problems of time travel being common and ordinary

[Harpo]

I accept the past as real, based on knowing that the post you wrote was written before the post I am currently typing. And similarly I accept that after I have posted this reply it will appear in this topic (in the future, as I type)
So yes the past and the future are real

Can you travel through an abstract concept? In fiction you can do anything, as we know from such examples as The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy, in which we can dine at the end of the universe if we've done six impossible things before breakfast

 

[Darth Angelus]

I accept the past as real, based on knowing that the post you wrote was written before the post I am currently typing. And similarly I accept that after I have posted this reply it will appear in this topic (in the future, as I type)
So yes the past and the future are real

Yeah, I accept the past and the future as real, too, for normal intents and purposes. However, it is an abstract, because linking to your example, your post does not exist as you type it. Neither the past nor the future IS. Just the present.
You can argue semantics all day, but the fact remains that if you take away abstractions that we use to understand the world around us, some things will just not be there.

Can you travel through an abstract concept? In fiction you can do anything, as we know from such examples as The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy, in which we can dine at the end of the universe if we've done six impossible things before breakfast

In fiction, yes, of course. The writer has to deal with some issues and conflicts this may create, though.

 

[Harpo]

And that's why short stories become long stories, which become longer stories

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Just to add to the abstract idea of time. There are two competing theories of time - i.e. what time is.

The first is the one we know, the A series of time, in which time passes. In this model time passes, the past is gone and therefore is no longer anything save an abstract concept, and the future does not yet exist. People who accept this view are often known as presentists, because in their understand there is really only the present.

The B series of time however takes the opposite view. Instead of time moving, we move through time. In this model the past exists in a very non abstract way as does the future, and the difference is that we are like readers of a book, reading only a fraction of a page at any one time while all other pages concurrently exist. Stalwarts of this view are known as Eternalists.

These two views have profound implications for time travel. For a presentist time travel is not possible because among other things it would lead to all sorts of paradoxes. For eternalist there are no such paradoxes, though time travel may still be impossible.

To explain, for an eternalist if you go back to the past and change it, however you want to, it's like going back to an earlier page of a book and rewriting it. Since the book is already written, all previous and future pages in black and white, changing what happens on one page will have no effect on what is written on any other page. So if I go back and kill grampa I will still exist with my happy memories of grampa. The only grampa that's dead is the one that was dead on the pages I went back to and killed him on. After that the old bugger was fine again.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[J Riff]

Which is why it's so dang much fun to write about. I just read one whre a guy and his Dad see an alien ship land. A monster comes out and they kill it. The alien ship is capable of interstellar travel, so the son trains for 5 years, then flies out to Alpha Centauri and lands on a planet where time runs backwards. (! The planet spins, uh, backwards, too...)
The son gets horribly ill on the planet and it takes him five years to fix the ship.
He returns to Earth and gets out of the ship, but he is now a hideous monster from his illness. He sees himself and his Dad, and they kill him.
So who built the ship?
Thats a 50s comic book story, but the same paradox applies every time, so good luck writing around it.

 

[Dave]

Jacob Von Hogflume 1864-1909