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| The Time Machine (1960) |
There was a young lady of Wight,
Who travelled much faster than light,
She departed one day,
In a relative way,
And arrived on the previous night.
I have no clue as to who the original author is, only a vague recollection of discovery in a Stephen Hawking book.
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| In picture: Young lady of Wight |
Time travel has been a popular aspect of science fiction since the 19th century - perhaps even one of the first tropes to come to mind when one hears the phrase ‘sci-fi'. When and where was this idea first brought up? Well, like many others, the roots of time travel lies in -
Mythology
Different mythologies from around the globe have some or the other aspects of time travel embedded in them - one only has to look closely enough. Although, I have come to notice a pattern of two kinds of legends which may be classified as ‘time travel'.
The first is the idea the time passes differently in the heavens (or in other cases, like Japanese mythology, undersea castles), and earth. The first example to spring to mind is the story of King Kakudmi from Hindu mythology.
King Kakudmi had visited the god Brahma (‘the Creator'), to ask for advice about his daughter's marriage, only to find that the god engaged in watching a musical performance. The King waited patiently for Brahma's performance to end, but before he could start discussing suitors, Brahma laughed and informed him that the world he knew had long gone by.
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| Brahma, the Creator |
Brahma explained that during the time the King had been waiting, 27 Chatur-Yugs (roughly 113 million years), had passed on Earth. The potential suitors had already all passed away, as had their children, grandchildren and so forth.
The second type of legend is where there is no change in place, only one person staying stationary for a large period of time. I speak, of course, of the legends in the style of ‘Rip Van Winkle'. The Van Winkle legend, along with others in the same vein, are believed to have originated from the Jewish tradition, which features a story involving the first century BC scholar, Honi HaMe'agel.
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| Honi HaMe'agel, alias Honi the Circle-drawer |
Neither of these forms – i.e., different place, different passage of time or a venerated timeskip –admittedly, are what the modern reader would first imagine when someone mentions time-travel. But they certainly lay the groundwork for the later ground-breaking work (ehehe) by being the first to bring up the idea that time can be manipulated or distorted to begin with.
A Cautionary Tale
Time travel, most frequently, features creating an
envisioned future based on contemporary anxieties and then critiquing the hell
out of it. One of the first examples of time travel in fiction (according to
Michio Kaku anyway) is the very creatively named ‘Memoirs of the Twentieth
Century’.
Published anonymously in 1733, and claiming to be the first
of six volumes, it was written by an Anglican clergyman called Samuel Madden,
alias “Premium" Madden (I wish I knew why). The other five volumes were
never published and most of the copies of this one were
destroyed after the then–British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpoole decided to
suppress it. This means the book had very little impact of its own, since it
first re-entered publishing in 1972.
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| “In SIX VOLUMES" |
It is generally considered to be a work of satire on ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (1726).
(I am, retrospectively, baffled by the sheer proportion of
early eighteenth century satire work that seems to prop up on this blog. Maybe
I should write a book reflecting this anxiety, with a world where the primary
topic of interest is speculative science fiction from three hundred years ago
and describe how this interest will be the harbinger of societal doom. Isn’t
that an idea?)
It’s an epistolary novel, in the form of a series of letters
exchanged between 1997–98 from overseas British diplomats. Madden lived in a
world rife with tensions between Protestant England and the Catholic church.
His book, unfortunately, is scarcely bothered with technological advancement.
Madden instead focuses entirely on the political and religious state of the
future, mainly the rise of the Catholics and Jesuits (which, from my
understanding, is a Catholic religious order).
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Premium Madden; “His was a name Ireland ought to honour" |
In Madden’s future, most nations, including parts of
Europe, Africa, China, and Paraguay, are either directly controlled
by the Jesuits or are their vassals. The French king, King Louis XIX is a
weak ruler, controlled by his Jesuit prime minister. The Ottoman Empire
has fallen, replaced by a new regime that promotes Deism and Christianity, with
Jesuits having a strong presence. Even their traditional foes, like Russia,
have changed their ways – to say nothing of turning into an expansionist power.
Riveting, maddening stuff, he tells us.
Notably, he does not end up discussing the mechanics of time
travel in any real shape or form. Why do we have these letters? What is our
source? (There’s something about a guardian angel? Look, it’s magic. Leave it
be.) How do we know that this is our future and not someone
else’s?
Madden isn’t really bothered.
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| A pair of mediaeval angels (what's the instrument on the left?) |
This was his attempt to warn the Protestant world of what he saw as a looming threat. Although the book itself did not end up garnering publicity, this perspective on time travel continues to make it an popular vehicle for pointing out changes in society.
Another rising anxiety that simply cannot be ignored is the fear of the independent woman. ‘Anno 7603’, a play set in – you guessed it – 7603, describes a society where men and women’s roles are reversed and only women can join the military. It is considered to one of playwright Johan Herman Wessel’s lesser works and was never staged.
