Time travel in fiction
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| - | :''[[time travel in fiction]]'' | + | :''[[time travel]]'' |
| - | '''Time travel''' is the [[hypothetical]] or [[fictional]] [[travel]] at will to the [[past]] or the [[future]], typically by means of a machine (a [[time machine]]) or a [[wormhole]]. | + | |
| - | ==Ideas from fiction== | + | |
| - | :''[[time travel in fiction]]'' | + | |
| - | ===Types of time travel=== | + | '''[[Time travel]]''' is a common theme in [[science fiction]] and is depicted in a variety of media. |
| - | Time travel themes in [[science fiction]] and the media can generally be grouped into two main types and a third, less common type (based on effect—methods are extremely varied and numerous), each of which is further subdivided. These classifications do not address the issue of time travel itself, i.e. how to travel through time, but instead call to attention differing rules of the time line. | + | |
| - | :1. The time line is consistent and can never be changed. | + | == Literature == |
| - | ::1.1 The [[Novikov self-consistency principle]] applies (named after Dr. [[Igor Dmitrievich Novikov]], Professor of Astrophysics at [[Copenhagen University]]). The principle states that the timeline is totally fixed, and any actions taken by a time traveler were part of history all along, so it is impossible for the time traveler to "change" history in any way. The time traveler's actions may be the ''cause'' of events in their own past though, which leads to the potential for circular causation and the [[predestination paradox]]; for examples of circular causation, see [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s story ''[[By His Bootstraps]]''. The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that the local laws of physics in a region of spacetime containing time travelers cannot be any different from the local laws of physics in any other region of spacetime, which distinguishes this idea from 1.2 below. | + | Time travel can form the central theme of a book, or it can be simply a plot device. Time travel in fiction can ignore the possible effects of the time-traveler's actions, as in ''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'', or it can use one resolution or another of the [[Grandfather paradox]]. |
| - | ::1.2 One does not have full control of the time travel, due to some new physical laws that take effect at the time travel. One example of this is in [[Michael Moorcock]]'s ''[[The Dancers at the End of Time]]'' in which time has tendency to reject time travelers who travel to the past to change it by pulling them back to the point from when they came. | + | |
| - | ::1.3 Any event that appears to have changed a time line has instead created a new one. It has been suggested that travel to the past would create an entire new parallel universe where the traveler would be free from paradoxes since he/she is not from that universe. | + | |
| - | :::1.3.1 Such an ''event'' can be the life line existence of a human (or other intelligence) such that manipulation of history ends up with there being more than one of the same individual, sometimes called ''time clones''. | + | === Early stories featuring time travel without time machines === |
| - | :::1.3.2 The new time line might be a copy of the old one with changes caused by the time traveler. For example there is the ''Accumulative Audience Paradox'' where multitudes of time traveler tourists wish to attend some event in the life of [[Jesus]] or some other historical figure, where history tells us there were no such multitudes. Each tourist arrives in a reality that is a copy of ''the original'' with the added people, and no way for the tourist to travel back to ''the original'' time line. | + | Although ''[[The Time Machine]]'' by [[H. G. Wells]] was instrumental in causing the idea of time travel to enter the public imagination, non-technological forms of time travel had appeared in a number of earlier stories, and some even earlier stories featured elements suggestive of time travel, but remain somewhat ambiguous. |
| - | :2. The time line is flexible and is subject to change. | + | * ''Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' (1733) by [[Samuel Madden]] is mainly a series of letters from English ambassadors in various countries to the British "Lord High Treasurer", along with a few replies from the British foreign office, all purportedly written in 1997 and 1998 and describing the conditions of that era. However, the framing story is that these letters were actual documents given to the narrator by his [[Guardian angel (spirit)|guardian angel]] one night in 1728; for this reason, Paul Alkon suggests in his book ''Origins of Futuristic Fiction'' that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel who returns with state documents from 1998 to the year 1728", although the book does not explicitly show how the angel obtained these documents. Alkon later qualifies this by writing "It would be stretching our generosity to praise Madden for being the first to show a traveler arriving ''from'' the future", but also says that Madden "deserves recognition as the first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backwards from the future to be discovered in the present." |
