|
Not long back I read something in 'New Scientist' that described using black holes to make something like a wormhole that could allow stuff to go to a different time. It was interesting but there didn't seem to be a way for anything to survive the experience, and definitely no way to get back. So these things may be possible in theory, just, but not practical. But that should never spoil a good story.
The things that do spoil a good story for me involve ignoring the paradoxes. Others have mentioned the issues of changing history, including in a way that the time traveler was never born in the first place. Douglas Adams covered this well in his description of a famous cathedral which was obliterated because they needed to build a factory on the site, a really, really big factory and the only way to complete it on time was to go back to before the cathedral was built and start building the factory.
But the one that I think has not been mentioned is the overcrowding of historic events. The usual examples are Jesus dying on the Cross, or first coming out of the tomb. If we could time travel back to then there would be at least a million people standing around watching, probably many more. How did we not notice? Or how was this prevented?
Personally I'm not so fond of the time branching stories. This is not to be confused with alternate history stories, which I do like. But time branching can get away with anything and the cleverest stories make history work regardless of the time travel.
|