Utopias
‘Golf in the Year 2000, or, What We Are Coming To' is a much more interesting title, perhaps owing to the fact that it was written hundred years and some after ‘Memoirs...'. The 1892 novel by Scottish author and (quick, look surprised!) golfer J. McCullough, under the pseudonym J.A.C.K. His main character falls asleep, van Winkle style, and wakes up in the year 2000, to find a world run by women. Women do everything and see to everything; except for being Prime Minister and – you know – playing golf.
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| “It's a cross between Nostradamus and Van Winkle!" promises an auction house. |
A particularly...intriguing quote:
“Well,” I thought, “this has been a most eventful day. The year 2000, is it? I wonder if I’ll be back in 1892 to-morrow, or moved on perhaps another century or so. That chap Adams isn’t half a bad fellow, anyhow. Wonder what kind of a game he plays? Humph—going to teach me a thing or two, is he? We’ll see about that.”
The whole thing is almost facetiously golf-centric and the narrator is astonishingly incurious, to the point that I would personally call unhealthy. Thankfully, McCullough does end up endeavouring to talk about technology, and ends up predicting bullets trains, smart watches and TVs, albeit in different words – which is quite the feat. The narrator discovers the matriarchal nature of this world and decides that although the ‘masculinised' women are not to his liking, this is, indubitably a true utopia.
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| The only thing men can do. |
McCullough also predicts automatic golf clubs that keep score. I suppose that could work today by having the golf balls and the holes (if that's the official term) equipped with sensors and letting the ball be connected to the club itself by Bluetooth or other wireless means. Every time the club and the ball make contact, the counter increases by one, and when the ball triggers the sensors of the hole, the counters restart. A similar concept already exists in bats and wickets in cricket using heat signatures, so I don't see why an application in golf would be unlikely.
All this to say: where's my patent?
Contraptions
In 1887, Enrique Lucio Eugenio Gaspar y Rimbau published a Spanish novel, called ‘El anacronópete’ (‘flyer against time’). It features one of the first real examples of machinery/mechanics for time-travelling.
(Special mention: ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ by good Mr. Twain. It’s not that you can’t time travel – you just haven’t been hit on the head with a crowbar hard enough.)
Anyway, Gaspar y Rimbau’s machine, the anacronópete is an enormous iron box powered by electricity and generously also capable of producing ‘García fluid’, which prevents the passengers from growing younger as they travel back in time.
The first act (it’s divided into three) deals with explaining the concept of time-travel. We are told that time is caused by the atmosphere. This is evidenced by preservation of food in sealed cans – they are not in contact with the atmosphere and therefore get frozen in time. To travel backwards in time, one must fly fast in the opposite direction of rotation of the earth.
The novel promises to convince you that “Moving forward is not the hallmark of progress.” The travellers visit countries in the past and give them political advice (including recommending the the Queen of Spain to pay heed to Columbus, which, from my limited knowledge of the show, seems exceedingly Dr. Whoesque).
Two years after the publishing of ‘El anacronópete’, (i.e., 1888) English writer and father-of-time-travel-and-science-fiction-itself-to-a-certain-extent-other-than-Jules-Verne, H. G. Wells, ill and bored; published the short story ‘The Chronic Argonauts’ in a magazine. It is the second novel to feature an actual time machine. This would later develop into the book without which any discussing of fictional time travel remains incomplete: ‘The Time Machine’ (1895) by H. G. Wells.
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| H. G. Wells |
A Victorian scientist travels 8,02,701 years into the future, to find the separation of humans into two separate species: the bourgeoisie Eloi and the proletariat Morlocks. The Eloi, descendants of the upper-class, live a life of splendour, privilege and ease on the surface of the earth, whereas the Morlocks live underground and are described as terrible-looking beings responsible for any sort of production, really, that the civilisation can create.
There was a time, our unnamed main character known only as The Time Traveller, explains, when the Eloi’s ancestors dominated the working-class Morlocks. This form of civilsation had long crossed its peak, the Eloi had devolved into decadence and the Morlock had begun the practice of feeding on them. In the year the Time Traveller visits, Morlocks essentially keep the Eloi fed and alive for this purpose – practically cattle.
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| A Morlock holding an Eloi in The Time Machine (1960) |
The novel is, extremely obviously, a product of 1895 Britain. The Communist Manifesto had been published 1848 and had inspired criticism and restlessness from the public about the distribution of economic resources, alongside a general dissatisfaction with labour exploitation.
Not unlike the previous examples, Wells’ novel is a reflection and exaggeration of contemporary anxieties and an effort to point out the issues he perceived.
Wells employs the contrasts between the Eloi and the Morlocks to suggest that the chasms separating social classes in Victorian England are as pronounced as they are perilous, with the potential to result in a bifurcation, each species reflecting the most undesirable traits of humankind. He implores his audience to consider the consequences, warning that, if left unresolved, it may devolve into a far more sinister reality.
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| A Morlock preying on an Eloi child, illustrated by Tatsuyo Morino. |
This audience itself is not without representation in the book. The Time Traveller shares his stories with a roomful of social elites including a doctor, a journalist, a physician and so forth, i.e., people of influence. Like Wells himself, the Time Traveller tells his story in anticipation of meaningful change.
