Time is an illusion

[Harpo]

Yes, I suppose this is possible. Have transporter 'pads' that can move you from one to another in both space and time. But there has to have been a 'pad' made at the other side to be able to make the journey.

It's entirely possible that in the near future with more and more powerful computers that even if we can't be transported back in 'real life' it can be done virtually. There's an episode of Black Mirror which deals with an eternal virtual existence.

Or just the same pad, existing for N years. When it eventually stops operating / wears out, that time is known, and a new model is installed beside it, so that travellers can simply transfer like they do with trains or lifts.
But the important part (along with the original one getting invented) is that future versions will eventually be made much simpler, smaller, etc etc, and then quite cheaply massproduced. And those are the ones that’ll get taken back in time and given to anyone and everyone to use, just like Tim Berners Lee gave everyone the World Wide Web immediately.

 

[BAYLOR]

Sounds interesting.

Fred Saberhagen was a terrific writer.

 

[farntfar]

There was a SF story I read many years ago. From what I recall, it was about somebody who had had a sex change (although you didn’t know because that was the twist), travelled back in time, bedded him/her self and subsequently gave birth to him/her self. It was quite confusing.

It's called "All you zombies", by Robert Heinlein.

 

[farntfar]

As (I think) I've mentioned before, time travel into the past must be impossible, because if it wasn't then someone from the future would at some point have returned.

This statement is like the Fermi paradox, and requires that the "visitor" from space or time allows themselves to be identified.
As we know from endless Star Trek episodes (from all the series), it's terribly easy to disguise the fact that you're from the future, or from another planet. All it requires is period dress and a woolly hat to cover your ears.

 

[Harpo]

This statement is like the Fermi paradox, and requires that the "visitor" from space or time allows themselves to be identified.
As we know from endless Star Trek episodes (from all the series), it's terribly easy to disguise the fact that you're from the future, or from another planet. All it requires is period dress and a woolly hat to cover your ears.

In my version, the first time traveller would be the temporal equivalent of Neil Armstrong, globally famous where he came from. And closely followed by his agent, paparazzi, etc etc, and then those people bringing us all the eventual uberupgrade versions.
Pity the poor eccentric inventor, who doesn’t get much of a mention in all this (like the computer programmers who worked out all the essential numbers for getting Neil and co to the moon and back safely)

 

[Wayne Mack]

Have you ever read the Veils of Azlaroc by Fred Saberhagen ?

Sounds sort of like the Legend of Brigadoon.

 

[Astro Pen]

Time is the resolution of quantum probability. Countless quadrillions of them each second.
The 'now' is the point where probabilities resolve to one.
The past is immutable, now locked, singular, because of that, The future still an open book because those multiple quantum probabilities are still there.
How this impacts on free will, I will leave to the philosophers.