From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihps3!ixn5c!inuxc!burton Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: re: "the past is determined by the future" Article-I.D.: inuxc.292 Posted: Wed Aug 11 09:38:06 1982 Received: Sun Aug 15 02:17:28 1982 References: pyuxjj.264 There is a fourth concept of time, which I have read about in only a few books: that time is an elastic parameter, which seeks to 'correct' any paradoxes which occur. Only forces acting from 'outside' the flow can make changes, and these changes only affect the timestream locally; the elasticity of the flow returns it to normal after a period of time (i.e., distance along the time stream, or megaflow). Anyone seeking to create a paradox from within the system (i.e., a time traveller) gets ejected from the past back to his own time; forward time travellers are stuck in the future, because by returning to the past, they have advance knowledge and so could cause paradoxes. These type of concepts can be found, for example, in Asimov's 'The End of Eternity' (the idea of a force outside the megaflow affecting the megaflow, with elasticity), and in a lot of Michael Moorcock's works (The Dancers at the End of Time, for example, where the paradox ejection effect is called the Morphail effect). To avoid the Morphail effect, time travellers have to insinuate themselves into the society of the era without causing any paradoxes; a difficult thing to do (in Moorcock's works, the people who can do this successfully form an elite society called The League of Temporal Travellers; they have a base set up in the far past, from which they monitor the megaflow and act to keep things running smoothly -- a tremendous responsibility, and one which gives rise to situations which bring characters from other of Moorcock's books together in intriguing combinations). Although this sort of resembles the time stream effect mentioned in an earlier article, I believe it is different enough to warrant separate consideration. Doug Burton ihps3!inuxc!burton