The Time Traveller’s identity has been a point of contention in its own right. Some critics view him as a poor caricature of a late Victorian scientist, while others interpret him as a more serious reflection of scientific progress. A third perspective views him steeped in mythic or self-idealised traits, drawing comparisons to legends like Oedipus or Ulysses.
He is, no doubt, derived from Dr. Nebogipfel of ’The Chronic Argonauts’. Dr. Nebogipfel is seen as a poor execution of a scientist figure. He is often compared to Victor Frankenstein or Dr. Henry Jekyll, with maximum emphasis on his alchemist and necromantic side, as opposed to actual scientific rationality. A popular choice for the origin of both, Nebogipfel and the Time Traveller, is Edison, thanks to his magic-light-wizard-man status in the late 19th century.
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| I'm just going to leave this here. |
The Time Traveller’s logic is of particular interest. He posits, to this assemblage of drunken aristocrats, that a dimension is what allows something – say, a cube – to exist. A cube must have a length, a breadth and a height – but if it doesn’t exist even momentarily, did it ever? Time, is therefore a dimension. And since other dimensions can be travelled through, time is no exception.
In this Day and Age
In Einstein’s 1915 paper, he explains that gravity can be described as a warping of space-time. This was later actually observed by the slight bending of light and radio waves when they pass by the sun. His claim, therefore, has experimental evidence, albeit only measurable by instruments, thanks to how small the bending really is. I don’t know if I’m more impressed by him or by those conducting the experiment.
Stronger fields than the sun can occur, such as in black holes or – hell – the Big Bang itself. In 1948, Kurt Gödel found a solution to Einstein’s equations that would allow you to “depart one day” and “arrive on the previous night”, given that it was a rotating universe. The only issue with this solution was that it did not allow for the expansion of the universe.
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| Einstein and Gödel. The latter is better known for his theories on incompleteness. |
Other solutions which allow for time travel have since been found. One of these is in string theory. String theory is odd from a science-fiction perspective. It is one of those concepts that loves being name-dropped in contemporary popular culture, but usually in a way to prove the intelligence of a character, rather than using it for the countless creative means it could be set to work on.
Either way. The strings in string theory (called ‘cosmic strings’) are like actual strings – i.e., have length but little to no cross-section. According to the solution, two cosmic strings moving past each other at almost light speed, but not quite, allows for time travel. The extreme tension on these two strings would allow the distortion of space-time, and therefore time travel.
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| Strings! |
The feasibility of time travel boils down how much space-time can be warped. Einstein’s relativity (much to his dismay) allows for it. Is it actually possible?
Another interesting construct which ties in with Gödel’s universe is the ‘closed timelike curve’ (CTC). Hawking says this is code for time travel, because a scientist in need of research grants and other forms of money cannot afford to be labelled a quack and must resort to jargon – but I digress.
A CTC allows an object to travel through space-time such that it returns to its starting point in both space and time. While general relativity does not forbid the existence of such curves, their practicality remains questionable due to challenges posed by quantum mechanics.
It simply wouldn’t do to leave out the ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridge’, known in popular consciousness as a ‘wormhole’. It involves connecting two points in space-time as a shortcut.
Now if one end of the wormhole were to experience different relativistic conditions than the other – say, by being accelerated to near-light speed or placed near a massive gravitational field – a time difference can be created between the two ends. This discrepancy theoretically enables time travel, allowing someone to step into the wormhole and emerge at a different point in time.
These have their own problems: astronomical energy requirements, far beyond our present civilisation; inherent instability; likely collapsing before you use them. The introduction of matter with negative energy (quantum mechanics actually allows this!) density has been suggested as a means of stabilising a wormhole, but such matter remains hypothetical. Science-fiction…till it’s not?
Paradoxes
You go back in time and stop your grandfather from ever meeting your grandmother. Now one of your parents doesn’t exist, so neither do you. Who stopped your grandfather from meeting your grandmother then?
(This assumes there’s nothing adoption or adoption-adjacent in the family.)
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| A paradox is defined as a self-contradictory situation. You can't both have had an effect on your grandfather's life and not existed. |
This is the grandfather paradox, and it highlights the tension between time travel and causality.
The ‘Novikov self-consistency principle’ is a proposed solution by Russian astrophysicist and cosmologist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov. It asserts that any actions taken by a time traveller were always part of history and cannot be changed. If you stop your grandparents from meeting, you will have inadvertently caused your grandparents to meet.
Quantum mechanics, of course, advocates the creation of a separate parallel universe for every possible outcome. In case of time travel, it says, the traveller enters a different branch of the multiverse, thereby avoiding paradoxes altogether.
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| Every branch comes from a different choice |
This idea aligns well with certain interpretations of string theory and quantum gravity, though it raises its own set of philosophical and practical questions. Is it truly ‘your’ past or future, or merely an alternate version?
Who even are ‘you’?
Alas. It seems I divagate. Again.
* * *
Halloa!
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-BracketRocket
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