Changing The Past

[Stephen]

Please pardon me if this has been discussed previously. I just became a member of this site & this is my first post. First off, I've been reading Stephen King (Richard Bachman) for years & I've read almost every non-fiction work he's produced (including "The Ledge" published in Playboy many years ago). I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them, even though you can count me as one of the disappointed over the way "The Dark Tower" series ended.

This was another great SK novel ... however, let me point out that changing the past is totally impossible ... even if we had the ability to travel back in time. Before the hordes devour me, let me explain why:
"If I could travel back in time & kill someone as the novel describes, I could also kill my own mother before I was born! But then I would never be born so I wouldn't exist to travel back in time to commit the murder. Therefore, as a physicist (no, not Sheldon Cooper) & a fantastic singer, I have to conclude that changing the past is impossible."

Now traveling forward in time & changing the future ... that's an intriguing idea & I can't prove that it's impossible. In fact, I believe it's quite possible.

CIAO

[GNTLGNT]

I've read almost every non-fiction work he's produced (including "The Ledge" published in Playboy many years ago).

...last I knew, The Ledge was fiction....
...as to the other points, again-the DT series is a work of fiction and as such, requires suspension of disbelief-it's not meant to be based on the laws of physics-just the enjoyment of a very long tale...

[JellybeanJay]

Great first post Stephen. Even though changing the past is impossible as you have pointed out, 11/22/63 was a fantastic story that let us all experience the "what if factor".

[Stephen]

My bad ... I meant to say I have read almost every fiction work Stephen King has written! I only pointed out the impossibility of changing the past because as a child I was fascinated by the idea of a time machine. The concept has been explored in comic books, novels, television shows, etc. This is still a great novel & I hope to see it made into a movie soon!

[champ1966]

Grandfather paradox

[Robert Gray]

Please pardon me if this has been discussed previously. I just became a member of this site & this is my first post. First off, I've been reading Stephen King (Richard Bachman) for years & I've read almost every non-fiction work he's produced (including "The Ledge" published in Playboy many years ago). I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them, even though you can count me as one of the disappointed over the way "The Dark Tower" series ended.

I can't imagine why you would be disappointed. It couldn't have ended any other way and in our guts (mine at least) we knew how it would end by book five at least. That is another discussion for another day.


This was another great SK novel ... however, let me point out that changing the past is totally impossible ... even if we had the ability to travel back in time. Before the hordes devour me, let me explain why:

The point of fiction is to make the impossible plausible and in doing so generate a good story. What is actually impossible is beyond the ken of you or I. As far as we know travel backwards in time is impossible in the first place until someone does it, let alone change things when you get there. It makes your whole comment kind of pointless doesn't it? Taking issue with time paradox is somewhat silly since the premise of the story hinges on "what if it was possible?" Like all good science fiction, it deals with the social, political, and ethical questions of something normally beyond means but now becoming possible.


"If I could travel back in time & kill someone as the novel describes, I could also kill my own mother before I was born! But then I would never be born so I wouldn't exist to travel back in time to commit the murder. Therefore, as a physicist (no, not Sheldon Cooper) & a fantastic singer, I have to conclude that changing the past is impossible."

You are regurgitating a popular time paradox here and all of us have heard it a thousand times before. While I don't see the point in wanting to argue with a fictional (and somewhat magical) process in a story, I'll play a long for a bit. Let me point out that I'm sure there were many great, learned men back in the day who took issue with the whole crazy idea that the world is round or the Earth revolves around the sun claptrap. I'm sure the made idiotic statements like, "therefore as a scientist and a really great Monk I must conclude a round world or the Earth revolving around the sun to be impossible." Do you see where I'm going with this? The more we learn the more we discover how little we know. Rehashing old paradox arguments is about as interesting as listening to people argue about how may actual episodes of Star Trek there are in fact.


Now traveling forward in time & changing the future ... that's an intriguing idea & I can't prove that it's impossible. In fact, I believe it's quite possible.

CIAO

Now I am going to be a bit snide. We are traveling forward in time right this moment. Every action we take is changing the future. I guess I would have to agree that forward momentum through time is possible at an impressive sixty seconds a minute. I'm going to drop the snide bit for a moment and point out that "time" itself is a meaningless term. It only exists as a measurement of decay. We measure seconds and minutes and days and weeks and years and decades and centuries and so on mainly by events. We mark events in a series. That is not time. We only consider it time because we are mortal and pass. Things break down and decay. As we speak the universe itself is hurtling away from itself, expanding ever outward at a high rate of speed (which we simply cannot sense). Time is meaningless to it until the point at which it entirely breaks down. Even then, since energy cannot be destroyed, things will just go on. Time (like math) is an artificial construct (a tool if you will) we use to make sense of things. Time, space, and dimension are all really terms we use to describe the LIMITATIONS of our current sensory array.