| - | ::2.1 The time line is extremely change resistant and requires great effort to change it. Small changes will only alter the immediate future and events will conspire to maintain constant events in the far future; only large changes will alter events in the distant future. (Example: [[The Saga of Darren Shan]], where major events in the past cannot be changed, but minor events can be affected. This is explained as if you went back in time and killed [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]], another [[Nazi]] would take his place and commit his same actions.) | + | * In the play [[Anno 7603]], written by the [[Dano-Norwegian]] poet [[Johan Herman Wessel]] in 1781, the two main characters are moved to the future (AD 7603) by a good fairy. |
| - | ::2.2 The time line is easily changed. (Example: [[Doctor Who]], where the time line is fluid and changes often naturally; even changes to the traveler's own timeline are possible, though it is suggested such an act would destroy most of the universe.) | + | * In the science fiction anthology ''Far Boundaries'' (1951), the editor [[August Derleth]] identifies the short story "Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism", written for the ''Dublin Literary Magazine'' by an [[Anonymity|anonymous]] author in 1838, as a very early time travel story. In this story, the narrator is waiting under a tree to be picked up by a [[Coach (vehicle)|coach]] which will take him out of [[Newcastle upon Tyne|Newcastle]], when he suddenly finds himself transported back over a thousand years, where he encounters the [[Bede|Venerable Bede]] in a [[monastery]], and gives him somewhat ironic explanations of the developments of the coming centuries. It is never entirely clear whether these events actually occurred or were merely a dream. |
| - | :3. The time line is consistent, but only insofar as its consistency can be verified. | + | * The book ''Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men)'' by the French botanist and geologist [[Pierre Boiterd]], published posthumously in 1861, in which the main character is transported to various prehistoric settings by the magic of a "lame demon", and is able to actively interact with prehistoric life. |
| - | ::3.1 The [[Novikov self-consistency principle]] applies, but if and only if it is verified to apply. Attempts to travel into the past to change events are possible, but provided that: | + | * The short story "[http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a2221.pdf The Clock That Went Backward]", written by editor [[Edward Page Mitchell]] appeared in the ''[[New York Sun (historical)|New York Sun]]'' in 1881, another early example of time travel in fiction. |
| - | :::-They do not interfere with the occurrence of such an attempt in the present (as would be the case in the [[Grandfather Paradox]]), and | + | * ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889) by [[Mark Twain]]. |
| - | :::-The change is never ultimately verified to occur by the traveler (e.g. there is no possibility of returning to the present to witness the change). | + | * ''[[Tourmalin's Time Cheques]]'' (1891) by [[Thomas Anstey Guthrie]] (written under the [[pseudonym]] F. Anstey) was the first story to play with the paradoxes that time travel could cause. |
| + | * ''[[Golf in the Year 2000]]'' (1892) by [[J. McCullough]] tells the story of an Englishman who fell asleep in 1892 and awakens in the year 2000. The focus of the book is how the game of golf would have changed by then, but many social and technological themes are also discussed along the way, including a device similar to [[television]] and [[social equality|women's equality]]. | ||
| - | There are also numerous science fiction stories allegedly about time travel that are not internally consistent, where the traveler makes all kinds of changes to some historical time, but we do not get to see any consequences of this in our present day.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} | + | ===Time traveling themes and ideological function=== |
| - | ====Immutable timelines==== | + | A number of themes tend to recur in science fiction time-travel stories, often with enough variation to make them interesting. |
| - | Time travel in a type 1 universe does not allow any [[paradox]]es, although in 1.3, events can ''appear'' to be paradoxical. | + | *'''Taking technology to the past''' In these stories a visitor to the past changes history using knowledge from their own time, either for evil or good, or sometimes accidentally. Examples of this genre include the classic ''[[Lest Darkness Fall]]'' by [[L. Sprague de Camp]]. |
| + | *'''The Guardians of Time''' In this genre a group of people are charged with ensuring that time turns out 'properly' (or protecting it from changes by other travellers). This includes Hugo winner [[The Big Time]] and the other Change War stories by [[Fritz Leiber]], [[Terry Pratchett]]'s humorous ''[[Thief of Time]]'', and [[Simon Hawke]]'s [[TimeWars]] series. Another good example of this concept is the popular sci-fi series [[Doctor Who]]. | ||
