Editing Time Travel (section)

=Conundrums=
Because time travel revolves around the concept of moving in a non-linear fashion through a medium that, to the best of our current knowledge, only ''can'' be moved in a linear fashion, it naturally invites a certain amount of logical conundrums and philosophical debates.

The biggest and most well-known of these conundrums is, of course, the "self-defeating time-trip" paradox. To try and put it simply; let's say that you go back in time to make sure that something doesn't happen - maybe you want to assassinate Hitler and stop the [[Nazi]]s causing World War II, that's a classic example. The thing is, if you ''do'' change the timeline by succeeding... then in the changed timeline, you would have no reason to go back and change history, so you wouldn't travel back in time. Which means the change wouldn't happen... which then means you'd live in the timeline where you'd want to go back and change it... which would ''erase'' your need to change it... which would ''create'' the need to change it... and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.

If your head is starting to hurt, well, there's a reason this has been popular with big-brained scientists alongside hack sci-fi writers.

The second-most famous of the time travel conundrums is the "grandpa assassination" paradox. Namely, if you kill one of your ancestors, then you should logically erase yourself from existence, setting up a same if=then loop as the previous example.

There have been several major methods settled on as a way to resolve the aforementioned paradoxes, varying in degrees of [[grimdark]].

The [[Multiverse]] theory is the most common, perhaps because it's the simplest. Basically, time is non-linear because it branches into parallel timelines; when you change history, you create an alternate timeline which you can then enter into from your original starting point, so it doesn't matter that your origins don't make sense in the course of this new timeline, because your roots are in an entirely different timeline, and you basically become a character in a universe-sized crossover fanfic.

The stable time loop method instead makes it that you ''can't'' change the flow of history; rather, your actions instead turn out to be necessary to ''cause'' history to take the path that you know, with your involvement simply being part of the secret true history that the common masses don't know.

Then there's the "self-correcting history" method, which is broadly similar to the stable time loop. Basically, the rough events of history are set in stone, but you can cause minor ripples. If you assassinate Hitler, there will still be a World War II, but some of the finer details may change - maybe a more competent Nazi leader takes over, maybe the Holocaust isn't made so high-priority that it eats up valuable resources intended for the front resulting in it killing far fewer people, maybe Germany becomes united under a militant communist regime instead of a fascist one. Either way, there's still going to be a big bloody war.

One of the rarest methods is the "living paradox" method. Basically, if you alter time in a manner that would logically erase you from existence, then your existence is erased, but you remain - a living ghost from a time that never was, an anomaly in the fabric of time itself. This may have serious metaphysical effects, or just give you an excuse to wangst.

These are just ''some'' of the many ways people have explored the repercussions of time travel. One particularly interesting scenario can be seen in [[Red Dwarf]], where one episode of the sixth season has the Boyz travel back in time in search of a fresh supply of curry and accidentally prevent the assassination of JF Kennedy in Dallas. Skipping forward a year in time to escape the cops, they find themselves in an abandoned Dallas, where newspapers reveal that due to surviving his assassination, Kennedy was eventually impeached and forced to leave the president's office in disgrace after his numerous affairs were revealed; this led to the mafia blackmailing Hoover to take the position in his place thanks to their having pictures of Hoover at a transvestite orgy, which in turn led to America ''not'' preventing Communist Russia from building missile silos in Cuba, resulting in mass panic and flight from America's major population centers. This in turn led to Russia winning the space race, and the erasure of the Jupiter Mining Corporation from existence, so they can't travel back to their own time. They attempt to fix this, but instead botch things so now Booth instead goes to a floor where he can't get a proper shot. How do they solve this? By finding the disgraced Kennedy on his way to prison and convincing him to travel back in time and assassinate ''himself'' as the legendary "gunman on the grassy knoll".