[bigguybb17]

Stephen - even though time travel seems impossible for many reasons, one thing does make it possible. A telescope can peer back in time in our universe to very near the beginning - just after the Big Bang. So, in fact we can travel back in time right now! As for the future - well, in 3 billions years, our galaxy will crash into Adromeda galaxy, and that will make a huge impact on our future.
Honestly, I'm just kidding around - I love SK's treatment of this period of history. It brought back many memories of that time, and the events that happened around that time. I would recommend this book to anyone for a good read, a great adventure, and some insight into that trajedy.

[Puro]

Generally, I like to think that if I traveled back in time and somehow caused the death of my father way back in the 70s, before I was conceived, I would still be able to just as easily travel back to the present day. It's just that that present day would be a January 2013 in which my mother had quite possibly never met my father, and I had never been born. It'd also be a January 2013 in which I had been completely and utterly absent since I left the 70s, and so no one anywhere would know me from Adam's house cat... even the folks I'd been friends with for years.

That's my take on it anyway.

I love to think about things like time travel, the multi-verse, and whatnot.

I have to admit though that if I found a doorway to 1958, I'd at the very least be tempted to just.... hang out. Say to myself, "Hey, I can get the 80s back!! Maybe even the 90s! All I have to do is not croak!"

I wonder what would happen if I went through the doorway to 1958, and then stayed there to 2013 and THEN went back through. Would I be back in the "present" 2011 or 2012? Having been gone for just a couple of minutes?

:)

[unclelouie]

You could go back in time and kill your own mother, and not be wiped out of existence. Time is not linear. If I went back to the 50s and killed my mama, she still would have had me prior to me killing her. See, it might be 2013 right this second, but if I went back to the 50s tomorrow and killed my mama, it would be MY future.

And NO I would never kill my mother!

[unclelouie]

PS- I think on the 2nd to last season of Lost one of those scientist dudes went back and killed his own mom by accident when she was on the Island back in the 60s or 70s.

[Ben E Gas]

I think that, in this book, when he went back in time and changed something, it created another string. So if you killed your own grandpa . . . or father, it would create another string of events. You would still exist, just no one would know who you are when you went back to the future. My head is starting to hurt.

[tjscotty]

At the end of the book Stephen King talks about how he and his wife disagree on whether or not conspiracy theories are relavant to JFK. The main turning point of many arguments is the coincidence of Ruby being able to kill LHO so conveniently two days after JFK has been killed. I would submit that someone could have given Ruby a police scanner which would have made it easy for him to arrive at the right time or just given him a hand signal. No one stopped him as he walked down the ramp and right up to LHO and shot him. But if anyone needs convicing just read Marilyn Monroe's "diary" who she called RED. There are three things that to me are very suspicious in regards to JFK being killed. First the secret service agents were ordered off the rear bumper of JFK's Lincoln, second the dealy plaza was noticeably less crowded than the rest of the parade route, third six detectives were posted in front of the school book depository waiting for LHO who disappointed them by ducking out the side door. IF LHO was really an assasin why not bring wth him his revolver? Why not have an escape route planned instead of coming back in to the city and going to a movie. The shoe salesman who spotted him was linked to CIA of course as was the lady who got him the job at the school book depository. Many years later when Sam Giancono was scheduled to testify before the Church committee he was killed just days before. And of course his killer also died. Too many coincidences for my taste. But to Stephen many kudos for invigorating my memories of this time and place. I thank you for a rewarding and interesting book.

[chestertherocker]

mother/father PARADOX I AM CONVINCED THERE are a few paradoxs for travelling into the future too. ... twin paradox. time travel either back/forward ius impossible take for instance acup of coffee you have in your hand and you drop it, if time wnet backwards this woulf remake itself but it doesn't Enjoy the book its really great.

[chestertherocker]

parallel worlds hmm interesting it would stop the paradoxes like grand father. But I think it is the way time flows in a circle or a straight line.

[Robert Gray]

If you want a metaphor which is visual in nature, think of the time stream as a gout of water coming out of your hose. To the casual eye, it looks like one big jet of smooth water. If you look closer and/or magnify the view, you would see thousands (if not millions) of little bubbles of water that create a near invisible mist just outside the main flow. Some of these drops of water drop back into the flow while other hang in the air and eventually pop.