| + | *'''Unintentional change or fulfillment'''. In these stories a time traveller intends to observe past events, but discovers that he or she has unintentionally either prevented or created the events. ''[[Behold the Man]]'' is an example of this kind. | ||
| - | In 1.1, the Novikov self-consistency principle asserts that the existence of a method of time travel constrains events to remain self-consistent (i.e. no paradoxes). This will cause any attempt to violate such consistency to fail, even if extremely improbable events are required. | + | {{Quote|The '''time travel''' motif also has an ideological function because it literally provides the necessary distancing effect that science fiction needs to be able to metaphorically address the most pressing issues and themes that concern people in the present. If the modern world is one where the individuals feel alienated and powerless in the face of bureaucratic structures and corporate monopolies, then time travel suggests that Everyman and Everybody is important to shaping history, to making a real and quantifiable difference to the way the world turns out]].|Sean Redmond|Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader (2004)<ref name=Redmond>Redmond, Sean (editor). ''Liquid Metal: the Science Fiction Film Reader.'' London: Wallflower Press, 2004.</ref>}} |
| - | :Example: You have a device that can send a single bit of information back to itself at a precise moment in time. You receive a bit at 10:00:00 p.m., then no bits for thirty seconds after that. If you send a bit back to 10:00:00 p.m., everything works fine. However, if you try to send a bit to 10:00:15 p.m. (a time at which no bit was received), your transmitter will mysteriously fail. Or your dog will distract you for fifteen seconds. Or your transmitter will appear to work, but as it turns out your receiver failed at exactly 10:00:15 p.m., etc. Examples of this kind of universe are found in ''[[Timemaster]]'', a novel by Dr. Robert Forward, the ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode "[[No Time Like the Past]]", and the 1980 [[Jeannot Szwarc]] film ''[[Somewhere in Time (film)|Somewhere In Time]]'' (based on [[Richard Matheson]]'s novel ''[[Bid Time Return]]''). | + | ==Time travel as a defining characteristic of science fiction== |
| - | In 1.2, time travel is constrained to prevent paradox. If one attempts to make a paradox, one undergoes involuntary or uncontrolled time travel. In the time-travel stories of [[Connie Willis]], time travelers encounter "slippage" which prevents them from either reaching the intended time or translates them a sufficient distance from their destination at the intended time, as to prevent any paradox from occurring. | + | {{Quote|[[Science fiction]] is, in essence, a '''time travel genre'''. Events either open in the altered past, the transformed present, or the possible future, transporting the reader or viewer to another age, place, dimension or world.|Sean Redmond|Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader (2004)<ref name=Redmond />}} |
| - | :Example: A man who travels into the past with intentions to kill Hitler finds himself on a Montana farm in late April 1945. | + | {{Quote|When science fiction time travels one truly knows that one is in science fiction because time travel provides [...] the futuristic narrative dynamic needed for the [[genre]]. |Sean Redmond|Liquid Metal: the science fiction film reader (2004)<ref name=Redmond />}} |
| - | An example which could conceivably fall into either 1.1 or 1.2 can be seen in book and film versions of ''[[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban]]''. [[Harry Potter (character)|Harry]] went back in time with [[Hermione Granger|Hermione]] to change history. As they do so it becomes apparent that they are simply performing actions that were previously seen in the story, although neither the characters nor the reader were aware of the causes of those actions at the time. This is another example of the [[predestination paradox]]. It is arguable, however, that the mechanics of time travel actually prevented any paradoxes, firstly, by preventing them from realizing ''a priori'' that time travel was occurring and secondly, by enabling them to recall the precise action to take at the precise time and keep history consistent. | + | ==Time travel in science fiction versus fantasy== |
| - | In 1.3, any event that appears to have caused a paradox has instead created a new time line. The old time line remains unchanged, with the time traveler or information sent simply having vanished, never to return. A difficulty with this explanation, however, is that conservation of mass-energy would be violated for the origin timeline and the destination timeline. A possible solution to this is to have the mechanics of time travel require that mass-energy be exchanged in precise balance between past and future at the moment of travel, or to simply expand the scope of the conservation law to encompass all timelines. Some examples of this kind of time travel can be found in [[David Gerrold]]'s book ''[[The Man Who Folded Himself]]'' and [[The Time Ships]] by [[Stephen baxter|Stephen Baxter]], plus several episodes of the TV show ''Star Trek: The Next Generation''. | + | Stories that involve '''time travel''' devices and technologies that take people backwards and forwards in time and space are considered part of the '''science fiction genre''', whereas stories that involve time travel through supernatural, magical, or unexplained means are considered part of the '''fantasy genre'''. |
