Knowing that you’re as much of a discusser of film time-travel problems as I am, I point you to the holy grail mother-load of film-based time-travel discussions: http://www.mjyoung.net/time/index.htm
Ah, good find. I checked that site out years ago and lost the link. It’s an interesting model, but I don’t really like the basic idea of the snap back. (He writes: "So what happens when Traveler leaves 2030, and goes to 2000? Time itself snaps back to 2000, and history is repeated with whatever variations are caused by Traveler’s presence in 2000.")
I find it somehow unsatisfying to imagine all of you and the rest of the universe ceasing to exist just because I chose to travel back in time. I prefer the more common (?) SF idea of alternate timelines peeling away from the home line when you arrive from the future. Ie. my jaunt into the past won’t destroy this present, but this version of you would never see me again. His bow-tie loop is not only unsatisfying but horrific.
A couple of great time travel novels:
The Man Who Folded Himself be David Gerrold and The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter (The official and truly awesome sequel to the HG Well novel The Time Machine.)
the new word verification is philosophically awesome, because those words are scanned out of books by robots in the process of converting paper books to digital books. The problem is, though, that sometimes the robots aren’t sure what a word is, and a human has to go read it for them. This new system solves that problem by asking YOU to type those words in instead of some other human somewhere. The first word is one that is already known while the second one is a new one that it doesn’t know. If you get the first one right it assumes that since you’re not a robot too that you got the second one right too. (it is shown to a number of people to double-check)
SO in essence, by ‘proving you’re not a robot’ you get to also help digitize books. Awesome, no?
The author lives in Vancouver, Washington, USA with his girlfriend and a menagerie of cats, rats, fish, birds, guinea pigs and robots.
Among other inanities, he strives to use investigative techniques to work young starlet breasts into every aspect of rational discourse — focusing on the discourse, thus making it not perverted. Also, has recently begun a career as “Internet hairstylist.”
He can be contacted via email and Jabber IM at ‘jer@nyquil.org’. He likes to be contacted.
(All press inquiries, however, ought be directed towards the author’s agent, Alistair Hoel, via email to ahoel@nyquil.org.)
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