also made me think about time travel in general. Some events seem timeless, even though they took place long ago. The thousands of people I saw honoring Kennedys legacy reminded me that time-travel stories do have resonance. And to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, its only by moving through timereturning to the place where we beganthat we can truly understand the journey.

Thanks for sharing your time with me!

PART I

OLD-SCHOOL TIME TRAVEL

ANNO 7603 (1781)

T his kicks off a series of older tales about time travel, for which I will warn: the scientific explanation for most of the time travel in this section is not really scientific in the sense that we understand it today. That said, Anno 7603 is one of a series of stories I chose because their plots have significance to understand not only todays time-travel stories, but also todays culture.

The Science of Time Travel

The premise of this Johan Herman Wessel tale is a fairly simple one, although we have to suspend disbelief in our modern sensibilities and try to read the story with an understanding that things were different a couple of hundred years ago. Julie and Leander are in love with each other and are interested in how it would be to exist as the others gender, specifically with the eye of raising children better, so a fairy magically takes them forward in time to the year 7603 to see what would happen. Therefore... yeah, there isnt much science here to be had in terms of discussing the time travel trope. Rather, lets focus on what this visit reveals.

Without focusing on many of the storys spoilers, one thing that they discover is only women are allowed to fight in the military. Lets remember that this story was written long before a time when women were allowed to vote or to run their own households, let alone make decisions that could put themselves in danger. Even today, women face discrimination in military spheres such as jet piloting or submarining, where they are in a very small minority. The romantic pair conclude their journey through time traveling not only deciding that its best not to switch genders, but also that they are more prepared to act in their societally mandated roles after looking at the alternatives. It doesnt sound like a traditional hero of a story, in the sense that theyre not prepared to muster change. So while this story is an interesting look at how the role of gender could influence society, it feels somewhat incomplete in reading it.

Many mythological stories in the centuries and millennia before this one follow a somewhat scripted formula that was later identified by Joseph Campbell as the heros journey. The main thing to understand here is that the hero is supposed to return from their journey somehow changed. One can argue that this couple did return changedafter all, they no longer want to switch gender rolesbut their change didnt have broader implications for society.

If we think about modern examples of the heros journey, we can definitely see character change happening as a result of it. George Lucas (of Star Wars ) was greatly influenced by Campbells work. If you look at the character of Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy, he starts the series as a somewhat-whiny nephew of his aunt and uncle, complaining about not being able to participate in the war and of having to follow his elders orders. Along the way, he meets characters who have been to war and who have lived through some of its terrible implicationspeople dying, people being captured, people losing their homes forever. By the original trilogys end, Skywalker does become a novice warrior, but not a warrior seeking adventurerather, a warrior seeking to help others. (Well let you watch the sequels to find out what happens next.)