| - | ====Mutable timelines====<!-- This section is linked from [[Back to the Future Part II]] --> | + | The genre of science fiction is often characterized by incorporating technology either as “a driving force of the story, or merely the setting for drama.”<ref name=Goldschlager>Goldschlager, Amy; Eos, Avon. "[http://www.sfsite.com/columns/amy26.htm Science Fiction & Fantasy: A Genre With Many Faces]." ''SF Site,'' 1997.</ref> Therefore, it is this key component—technology—that can be used to distinguish between time travel of the science fiction and [[fantasy]] realms. |
| - | Time travel in a Type 2 universe is much more complex. The biggest problem is how to explain changes in the past. One method of explanation is that once the past changes, so too do the memories of all observers. This would mean that no observer would ever observe the changing of the past (because they will not remember changing the past). This would make it hard to tell whether you are in a Type 1 universe or a Type 2 universe. You could, however, infer such information by knowing if a) communication with the past were possible or b) it appeared that the time line had ''never'' been changed as a result of an action someone remembers taking, although evidence exists that other people are changing their time lines fairly often. An example of this kind of universe is presented in ''[[Thrice Upon a Time]]'', a novel by [[James P. Hogan (writer)|James P. Hogan]]. The [[Back to the Future trilogy]] films also seem to feature a single mutable timeline (see the [http://www.bttf.com/film_faq.htm Back to the Future FAQ] for details on how the writers imagined time travel worked in the movies' world). By contrast, the short story ''Brooklyn Project'' by [[William Tenn]] provides a sketch of life in a Type 2 world where no one even notices as the timeline changes repeatedly. | + | |
| - | In type 2.1, attempts are being made at changing the timeline, however, all that is accomplished in the first tries is that the ''way'' of how decisive events happen is changed; final conclusions in the bigger scheme cannot be brought to a different outcome. Example: In the Movie [[Deja Vu (film)|Deja Vu]] a paper note is being sent to the past with vital information to prevent the main plot incident. All that happens, though, is that an ATF agent gets killed, with the final disaster still not being prevented; also, the very same agent died in the previous version of the timeline as well, albeit under different circumstances. Finally though, the timeline is changed (Claire Kuchever is being saved from murder) by sending a human back into the past in order to prevent the murder of Claire and the main incident (a terrorist attack), which is arguably a "stronger" measure than simply sending back a paper note. | + | [[Isaac Asimov]], when asked to explain the difference between science fiction and fantasy, once explained that science fiction, given its grounding in science, is possible; fantasy, which has no grounding in reality, is not.”<ref name=Goldschlager/> |
| - | :Similar to the [[Back to the Future trilogy|Back to the Future movie trilogy]], there seems to be a [[Ripple effect#Movies|ripple effect]] (changes from the past 'propagate' into the present, and people in the present have altered memory of events occurred after the changes made to the timeline) | + | |
| - | :The type of timetravel in Deja Vu fits the 2.1 Type very well: Sending the paper note seems to be too "weak" a measure to cause any permanent effect, but agent Carlin going back into the past has a final decisive impact. | + | |
| - | The science fiction writer [[Larry Niven]] suggests in his essay ''The Theory and Practice of Time Travel'' that in a type 2.1 universe, the most efficient way for the universe to "correct" a change is for time travel to never be discovered, and that in a type 2.2 universe, the very large (or infinite) number of time travelers from the endless future will cause the timeline to change wildly until it reaches a history in which time travel is never discovered. However, many other "stable" situations might also exist in which time travel occurs but no paradoxes are created; if the changeable-timeline universe finds itself in such a state no further changes will occur, and to the inhabitants of the universe it will appear identical to the type 1.1 scenario.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} This is sometimes referred to as the "Time Dilution Effect." | + | Any story involving time travel may be considered to include an element of science fiction. However, novels and short stories from the science fiction genre usually feature time travel via technology (a 'time machine') rather than time travel by supernatural means, and often play with the possibility of [[Physical paradox#Causality paradoxes|time paradoxes]] such as the [[grandfather paradox]].<ref>Odgers, Sally O. "[http://www.twilighttimes.com/Odgers4a.html SF? Fantasy? What's the difference?]" ''Twilight Times,'' 1999.</ref> |
