They revel in their own smarts, not without reason. Time travel and related plot devices (alternative histories, garden-of-forking-path plots, Rip van Winkles, the lot) rely on such hoary old (!) science-fiction tropes that you’d think the whole sub-genre just about wrung out by now… except.Įxcept that the mechanics - how does it work, exactly? how does one keep the story from tripping over its own feet? - the mechanics seem to offer so many extraordinary challenges except that by definition they play with some of the things most precious to human beings: family (the kill-your-grandfather paradoxes), memory (once you’ve changed the past, can you still remember it?), destiny (must it always happen the same way?)…įurthermore, SF authors - also sort of by definition - are an inventive, imaginative lot.
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