I always say that if you understand what's going on

[conuly]

then your time travel story can't be any good.

However, with that said, I was really surprised when one of the heroes actually went back and murdered his twelve year old self. (He survived his murder. Well, the adult did. The kid is dead.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

…multiple timelines???

[conuly]

Yes, although they aren't able to control which present-day (however you define it) they go to... though I strongly suspect that they are able to at least minimize their options by trying to get to a specific person rather than a specific place (though I'm not sure that the author intended that).

[dine]

wow, yeah - that's just not something we're conditioned to expect,even in time travel stories

[conuly]

I did not think they'd really go there, but they did.

Later somebody else goes back and time and saves his child self's life, but only by slitting his previous adult self's throat.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That sounds like Marvel style time travel, aka multiple timelines. It is unusual for a time travel story to have self-cide of a minor, despite how frequently the 'ethical quandary' of killing a mass murderer in his crib gets mentioned when time travel is a thing.

[conuly]

Seriously, why not simply kidnap baby Hitler and place him with a new, kind, adoptive family? With some scholarships to really nice art schools.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

It's right up there with You've got the Infinity Stones and all their power, but your answer is 50% random reduction of population. Did that also include whale populations?

That's the [redacted spoilers] option; those 'thought exercises' never let you pick off Hitler once he's finished writing Mein Kampf or prior to Night of Long Knives etc.

[conuly]

https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/

[malada]

The only problem with killing/kidnapping Hitler is that he's only the symptom of the racist mentality that allowed him to be propelled into political power.

If Hitler didn't initiate the Holocast... someone else would have.

-m

[conuly]

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

“How a Right Can Make a Wrong”

[nodrog]

Truth can be as strange as fiction

“The annals of history are full of fateful moments which scholars refer to as the great ‘what if's’ of history, where if events had taken only a slight deviation the course of human affairs would have been dramatically different.

“Such a moment occurred in the last moments of the Great War in the French village of Marcoing involving 27 year old Private Henry Tandey of Warwickshire, UK, and 29 year old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler of Braunau, Austria…”


https://www.firstworldwar.com/features/tandey.htm

[heron61]

Now I'm curious - what time travel story did this happen in?

[conuly]

The first (and thus far only) Edge to Center book.

It's a very plot-driven story, though the main character makes some enormous character development, starting off dumber than a box of rocks* and ending up quite a savvy political leader. It's a steep learning curve.

* This isn't much of a spoiler, but she seems to be vaguely unaware that a. her family is still ruling a military dictatorship where conditions are barely par in the best of places b. her grandma is imprisoned in her home and c. ...no, wait, the last revelation is a spoiler.

[heron61]

The first (and thus far only)? I've been meaning to read these, and Amazon says all 3 are out, is this incorrect?

[conuly]

Amazon did not say that when I looked, but it's more likely to be glitchy for me than for you. Unless we're looking at the wrong books here - mine is by Brenda Clough.

[conuly]

Nope, they're there now. JFC.

[sallymn]

{blink}

{blink}{blink}

That's quite a trick....

[conuly]

They're rather baffled by it too.

[redbird]

I am reminded of Pratchett's "trousers of time," the idea that there are multiple pasts.

Also, time travel is, if not impossible in a relativistic universe, inconsistent with causality (assuming for the moment that General Relativity is true). Which I suspect means the author can do what they want, as long as the suspension of disbelief holds, and that of course varies from one reader to the next.

(The Young Wizards books seem to mostly deal with this by cheerfully ignoring it in favor of an approach that is more like "how much can we reweave/plaster over before we run out of material?": we are explicitly given instantaneous interstellar and even intergalactic travel, even to distances outside the observable universe, and an expanding universe (one of the characters mentions Olbers paradox.)

[conuly]

Also, time travel is, if not impossible in a relativistic universe, inconsistent with causality (assuming for the moment that General Relativity is true). Which I suspect means the author can do what they want, as long as the suspension of disbelief holds, and that of course varies from one reader to the next.</i. Yeah, it's like magic. As long as wizards aren't chronically OP, magic can be there.

[robby]

Something that's never addressed is that, because of the constant movement of the earth through space, time travel would leave you stranded, hanging somewhere alone in space.

[conuly]

That makes for some short (and boring) stories. We just assume that all time travel is relative to Earth, not to the center of the galaxy.