| - | + | ||
| - | Few if any physicists or philosophers have taken seriously the possibility of "changing" the past except in the case of multiple universes, and in fact many have argued that this idea is logically incoherent, so the mutable timeline idea is rarely considered outside of science fiction. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | Also, deciding whether a given universe is of Type 2.1 or 2.2 can not be done objectively, as the categorization of timeline-invasive measures as "strong" or "weak" is arbitrary, and up to interpretation: An observer can disagree about a measure being "weak", and might, in the lack of context, argue instead that simply a mishap occurred which then led to no effective change. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | An example would be the papernote sent back to the past in the film Deja Vu, as described above: Was it a too "weak" change, or was it after all just (time-local; that is, in the past) bad circumstance which made it have no effect, but it might have worked if the paper note would have been sent back 1 hour earlier, or 1 hour later into the past? As the universe in Deja Vu seems to be not entirely self-preserving from paradoxes (some, arguably minute, paradoxes, do occur), both versions seem to be equally probable, to which the film gives no further clarification. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | ===Gradual and instantaneous=== | + | |
| - | In literature, there are two methods of time travel: | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | 1. The most commonly used method of time travel in science fiction is the instantaneous movement from one point in time to another, like using the controls on a [[CD player]] to skip to a previous or next song, though in most cases, there is a machine of some sort, and some energy expended in order to make this happen (Like the time-traveling [[De Lorean DMC-12|De Lorean]] in ''[[Back to the Future]]'' or the [[phonebooth]] which traveled through the 'circuits of history' in ''[[Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure]]''). In some cases, there is not even the beginning of a scientific explanation for this kind of time travel; it's popular probably because it is more spectacular and makes time travel easier. The "Universal Remote" used by [[Adam Sandler]] in the movie ''[[Click (film)|Click]]'' works in the same manner, although only in one direction, the future. While his character Michael Newman can travel back to a previous point it is merely a playback which he cannot interact with. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | 2. In ''[[The Time Machine]]'', [[H.G. Wells]] explains that we are moving through time with a constant speed. Time travel then is, in Wells' words, "stopping or accelerating one's drift along the time-dimension, or even turning about and traveling the other way." To expand on the audio playback analogy used above, this would be like rewinding or fast forwarding an analogue audio cassette and playing the tape at a chosen point. This method of gradual time travel is not as popular in modern science fiction. Perhaps the oldest example of this method of time travel is in [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Through the Looking-Glass]]'' (1871): the White Queen is living backwards, hence her memory is working both ways. Her kind of time travel is uncontrolled: she moves through time with a constant speed of -1 and she cannot change it. [[T.H. White]], in the first part of his Arthurian novel ''[[The Once and Future King]]'', ''[[The Sword in the Stone]]'' (1938) used the same idea: the wizard Merlyn lives back in time, because he was born "at the wrong end of time" and has to live backwards from the front. "Some people call it having second sight", he says. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | ===Time travel, or space-time travel?=== | + | |
| - | An objection that is sometimes raised against the concept of time machines in science fiction is that they ignore the motion of the Earth between the date the time machine departs and the date it returns. The idea that a traveler can go into a machine that sends him or her to 1865 and step out into the exact same spot on Earth might be said to ignore the issue that Earth is moving through space around the Sun, which is moving in the galaxy, and so on, so that advocates of this argument imagine that "realistically" the time machine should actually reappear in space far away from the Earth's position at that date. However, the [[theory of relativity]] rejects the idea of [[absolute time and space]]; in relativity there can be no universal truth about the spatial distance between events which occurred at different times (such as an event on Earth today and an event on Earth in 1865), and thus no objective truth about which point in space at one time is at the "same position" that the Earth was at another time. In the theory of [[special relativity]], which deals with situations where gravity is negligible, the laws of physics work the same way in every [[inertial frame of reference]] and therefore no frame's perspective is physically better than any other frame's, and different frames disagree about whether two events at different times happened at the "same position" or "different positions". In the theory of [[general relativity]], which incorporates the effects of gravity, ''all'' coordinate systems are on equal footing because of a feature known as "diffeomorphism invariance". | + | |
