Stepping off the feedback loop.
My son has this tattoo of a Mobius strip by M.C. Escher on his entire leg. It’s amazing. I love the tattoo.
A Mobius strip is not only a symbol of eternity/infinity, it’s also a feedback loop, or, in my mind, it symbolizes the nature of time travel ala the movie, The Terminator.
I love a good time paradox. Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are stuck in a feedback loop like the ants on Escher’s Mobius strip. How does Sarah get pregnant with John, the future savior, in the first place? Kyle comes back to try to save her life. How does she know what she’ll name her child? Kyle tells her. How does she know what it takes to fight the Terminators? Kyle again. How does Kyle know where to find her? Her son, John Connor, tells him and gives him a photo. When is the photo taken? In Mexico as she’s running for the hills in her jeep, with her gun and her German shepherd. As Sarah herself says in that particular scene…she could go crazy thinking about it. For all eternity, Sarah and Kyle are stuck on a feedback loop. When you think about it, to even try to prevent the rise of the machines in the first place means that she would never meet Kyle, John would not be born - what would happen? Would Sarah be returned to her life before the Terminator entered her world, with no knowledge or memory of an alternate future? Even the Terminator is stuck. Because he returns to the past to kill Sarah, his destruction leaves behind technology that insures the future rise of the machines. A=B=C=A. I love feedback loops and the concept of time travel. The original movie, The Terminator, captured the concepts better than any movie I’ve seen or book I’ve read.
Okay, let’s look at a time travel novel - The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I loved the first half of this book, hated the second half. Why? I felt used as a reader - set up for a pat and very predictable tragic ending. And the movie version annoyed the hell out of me. The over-arching theme of the book is that even if you can travel through time and you know what’s going to happen, you can’t change anything, you can’t prevent anything from happening. Bull shit. Once the protagonist, Henry, realizes who Clare is and remembers what will happen, he has the choice to walk away from her and from his involvement with her in the past, but he doesn’t. Of course if he did walk away, I suppose we wouldn’t have a book. But I could not get behind the author’s theory of time travel, despite her very interesting concept of time travel as a sort of epileptic seizure.
I prefer the theory Frank Herbert espouses in Dune. One action sets off a series of reactions. The future does not move forward in a straight line, but rather every step we take, every move we make (bad poetry), changes the course of history. My view is that our path to the future follows more of a zig and a zag course, we don’t travel directly from point A to point B. In the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell’s character finds himself involved in an existential time/space paradox. Knowing the outcome of his own story, he willingly accepts his fate, and in doing so, changes it. It’s called The Observer Effect: the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed.
Here’s how I see it…If I could travel through time, what would I do? I’d like to go back and kill Adolph Hitler, but if I did, what would be the ramifications of my act? Let’s say I succeed and I kill him as a young man, when he’s nothing more than a struggling artist. Our future would be completely different. Would our world be better? It might be worse. According to Sir Isaac Newton, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Who knows how far-reaching the consequences of a single act could be?
I included time travel in my Daughters of Persephone series. The road these female protagonists travel is not straight, believe me. In the end, the sister with the most power, the sister who loves nothing more than to manipulate the past and the future, who is both ancestor and descendant, steps off the Mobius strip to live her own life and die in anonymity, yet even by stepping out of the feedback loop, she has an impact, planting genetic seeds that will bear fruit in the future.
Thoughts on time travel?
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November 12th, 2010 at 3:49 am
Very cool tattoo your son has.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:20 am
I’m in the camp of believers who see reality and time being a community effort. I think the future is highly variable and ever changing despite the “fact” it already happened.
XXOO Kat
November 12th, 2010 at 9:30 am
I think the time-travel idea is fascinating, especially when the character is put into a position of changing history-and what kind of ramifications that can have. I haven’t read “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” and now I don’t think I will-LOL. Great post!
November 12th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Yes, Amber, it’s a great tattoo!
I’m kinda there with you, Kat - sort of like we live the past, present and future all at the same time, but at the same time, we don’t. Hard to explain.
Suzanne - my husband loved the book, but thought the movie version was stupid. As you know, lots of readers are very much into the book. I was at first, but a little more than halfway through the story, I came to the conclusion that I was being hooked by a false premise and cheated by an unnecessary tragic ending. That bothered me a lot.
