Behind the time loop 'experiment in style'
Plus science fiction discursions and a preview of a future 'experiment in style'
The articles in this section (Experiments in Stle Extra) are usually for paid subscribers only. However, for this one I've decided to open it to all because:
Firstly it will give people an idea of the sort of deep dive or meandering around the subject that these posts go into; and secondly, I mention a book I've been sent for review, so it's only right and proper to ensure that as many people as possible hear about it.
I had hoped to publish this at 2pm, which is what I’ve been doing, but (a) I was held up and (b) my time machine seems to be malfunctioning. Otherwise I’d have zipped back to 1pm, completed the article, and nobody would have been any the wiser.
But enough of this persiflage! On with the article.
The video below was created in Seeart.ai.)
Behind the time loop version
In case you missed it, the time loop version is here: Time loop. If you have not already read it I suggest you do so now, otherwise some of this won’t make as much sense as you’d like.
I’ve always loved time travel stories, and a particular kind of time travel story is what is known as a time loop. According to Steve Nallon and Dick Fiddy (see below),
A TIME LOOP is where time is, as it were, put on repeat. A loop, were you able to draw it, would be like an Escher sketch of a staircase that had no exit. If it were a road, it would send you back to where you started, a cul-de-sac, if you will, but with a door at the end that leads to where you began. And if want to think of a time loop in terms of Greek myths, it will be Sisyphus's worst possible nightmare.
In fact, it was this book that made me think of writing a time loop version, and it was more difficult than you might imagine — more of that in a moment or two. I’ll be writing a review of this book for Teach Secondary magazine, and I’ll publish that review here in due course. For now, take it from me that if you love time travel stories, this is a brilliant resource for finding books, TV series and films that feature such tales.
It’s also a good book for anyone, especially teachers, who want to stimulate discussion about either the scientific aspects of time travel, moral issues or even the great what-ifs of history1.
There’s a great example of the time loop idea in the Star Trek TNG episode called Cause and Effect, in Season 5. The Enterprise gets blown up, then catapulted back to before that happens. This keeps happening until the crew start to have the feeling that they’ve been through this before.
Perhaps the best known example is Groundhog Day, which I have known the story of for a long time, but watched only recently. In it the protagonist keeps waking up to the same day, a process that keeps repeating until he has learnt some lessons and changed. It’s a bit like the Eastern idea of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, in which you keep having to be reincarnated in order to learn certain lessons, after which you’ll have reached enlightenment (with a bit of luck!). Except that in Groundhog Day the phenomenon happens in a single lifetime.
Both the Star Trek episode and Groundhog Day are flawed though. If you were stuck in a time loop, you wouldn’t know about it. You certainly wouldn’t have any memory of an alternative or previous time.
The whole idea of time travel is fraught with paradox anyway. Suppose, for instance, that you went back in time and throttled Hitler at birth. If this had the desired effect of avoiding the Holocaust and the Second World War, on your return to the present nobody would have any knowledge of Hitler, and so nobody would want to go back and kill him, in which case he would live…
This is a variant of the grandfather paradox: if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you won’t get born, in which case you won’t travel back in time in order to kill your grandfather, in which case….
For an example of the idea that changes wouldn't be seen by people because they wouldn't remember the original version of events, see The Brooklyn Project by William Tenn in The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time.
Alternatively, there is a view that killing Hitler would achieve nothing, because of karma — this is the theme of I killed Hitler. Another view is that the past simply cannot be changed: see Try and change the past, by Fritz Leiber.
This is all nonsense looked at in one way, but can be a rich source of discussion. For example, My Object All Sublime, by Poul Anderson examines the theme of Crime and punishment.
In the story, which may be found in The Giant Book of Science Fiction Stories, the punishment has profound moral implications that extend beyond the person being punished.
I won’t spoil the story and the surprise ending, but it does raise issues which apply to other forms of technological inventions as well. Namely:
Our technological abilities seem to me to advance a lot faster than our ability to handle and control them, as opposed to them controlling us. Would you agree?
Are we in danger of losing touch with values like kindness and spirituality?
And if the answer to either of these points is “yes”, what should, or perhaps more realistically could, be done about them?
The End of Eternity, by Asimov, and The Guardians of Time, by Poul Anderson, both involve time travellers going back to the past to correct “mistakes”. In so doing, they raise the issue of who gets to have the right to say what the correct set of events actually is?
The questions raised in the time loop version, and why it was hard to do
In that post I suggested that two questions arose, and invited readers to say what they might be. I think the answer given by
was interesting. He wondered if the sequence would go on forever. The answer is yes, unless the Terry in the story broke the cycle by interfering with a key element. But that couldn’t happen, because he wouldn’t know he was stuck in an endless cycle, as explained above.The two questions I had in mind were:
Where did the sedative at the beginning of the story come from? The only reason that Terry took the sedative was that he was given it by a nurse who told him it would help him relax because he had concussion. But he didn’t have concussion before he banged his head, and one of the factors in his becoming disoriented was that he’d taken a sedative! Is your head hurting yet?
The second question is: how did this time loop happen in the first place? How should I know? What am I? A physicist?
The Terry in the story takes a sedative, and that is instrumental in creating the time loop. In the diagram below, Terry started from point A, went to the hospital (H), and decided to take the sedative he was given (S), thereby leading to a time loop. Had he refused to take the sedative, he would have just carried on as normal.
However, one of the ideas posited by science fiction writers, and even some scientists, is that some decisions lead to a kind of branching of reality, or that there are worlds parallel to ours involving the same people but where different decisions were made. This is shown in the diagram below:
In this case, there are two Terrys, Terry 1 (no sedative) and Terry 2 (sedative and, therefore, time loop). Both Terrys co-exist but in different dimensions.
Anyway, I realise that all this is completely bonkers, but it does serve to indicate, I think, why I found this version particularly hard. However I wrote it, it was fraught with paradox. In the end, after battling with the question of whether I should just jettison the idea completely, I decided to channel my inner Wellington and publish and be damned. I promise that the next ‘experiment in style’ will be rather less mind-bending, but I hope that you enjoyed reading the time loop version and this deep dive into it. Do let me know what you think.
A preview
One of the things I’ve been thinking of doing in these posts is giving a preview of a forthcoming ‘experiment in style’ or a work in progress. I’d love to know what you think of the idea. As a taste of what I’m talking about, here is a version I’ve been playing around with, imagining the editorial comments that might have been written had I submitted the original story to a magazine. This isn’t the whole thing, or even the final thing, but it will give you an idea of what I have in mind:
Please comment, share or subscribe. Thanks for reading!
The book doesn’t go into alternate histories, but I still think it could act as a natural springboard for such discussions.
Love the editorial comments, the red pen is always a friend. I like that version very much and if I were in your class, I think you might ask me if I had been paying attention *at all* to anything you've ever said. 😅
I applaud you for tackling this difficult topic! This is fascinating and can be examined from every possible angle. I have no answers other than there is just so much we don't know which sounds like a cop-out but is more of an admission of truth (from my perspective).