paradox

[druiaghtagh]

anybody know of any time travel paradoxes in books apart from the Grandfather paradox

[gazzawazza]

This may be a stupid question but have I missed something? What is the Grandfather paradox?

[jenstar]

I assume the Grandfather paradox means going back in time, meeting your grandmother and becoming your own grandfather. Another Time Travel paradox would be effect preceding cause. I know it's not a book, but there are several amusing examples of this in the film Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure where they defeat the baddies by deciding to go back in time afterwards and setting the situation up.

[Pinotage]

I think it would be easier to list time travel books that DO NOT have paradoxes!

[Cathy]

Another film paradox is in the latest version of "The Time Machine" where Guy Pierce's character couldn't save his fiancee in the past because if she was alive, he wouldn't invent the time machine. As for the grandfather paradox, isn't it that if you kill your grandfather you cease to exist, and are therefore unable to kill your grandfather?

[druiaghtagh]

thanks to all who have answered,Cathy , you are indeed correct about Grandfather paradox

[Pinotage]

My previous answer was a bit flippant - and incorrect. I was thinking of the issues raised by time travel, ratherthan paradoxs. So how about this from a Fredric Brown story.

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Earth and its Mars colony are at war when an alien fleet appears and blasts Venus destroying the planet and the millions of earth colonists, then heads towards earth. The mars and earth fleets stop fighting each other and unite to anniliate the invaders. The two planets sign a peace treaty and decide to build a vengeance fleet that will go and destroy the aliens home planet - theyc ould calaculate the route they'd come from. They'd use a new faster than light drive, but it'd take 10 years to build the fleet and ten years for the journey. It would be headed by the Admiral who commanded the terrestrial fleet and combined mars/earth fleet. The universe is round and time goes backwards as you exceed the speed of light. In the ten year journey the vengeance fleet, travelling in a straight line, circled the universe retuning to its point of departure ten years before it left. It destroyed the first planet it came to before the admiral recognised the terrible truth and ceases fire to be destroyed by the combined mars/earth fleet commanded by himself.

[Merthyr Imp]

Two of the best short stories dealing with time travel are both by Robert Heinlein - 'By His Bootstraps' and 'All You Zombies'. Although the latter is perhaps a little over the top in that the hero becomes both his own father and his own mother!

[incitatus]

there are also lots of issues in other works- try Larry Nivens "large spinning cylinders and the possibility of global causality violation" for example, where the universe itself takes preemptive action to avoid the invention of a time machine, or a short story by Ray Bradbury called " a sound of thunder" where a killed butterfly changes history, or basically any Dr Who story....