Think of time as a stream wherein a certain amount of back flow creates little bubbles which rise from the main stream. These little realities of time continue until their epicenter, the person who has moved through time dies/ceases to exist, or until they rejoin the main stream. This means that IF you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you do not cease to exist. You have created a temporal bubble of which you are the center. You are in a pocket reality of sorts which, since it cannot rejoin the main time stream, will float on the winds of eternity until you pass naturally. Then your pocket reality will cease to exist. You will not have changed the main time stream, but you will have (at least for the duration of your existence) altered your own. If you travel in time and do not disrupt time in a meaningful manner, your bubble might simply merge back with the main stream as some bubbles of water do with the main water jet.

Time is an artificial concept created by our "perception" of reality. We perceive time because, in general, we are finite beings and will cease to exist at some point. This makes time painfully relative. There is that odd saying, "the universe began when I opened my eyes, and it will all end when I finally close them again." Please bear in mind that I am NOT attempting to describe how time travel works in Mr. King's book, but rather stating a variation of theory based on a graphic image which makes it easier to conceptualize by human beings.

[RichardX]

At the end of the book Stephen King talks about how he and his wife disagree on whether or not conspiracy theories are relavant to JFK. The main turning point of many arguments is the coincidence of Ruby being able to kill LHO so conveniently two days after JFK has been killed. I would submit that someone could have given Ruby a police scanner which would have made it easy for him to arrive at the right time or just given him a hand signal. No one stopped him as he walked down the ramp and right up to LHO and shot him. But if anyone needs convicing just read Marilyn Monroe's "diary" who she called RED. There are three things that to me are very suspicious in regards to JFK being killed. First the secret service agents were ordered off the rear bumper of JFK's Lincoln, second the dealy plaza was noticeably less crowded than the rest of the parade route, third six detectives were posted in front of the school book depository waiting for LHO who disappointed them by ducking out the side door. IF LHO was really an assasin why not bring wth him his revolver? Why not have an escape route planned instead of coming back in to the city and going to a movie. The shoe salesman who spotted him was linked to CIA of course as was the lady who got him the job at the school book depository. Many years later when Sam Giancono was scheduled to testify before the Church committee he was killed just days before. And of course his killer also died. Too many coincidences for my taste. But to Stephen many kudos for invigorating my memories of this time and place. I thank you for a rewarding and interesting book.

Ruby took his dog with him that morning. According to those who knew him, that dog was his closest companion. If he had planned to kill Oswald on national TV and be arrested, there is absolutely no way he takes his dog and leaves it in the car. He also arrives at the shooting location within one minute of Oswald's transfer. If this was a prearranged plan, there is no way they cut it so close. Why would they? Ruby had been hanging around the police station all weekend. No one would have cared if he stood around in the basement that morning with the press. Instead he is standing in line at the Western Union sending a money order when the transfer is in progress. He was not in any hurry. If one more person were in front of him, we would never had heard his name. JFK had ordered the Secret Service off the car in Florida. He obviously wasn't in on any plan to kill him. Nevertheless, Clint Hill made his way to the back of the car several times during the Dallas motorcade. There were Secret Service agents in the car with JFK. There was no good plan for escape after shooting the President. Oswald couldn't even drive a car! He left most of his money with his wife that morning because he expected to be killed or arrested at the scene. And he almost was. He was confronted by a police officer on the second floor but the building supervisor indicated he worked there. That allowed him to get out of the building. A random shoesalesman in Dallas was linked to the CIA? It's lucky the conspirators got Oswald to pass by him. LOL.

[jchanic]

I'm in the middle of a reread of Ken Grimwood's Replay.

The protagonist tries to stop the Kennedy assassination by writing a letter, purportedly by Oswald, threatening to kill Kennedy. Oswald is then arrested, but Kennedy is assassinated by someone else by a rifle shot in the Dealey Plaza. This guy is then killed by Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Police Station. An interesting angle.


John

[SharonC]

Generally, I like to think that if I traveled back in time and somehow caused the death of my father way back in the 70s, before I was conceived, I would still be able to just as easily travel back to the present day. It's just that that present day would be a January 2013 in which my mother had quite possibly never met my father, and I had never been born. It'd also be a January 2013 in which I had been completely and utterly absent since I left the 70s, and so no one anywhere would know me from Adam's house cat... even the folks I'd been friends with for years.

That's my take on it anyway.

I love to think about things like time travel, the multi-verse, and whatnot.

I have to admit though that if I found a doorway to 1958, I'd at the very least be tempted to just.... hang out. Say to myself, "Hey, I can get the 80s back!! Maybe even the 90s! All I have to do is not croak!"

I wonder what would happen if I went through the doorway to 1958, and then stayed there to 2013 and THEN went back through. Would I be back in the "present" 2011 or 2012? Having been gone for just a couple of minutes?

:)

DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN! NOT THE 80'S!

[Chris1974100]

wow nice analysis guys, truly 11/22/63 is amazing book