November 12th, 2010 at 10:08 am
I believe that Stranger than Fiction was 1. original and 2. Ferrell’s best work.
In college we called the law of thermodynamics - “there is no such thing as a free lunch. ” It is part of my belief system that physics applies to social as well as physical systems. THe more we understand physics the more magic makes sense.
Free Lunch applies to life in so many ways. For example, having exported technology and financial aid to developing nations, we have changed our own economic structure. I call this “You cannot export prosperity without importing poverty.”
November 12th, 2010 at 10:28 am
The whole idea of time travel drives my mind into a complete tailspin. I do love a good time travel story. But no matter how well it’s done, I always come back to … but what happened the first time the person didn’t have a time traveler to experience and change things? And then it just gets too complicated from there for me. I can’t even adequately express my confusion. (But that happens with a lot of my mind bending thoughts.) LOL!
November 12th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Steph - ICAM! Stranger than Fiction is original and brilliant and it is most definitely Farrell’s best work. I generally do not watch his movies.
I also agree that there is no free lunch. If I remember my physics correctly - and I am not a math whiz by any means - you reach a point where the physical nature of things collides with the spiritual nature with the numinous with the magical. Plus yeah, to every action there is a reaction.
November 12th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Oh Nina! LOL! I love time travel. You just have to do it right! Terminator does it right!
November 12th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
OK you are making us think too hard!!
Terminator RULES! And they did some of the theories really well.
The Time Traveler’s Wife was good for an emotional journey, but the rules she but in place were bs, and the theories applied were even worse. And for the “I saw us together, so it must be,” doesn’t work either. Those of us who grew up on good scifi couldn’t enjoy this because of these problems (even worse for those with real science backgrounds).
If wanting a good time travel (light on applied theory) story, one that has always stuck with me is: The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Not a romance, more a historic novel, but a really good read.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I loved The Terminator, though more for other reasons than the time travel element.
The movie, SOMEWHERE IN TIME is one of my all time faves. I don’t know if GROUND HOG DAY with Bill Murray is considered time travel, but why not?
The idea of time travel used to make me want to pull my hair out until I really began paying attention to all the different theories and possibilities.
If you’re really into the whole time travel thing… look up John Titor on the Internet. And Julia, what a perfect synchronicity. Last night on Coast to Coast am, paranormal nighttime radio… coasttocoastam.com… here’s a show recap about a real time traveler ~ and, yeah, you can think I’m crazy, but I believe him. Because it makes sense to me.
Time Travel & Teleportation (Thu 11-11)
Part of DARPA’s Project Pegasus as a young child, and now a practicing attorney, Andrew D. Basiago claims to be one of America’s early time-space explorers, and revealed his experiences with time travel & teleportation research.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Vicky - I am going to check out The Doomsday Book - sounds good! I had the same issues with The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Savanna - I think Groundhog Day can be considered a feedback loop - only one person knows he’s stuck on the feedback loop and as such, he can change his behavior and thus the outcome.
I’ll have to look up the radio show. Sounds kinda scary…I do understand that scientists have been able to transport microscopic particles - you know, as in Star Trek via a transporter.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
What a thought provoking post!
I have a saying that keeps me motivated…”If you don’t do that today, the me of tomorrow is going to really pissed at you”.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Linda Howard has a pretty good time-travel novel. And Jude Devereax had one titled Knight in Shining Armor.
I think time is sort of like a ball of string and where the pieces of string touch is a doorway we can travel through. Getting back? Probably an iffy proposition.
I was looking for an idea for a story so maybe I’ll consider this.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Harris - sounds like something I’d say to my kids!
Anny - Yes, a new story for you!
November 13th, 2010 at 1:12 am
I love to read and write time travel novels. The fun thing is that there are so many different ways it can be written, and the possibilities are huge. Sci-fi does it so differently than romance. I think they are fascinating. I prefer happy endings, whatever the mode of travel or the theories behind it.
November 13th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Laura - thanks for stopping by and I agree the possibilities are huge. Scifi and romance tackle the same subject differently. Literary fiction, IMO, doesn’t always tackle it well.