Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site caip.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!pyrnj!topaz!caip!KFL From: KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Time travel Message-ID: <250@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 00:42:22 EST Article-I.D.: caip.250 Posted: Mon Oct 28 00:42:22 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 22:11:32 EST Sender: daemon@caip.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 32 From: "Keith F. Lynch"Date: Thu, 24 Oct 85 13:54:23 cdt From: Alan Wexelblat ... It seems to me that time travel *must* imply spatial (not necessarily space) travel because if you move in time, then the spot you left from is going to be in a different spatial location when you stop moving in time. This would only be true if velocities were absolute. They aren't. Can anyone think of SF in which time travel was explicitly separated from spatial travel? I can think of several. The authors obviously didn't undertand what they were talking about. To say that the earth was 'there' in 1955 and will be 'over there' in 2015 is meaningless. For instance see Benford's _Timescape_, in which, when sending messages to 1963, scientists in 1997 point their transmitter in the direction the earth was in 1963. This was the only major flaw in an otherwise excellent book. Also see James White's _Tomorrow_Is_Too_Far_, in which it is discovered that traveling a day back in time will put one in the outer solar system because the whole solar system moved in the meanwhile. (Also, the time travelers lose their memory and gradually regain it, both for no reason I could understand.) Both of these books share the implicit notion that it is the center of our galaxy which is stationary. Presumably a time traveler there would always remain in the same place. There is no better reason to regard that as non-moving as anyplace else. ...Keith