Time Travel
An exclusive article by @TheOrangutan

Time travel is probably one of the most fascinating and potentially complex areas of science fiction. I could probably waste pages going into immense detail here, but I’d probably end up trying to work out whether I still exist, if Kennedy shot John Lennon or, if I do exist, whether I’m my actually own father (this is technically possible in some part of Alabama and Dorset, UK).

Suffice to say, it’s very easy to tie yourself in knots. But, as with all things Science Fiction, and indeed writing, if you have the rules of your universe in place, your storyline planned, and your characters worked out in your head, you should be able to keep your storyline working regardless of how often you send your characters down the wrong trouserleg of time.

Orson Scott Card talks about several variations on the theme of Time Travel, all of which have been ‘done’ to a greater or lesser extent in film, TV, or literary form. They can take the form of Romantic yearning, comedic mishap, more serious social commentary on whether ‘we should if we could,’ and many things in between.

So, what kind of time travellers are your characters? There are a few basic types listed below as a start point :

1.    The Immune: a time traveller who can go back, make changes, but continue to exist as they are ‘outside time’ and therefore be immune to the change.

2.    The Careful Traveller: someone who can make changes but can also potentially destroy or irreversibly alter their present. So, this sort of traveller can do things like save people who’re about to die, or great works of art and bring them to their ‘present’ but has to be very careful about who and what they save, and how.

3.    The Inertial Traveller: where time has inertia, so even if Genghis Khan was wiped out for example there would still have been a similar leader and empire, and by the time the traveller gets back to ‘now’, time will have reasserted itself, and Genghis’ younger brother Imran would’ve sworn off cricket for world domination.  

4.    The Inconsequential Changer: a traveller who can only make changes that have no long-term effects, as any universe in which you change your own future could not exist. So you could go back and change the coffee cup your father drank from on the day of your conception, but not interrupt the act that produced you.

5.    The Watcher: can travel and watch events but not interfere in any way, and would be invisible to the local denizens of that timeline.

6.    The Lodger: where the traveller looks through the eyes of someone in the past. The brain he/she is in doesn’t know they’re there, but they can observe.

7.    The Younger You: similar to 6, but where the traveller goes back in time within their own life and mind. There are two subvariations to this one; one where the traveller watches, the other where the traveller can act and change things, but the younger would have no memory of what they’d done whilst the other ‘him / her’ was in control.

8.    The Observer: time TV, where the traveller doesn't travel as such but watches the various timelines unfold from the comfort of their Time Sofa (but the time remote is usually lost, or out of battery so you’re stuck on Channel You).

9.    The Avatar: where a machine or alternate body is arranged for the traveller to experience the past. Their consciousness is downloaded into the avatar and they get to wander around in it, think of it as historical joyriding.

There are almost infinite variations and cross pollinations of the above ideas, but these tend to be the most common in literature. As long as you, the writer, know where your boundaries lie then you should be able to write it convincingly without tying yourself, your father or your time trousers in a knot. Do that, and not even Doctor Who with the aid of a sonic screwdriver will be able to help you out.