Just wrapping up today's newsletter, but I keep coming back to this statue and chuckling.
This is a depiction of Thucydides - but take a look at the pose chosen for immortalization.
If someone were going to make a statue of you...
a) what pose would you prefer to be in; and
b) what pose would be more accurate to how you lived your life? 👀
Only if the head buried in the sand has actually dipped through a wormhole, and is revelling in a world of wonders on the other side. :)
@MLClark Sounds like a Brannon Braga story idea. 🤮
Not enough time travel paradoxes... yet!! 😅
@MLClark I think I told you I have a time travel idea where the duo who travelled to the past do their best to change history but it never works, e.g. the guy puts a gun to his head but it misfires. There's only one timeline and you're fulfilling it, slick. My 🖕 to time travel stories.
I LOVE this idea. 😅 And I can't think of an example of it pulled off well before! #DoIt!
@MLClark A bit of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in it ... But generally a serious tale.
JMS did it, more or less, with B5's "War Without End." They have to go to the past because it's already happened. But they never really refused to go, they just took Sinclair at his word. And Zathras ... not to be confused with Zathras ...
Nah, the JMS version is a classic use of the time travel trope. Tons of stories have people go back to try change timelines, only to realize that their going back is part of the main timeline.
The version you were talking about read to me as people meeting with a universe emphatically, comedically, & in more extreme ways every time rebuffing the time travellers' attempts to change things.
Very much a goofier vibe, with more of an "Oh no you don't" character to the universe, too.
@MLClark Your interpretation is correct. The two protagonists travel back in time to try to change the course of history, to reverse one particular event. The problem is, every step of the way, they fail. After a while, they start to suspect the universe won't let them change history, which is when one even tries suicide but fails. Their attempts become increasingly outlandish. They finally accept they're doomed to stay in the past as part of history.
And that's a great concept. 🙂 JMS hasn't taken your thunder on this one!
Although maybe Zathras wrote fiction of this sort during his wait? 🤔 (Not that Zathras - the other one. 😉)
@MLClark Zathras write, Zathras hire agent, Zathras even pitch to big studio, but no one listened to Zathras.
No one EVER listen to Zathras! 😠
But Zathras get credit some day!
Seriously, though, I'm chuckling at the possibilities:
Every time they try to kill baby Hitler, they just kill another time traveller trying to kill baby Hitler.
Every time they try to send young Hitler to art school, they just cause another art school to burn down.
One even tries to charm Hitler's mother away from his father before he's conceived, but it's just mistaken identity after mistaken identity and a long line of confusingly distracting & wonderful hookups instead. 🙃
*I'll add that I don't actually like fiction that plays with what-ifs around Hitler, but when it comes to talking about tiresome time travel tropes, the "baby Hitler" hypothetical is one of the worst for me. It's not *really* about rectifying past injustice, so much as it's about giving armchair philosophers an abstract excuse to do violence, from which they can justify other acts of violence in the world today. It's a really ugly facet of the time travel plot device.