Abstract
One of the most persistent themes in science fiction and philosophical reflection alike is the question “What If—?” Give me a time machine, as Archimedes did not say, and I will change the past. But is it genuinely possible to modify what is already part of the historical record, even with time travel? Or is the logical impossibility of rewriting the known past sufficient evidence that time machines just cannot exist, no matter how much power and subtle knowledge is available?
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Notes
- 1.
From “JW”, at http://www.andre-norton-books.com/index.php/worlds-of-andre/series-by-andre-l-thru-z/time-traders-series/96-echoes-in-time . Sherwood Smith herself mentions some difficulties: “The road was not completely smooth… [Earlier volumes] were so very, very fifties. Cigar shaped rockets. Evil Russians. And the Baldies—the aliens with the big bald heads. These tropes, popular when I was a kid, had not aged well. But I had promised Andre that I would try to stay true to her original vision, and in our phone discussions, it became clear that, though she still read a great deal of anthropology and history for pleasure, she was not up on the rapidly changing world of high-tech. When I tried discussing ways of adapting the series for modern readers, it just made her confused and anxious” (“Andre Norton and Me,” Tor.com, Feb 17, 2012, quoted here with her permission). Ms. Smith’s changes and additions do seem suitable and helpful, but it is necessary to recall that Norton was then about 90 years old.
- 2.
See, for example, the story that made headlines in December 2017 when it was revealed after years of denial that the Pentagon had continued studying UFOs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/12/18/the-government-admits-it-studies-ufos-so-about-those-area-51-conspiracy-theories/
Fiction Works Discussed, Plus Suggested Reading
Robert Silverberg Hawksbill Station The Masks of Time/ Vornan-19 1968b
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Broderick, D. (2019). Empires of Time. In: The Time Machine Hypothesis. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16178-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16178-1_6
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