I discount most time travel material as just plain impossible. The multiverse theory I also discount, because it denies the laws of thermodynamics... you can't be "splitting off" new universes (and creating new energy) every instant something changes, and not go to entropy mighty fast. I consider the multiverse theory to mean that there are multiple possibilities of different universes for every change... but once the change is made, a "decision" is reached, and all the possible alternatives collapse into one.
My Kestral novels (and Sol) use a variation of the Alcubierre drive to allow FTL travel... basically, creating a bubble of "speeded-up" time outside of the ship to go FTL, then a second field that encloses the ship and "slows down" time, averaging the two out so the same time passes inside the ship as outside the bubbles.
I consider the idea complete balderdash, really. I only used them because they are part of the "accepted language" of popular SF, up there with transporters and humanoid aliens.
I firmly believe that if time travel were possible, we would have found inescapable signs of its having happened already... most likely in the records of strange or unexpected events, or unexpected outcomes of critical events that would have created a very different reality had they happened as expected.
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