The past is either mutable or it is fixed. If you are writing a story about time travel, whether you pick mutable or fixed, you’re going to have to deal with disquieting consequences.
If history is immutable, you cannot fix the horrors of the past, but it is also the case that you cannot make your now worse. The timeline from which you started will stay the same. If you can tweak history, perhaps calamities can be prevented: the Challenger could be saved, the Titanic diverted, any number of terrible calamities prevented by the most trifling intervention. But if you step on the wrong butterfly, the world from which you started could be erased…
Immutable? Mutable? The authors of the following five works explored both…
“The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” by Alfred Bester (1958)
Discovering his wife in the arms of another man, scientist Henry Hassel is understandably vexed. Rather than settle for angrily lashing out at his unfaithful wife and her paramour, the brilliant physicist uses a time machine to travel back in time to murder his wife’s grandfather before his wife’s father is born. His wife is thus erased from having ever existed.
Imagine Hassel’s surprise when he returns to his home in time to discover that his wife has not vanished in a puff of logic as expected, but remains in the arms of her lover. Nothing for it but further pursue temporal vendetta by causing even greater alterations to the time stream. Vengeance will not be his. An all too late education in the nature of time ensues.
One might expect a scientist whose first foray into temporal engineering produced results wildly at odds from those predicted by his model would pause to reassess said model. In his defense, the professor was very upset.
Operation Time Search by Andre Norton (1967)
Hargreaves and Fordham hope to solve 1980’s resource shortages by plundering the Earth’s distant past. Inadvertently dispatching Ray Osborn backwards through time was not on the menu. Nevertheless, the astonished photographer is catapulted to a time when the land was covered in vast, ancient forests unknown in modern day Ohio. Osborn scarcely has time to take in his new surroundings when he is taken prisoner by Atlanteans.
The long struggle between malevolent Atlantis and virtuous Mu is nearing its end. Atlantis expects total victory. History suggests that catastrophe is more likely. Two continents will be annihilated so completely that their very existence is open to debate. Osborn thus has a choice: play passive witness to history and perish with Atlantis and Mu, or intervene to save both…with who knows what consequences for 1980?
It seems to me that extracting resources in the past will only exacerbate resource shortages in the present. I’d have more faith that the scientists know what they are doing, save for that potentially-altering-the-time-stream-by-accident thing.
Timescape by Gregory Benford (1980)
Among the wonders provided by the advance of technology are irreversible changes to ocean chemistry. Ocean food chain disruption is only the beginning. Humanity, lacking any means to halt the process once it’s been set in motion, may be doomed. Happily, John Renfrew may be able to save the present by altering the past.
Renfrew and his colleagues can send tachyons across space and into the past in order to warn past Earth and so prevent disaster. Renfrew is aware the desperate gambit faces serious impediments, not least its dependence on a scientist of the past having the necessary insight to detect tachyons and recognize them as a signal. In fact, due to an unforeseen characteristic of space-time, the plan will both succeed magnificently and fail abjectly.
This novel would have served as an excellent example for this venerable essay, as Benford’s July 1980 novel about forestalling global calamity by sending messages to the past was preceded by James P. Hogan’s March 1980 Thrice Upon a Time, which also focuses on forestalling global calamity using messages to the past. The two novels are distinguished by entirely different models of time, as well as by their prose. Which novel was better? The Benford won a BSFA for Best Novel, a Campbell Memorial Award, a Ditmar, and a Nebula whereas the Hogan … didn’t.
A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones (1987)
Time City has prospered thanks to its control of history… until now. Now Time City is threatened by accelerating entropy. Time City’s Sempitern (basically a mayor, more or less) and the Time Council are at a loss. The Sempitern’s young son Jonathan, on the other hand, is convinced he has a simple solution.
Jonathan has the name of the person blamed for Time City’s problems: Vivian Smith. All Jonathan needs to do is snatch the miscreant out of the time stream. What could go wrong with a such a simple plan? Aside from the minor matter that many people are named Vivian Smith and Jonathan has abducted the wrong Vivian Smith. Jonathan’s quest to save Time City now depends on the perspicacity of eleven-year-old war refugee Vivian Smith.
This novel could be read as a YA reply to Asimov’s The End of Eternity. One significant difference is that the protagonists are kids and not jaded adults. Another is, as with so many Jones novels, the adults in this book are not the sharpest or most useful crayons in the box.
The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig (2016)
Nix’s father Slate, struggling with a growing opium addiction, has been content to use his ability to Navigate his ship Temptation through time to satisfy immediate needs and desires. No grand architect of history, Slate is happy to take history as it is, save for one tragedy. If Slate could only find a map that would him back before his beloved wife’s death in 1868, he would save her regardless of the consequences.
When the means to reach 1868 appears within Slate’s grasp, Nix is forced to consider the potential consequences. A sufficiently dramatic historical change prior to Nix’s birth could erase Nix entirely. Lacking her father’s Navigation skill, it is unclear what Nix can do. Regardless, Nix must act or perish in the Winds of Change.
Caper fans may be interested to know a good chunk of the book involves a historical caper, the 1884 looting of the Hawaiian treasury.
It is a credit to Nix that she never considers the most obvious way to forestall her father’s plan, which is to jam a sharp marlinspike deep in her father’s head before disposing of his weighted corpse into the abyssal depths. No time traveler, no time traveler-related problems…
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Unexpected consequences due to dabbling in the past afford such rich plot possibilities that for every work I did mention, there are no doubt hundreds that I did not. Some of your favorites may have been omitted or erased from history thanks to some time-traveling fool. If so, feel free to mention them in the comments below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