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| - | Nevertheless, the idea that the Earth moves away from the time traveler when he takes a trip through time has been used in a few science fiction stories, such as the [[2000 AD (comic)|2000 AD]] comic ''Strontium Dog'', in which Johnny Alpha uses "Time Bombs" to propel an enemy several seconds into the future, during which time the movement of the Earth causes the unfortunate victim to re-appear in space. Other science fiction stories try to anticipate this objection and offer a rationale for the fact that the traveler remains on Earth, such as the 1957 Robert Heinlein novel ''[[The Door into Summer]]'' where Heinlein essentially [[handwaving|handwaved]] the issue with a single sentence: "You stay on the [[world line]] you were on." In his 1980 novel ''[[The Number of the Beast (novel)|The Number of the Beast]]'' a "continua device" allows the protagonists to dial in the six (not four!) co-ordinates of space and time and it instantly moves them there—without explaining how such a device might work. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | In Clifford Simak's 1950s short story "Mastodonia" (later broadcast on the X Minus One radio anthology show and then significantly re-written into a longer novel of the same name) the protagonists are aware of the possibility of changes in ground level while traveling back in time to the same geographical coordinates and mount their time machine in a helicopter so as to not materialize underground. When the helicopter is damaged beyond repair while in the past, they then build a mound of rocks from which to launch their return to the present. | + | |
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| - | The television series ''[[Seven Days (TV series)|Seven Days]]'' also dealt with this problem; when the chrononaut would be 'rewinding', he would also be propelling himself backwards around the Earth's orbit, with the intention of landing at some chosen spatial location, though seldom hitting the mark precisely. In [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''[[Incarnations of Immortality#Bearing an Hourglass|Bearing an Hourglass]]'', the potent Hourglass of the [[Characters from the Incarnations of Immortality#Norton|Incarnation of Time]] naturally moves the Incarnation in space according to the numerous movements of the globe through the solar system, the solar system through the galaxy, etc.; but by carefully negating some of the movements he can also travel in space within the limits of the planet. The television series [[Doctor Who]] cleverly avoided this issue by establishing early on in the series that the Doctor's [[TARDIS]] is able to move about in space in addition to traveling in time. | + | |
| + | == See also == | ||
| + | {{col-begin}} | ||
| + | {{col-2}} | ||
| + | * [[Time travel in science fiction]] | ||
| + | * [[List of time travel science fiction#Time travel in science fiction literature|List of time travel science fiction literature]] | ||
| + | * [[List of time travel science fiction#Time travel in science fiction films|List of time travel science fiction films]] | ||
| + | * [[List of time travel science fiction#Time travel in science fiction television series|List of time travel in science fiction television]] | ||
| + | * [[List of games containing time travel]] | ||
| + | * [[List of fictional characters who can manipulate time]] | ||
| + | {{col-2}} | ||
| + | * [[Ontological paradox]] | ||
| + | * [[Grandfather paradox]] | ||
| + | * [[Predestination paradox]] | ||
| + | * [[Time viewer]] | ||
| {{GFDL}} | {{GFDL}} | ||
Revision as of 18:06, 12 May 2009
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Time travel is a common theme in science fiction and is depicted in a variety of media.
Contents |
Literature
Time travel can form the central theme of a book, or it can be simply a plot device. Time travel in fiction can ignore the possible effects of the time-traveler's actions, as in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or it can use one resolution or another of the Grandfather paradox.
Early stories featuring time travel without time machines
Although The Time Machine by H. G. Wells was instrumental in causing the idea of time travel to enter the public imagination, non-technological forms of time travel had appeared in a number of earlier stories, and some even earlier stories featured elements suggestive of time travel, but remain somewhat ambiguous.
- Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) by Samuel Madden is mainly a series of letters from English ambassadors in various countries to the British "Lord High Treasurer", along with a few replies from the British foreign office, all purportedly written in 1997 and 1998 and describing the conditions of that era. However, the framing story is that these letters were actual documents given to the narrator by his guardian angel one night in 1728; for this reason, Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of Futuristic Fiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel who returns with state documents from 1998 to the year 1728", although the book does not explicitly show how the angel obtained these documents. Alkon later qualifies this by writing "It would be stretching our generosity to praise Madden for being the first to show a traveler arriving from the future", but also says that Madden "deserves recognition as the first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backwards from the future to be discovered in the present."
- In the play Anno 7603, written by the Dano-Norwegian poet Johan Herman Wessel in 1781, the two main characters are moved to the future (AD 7603) by a good fairy.
- In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), the editor August Derleth identifies the short story "Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism", written for the Dublin Literary Magazine by an anonymous author in 1838, as a very early time travel story. In this story, the narrator is waiting under a tree to be picked up by a coach which will take him out of Newcastle, when he suddenly finds himself transported back over a thousand years, where he encounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery, and gives him somewhat ironic explanations of the developments of the coming centuries. It is never entirely clear whether these events actually occurred or were merely a dream.
- The book Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men) by the French botanist and geologist Pierre Boiterd, published posthumously in 1861, in which the main character is transported to various prehistoric settings by the magic of a "lame demon", and is able to actively interact with prehistoric life.
- The short story "The Clock That Went Backward", written by editor Edward Page Mitchell appeared in the New York Sun in 1881, another early example of time travel in fiction.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain.
- Tourmalin's Time Cheques (1891) by Thomas Anstey Guthrie (written under the pseudonym F. Anstey) was the first story to play with the paradoxes that time travel could cause.
- Golf in the Year 2000 (1892) by J. McCullough tells the story of an Englishman who fell asleep in 1892 and awakens in the year 2000. The focus of the book is how the game of golf would have changed by then, but many social and technological themes are also discussed along the way, including a device similar to television and women's equality.
Time traveling themes and ideological function
A number of themes tend to recur in science fiction time-travel stories, often with enough variation to make them interesting.
- Taking technology to the past In these stories a visitor to the past changes history using knowledge from their own time, either for evil or good, or sometimes accidentally. Examples of this genre include the classic Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp.
- The Guardians of Time In this genre a group of people are charged with ensuring that time turns out 'properly' (or protecting it from changes by other travellers). This includes Hugo winner The Big Time and the other Change War stories by Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett's humorous Thief of Time, and Simon Hawke's TimeWars series. Another good example of this concept is the popular sci-fi series Doctor Who.
- Unintentional change or fulfillment. In these stories a time traveller intends to observe past events, but discovers that he or she has unintentionally either prevented or created the events. Behold the Man is an example of this kind.
Time travel as a defining characteristic of science fiction
Time travel in science fiction versus fantasy
Stories that involve time travel devices and technologies that take people backwards and forwards in time and space are considered part of the science fiction genre, whereas stories that involve time travel through supernatural, magical, or unexplained means are considered part of the fantasy genre.
The genre of science fiction is often characterized by incorporating technology either as “a driving force of the story, or merely the setting for drama.”<ref name=Goldschlager>Goldschlager, Amy; Eos, Avon. "Science Fiction & Fantasy: A Genre With Many Faces." SF Site, 1997.</ref> Therefore, it is this key component—technology—that can be used to distinguish between time travel of the science fiction and fantasy realms.
Isaac Asimov, when asked to explain the difference between science fiction and fantasy, once explained that science fiction, given its grounding in science, is possible; fantasy, which has no grounding in reality, is not.”<ref name=Goldschlager/>
Any story involving time travel may be considered to include an element of science fiction. However, novels and short stories from the science fiction genre usually feature time travel via technology (a 'time machine') rather than time travel by supernatural means, and often play with the possibility of time paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox.<ref>Odgers, Sally O. "SF? Fantasy? What's the difference?" Twilight Times, 1999.</ref>
