Time loop
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The closed loop in time, in which an event becomes its own cause, is the simplest narrative form of the time-paradox story, seized upon by several of the contestants invited by the editor of Amazing Stories to find a clever ending for Ralph Milne Farley's "The Time-Wise Guy" (1940). More notable examples include Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941), Bester's "The Push of a Finger" (1942), P. Schuyler Miller's "As Never Was" (1952) and Mack Reynolds's "Compounded Interest" (1956). Greater ingenuity is exercised when these loops become more complicated, forming convoluted sealed knots. Two classic exercises in this vein were written by Robert A. Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps" (1941) as Anson MacDonald and "—All You Zombies—" (1959), the latter being a story whose central character moves back and forth in time and undergoes a sex-change in order to become his own mother and father."--The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |
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A time loop or temporal loop is a scientific theory, used as common plot device in science fiction (especially in universes where time travel is commonplace) where a certain length of time (such as a few hours, or a few days) repeats over and over. When the time loop "resets", the memories of most characters are reset, and behave as though they're not aware of the loop. The plot is advanced by having one or more central characters retain their memory or become aware of the loop, sometimes through déjà vu.
One well-known example of this is in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, in which the main character is the only one affected by the time loop. Stories with time loops commonly center on correcting past mistakes or on getting a character to recognize some key truth; escape from the loop may then follow.
See also
- Time loop logic
- Butterfly effect
- Eternal return
- Grandfather paradox
- List of television series that include time travel
- List of films featuring time loops
- Ontological paradox
- Predestination paradox
- Time slip
- Time travel