Why Is Time Travel So Pleasurable?

time-travel stories about Orson Welles, John Lennon, David Bowie, more

Why is time travel so pleasurable?  I mean to read or watch on the screen or listen to in a radio play or an audio book - and, in my case, to write - because I am sure I've never actually time traveled (living into the future a moment at a time is not actually time travel, in my book, which would entrail traveling to the future faster or slower than in normal time or traveling to the past at all).  And I'm almost as sure which is to say very sure that no one else has ever time traveled, or will time travel, either.

And that's why time travel is my favorite kind of science fiction, which makes it my favorite kind of fiction, period - precisely because it’s almost certainly impossible. Not like travel to other planets, which makes great science fiction, but we're already beginning to do in reality. Or artificial intelligence and robots, which also makes for great science fiction, but we're also already beginning to do, a least little. But time travel is different because it's so likely impossible - as far we know, we're not doing any of it today, and have never done it. As far as we know, no one from the future has yet to pay us a visit. And because time travel is so likely impossible, seeing how time travel stories can work, can make sense, anyway, is a special kind of enjoyable.

Why is time travel impossible? Well, if you travel to the past to change whatever event, and you succeed, how would you have had knowledge about the event you went back to change in the first place? This is often called the grandfather paradox – if you go back in time and accidentally kill your grandfather, then you wouldn’t have been born, so how could you have gone back in time in the first place? But actually there’s no need to kill anyone in your ancestral family for this paradox to be upon you, the time traveler. Anything you do, when you travel back in time, that invalidates the reasons or necessary ingredients for the trip, would trigger the paradox.

There are lots of ways out of this, such as the multiple-worlds interpretation, which works like this: Time traveler 1 (TT1) from World 1 travels back in time, and accidentally prevents either set of grandparents (or parents) from meeting. So TT1 is never born. And in that world - call it World 2 - since TT1 doesn’t exist, there may never be any time travel. But that’s ok, because it was TT1 from W1 who went back in time, stopped the grandparents or parents from meeting, which resulted in W2 with no TT1 or TT2. So: no paradox at all with these multiple worlds.

But if our existence really consisted of an infinite number of multiple worlds or realities, with a new one triggered with every drop of the time traveler's figurative hat, that would make for an existence far more insane than just our normal world would be with time travel, right? I mean, a new world created with every drop of the time traveler's hat, or even if no hat is dropped, by the time traveler just catching someone's eye at just the right or wrong time, and distracting that person for some kind of crucial instant - well, hey, that's even crazier than time travel, right?

All right, but what about travel to the future? No grandparent paradoxes there, but we run into other serious problems. If I travel one day into the future, and I see you wearing a blue hat, what does that mean for you? That you have no choice but to wear a blue hat? Well I don’t know about you, but I think I have a choice about what color hat to wear tomorrow, or not wear any hat at all. We call that free will. Don’t you think you have that ability too, or do you think everything you do from now on is available to the scrutiny of anyone in your vicinity who travels into the future, which would result in your doing just that, and only that, whatever other ideas you might have between right now and tomorrow about what to wear on your head or otherwise do tomorrow?

Time travel is such a pleasurable exercise for the mind that I get a kick just thinking about it, making the impossible seem possible, and writing stories and novels with those paradoxes and loops. But reading a great novel like Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity or Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, or seeing a movie like Back to the Future (any of the three) or 12 Monkeys or Primer, or a new television series like Travelers (back next week for its second season) or Dark or Erased (all on Netflix) – well, that’s always a big treat indeed. If you’ve read this far, I’d bet that at least some part of your brain agrees … at least, in this timeline.

 
It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the 
set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, 
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

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Erased: Finding His Way to the Real Timeline

One of the pleasures of Netflix is finding a movie or a TV series you never heard of, likely never would have, and finding it to be a gem.  Erased (aka Bokudake ga Inai Machi), just up on Netflix this weekend, is such a series.

It's 12 episodes, 30 minutes or less each, and time travel.  How could I resist?  It's in Japanese, with English subtitles, and its lead character experiences what he calls "revivals," or flipping back briefly into the past, to save someone in danger.  That is, until his mother is murdered, he's a suspect, and he finds himself 18 years in the past, in the body of his younger self - in grade school - and determined not only to save his mother, but a group of girls who have been kidnapped and murdered back then.

Beautifully photographed, with shimmering snow scenes and rusty sunrises and even smoking factories that set the ambience, Erased is told with delicacy and depth, and excellent performances by Yûki Furukawa as 29-year-old Satoru,  RiRia as 10-11-year old Satoru, and all the other kids and adults in the series.  There's no explanation given for the time travel, which makes Erased more fantasy or magical realism that science fiction, but that's just fine for this softly focused story.

Satoru's key problem, tied to stopping the murders, is which reality he in effect creates by changing something in the past is the one that was meant to be?   The ending provides a satisfying answer.  I was able to spot the serial killer pretty early on, but since so much of the story was what Hitchcock called suspense (knowing there's a bomb ticking on a bus) not surprise (there's an unexpected explosion), that worked well for me, too.  Good job by director Ten Shimoyama  and writer Kei Sambe.  Special kudos for outstanding cinematography to Koshi Kiyokawa.

Check our Erased for a very different kind of time travel story, with lots of narrative in grade school, but a profundity that transcends age.



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My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2017

Continuing the tradition - just started two years ago - here is my Top 10 list for 2017,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Vikings was on my Top 10 list last year (that would be season 3).  Season 4 was excellent, but not quite as good in previous seasons.  (Season 5 has just begun, and I'm already liking it a little more than Season 4.) Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.   Apples and oranges: Veep is still hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Same for the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is in an hilarious class of its own. Closest runners-up: Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime): sequels, especially broadcast years later, are always a difficult proposition, but Twin Peaks did this insanely well, literally;  Game of Thrones (Season 7) (HBO): best season so far, we finally got to see the dragons in action; Ozark (Netflix): an original, engrossing crime drama in an unlikely place; The Break (Netflix): top-notch Belgian noir, The Crown (Netflix): peerless drama of the first years of Queen Elizabeth II;  Mindhunter (Netflix) think Criminal Minds, unhindered by network mores

-> 17 December 2017 shoutout to Erased, a charming, very different kind of time travel series on Netflix, which I just saw last night.  It will definitely be on my Top 10 list next year.

-> 28 December 2017 I just finished streaming Travelers 2 - the first season was on my Top 10 list last year (2016) - Travelers 2 will surely be on my Top 10 list next year.

And now the Top 10:

10. 19-2 (final season, Acorn): back on the list from last year, one of the best cop shows ever on television; sorry to see it conclude

9. The Deuce (HBO): a gritty, in-your-face look at prostitution and the dawn of the porn industry in 1970s New York City, as only HBO can do it

8. Big Little Lies (HBO): sly, well-acted, delicious, brutal, and criminal

7. Four Seasons in Havana (Netflix): Cuban noir, based on four novels, about the exploits of detective with a secret life as a writer - you can't go wrong with this gem

6. Narcos (Season 3) (Netflix): 3rd year in a row on my Top 10 list, you can't beat the pace, the realism, and the sarcasm of the DEA-agent narrator

5. Dark (Netflix): there was a lot of time-travel on television in 2017 (12 Monkeys, Timeless, Time After Time, Somewhere Between, Outlander), but this German outing was the best, and wove at least half a dozen major paradoxes into the story

4. The Orville (Fox): the closest thing ever on television to the original Star Trek series, with some of The Next Generation on board with equivalent characters; and The Orville is often laugh-out-loud funny

3. Fauda (Netflix): a brilliant, riveting Mossad spy story, swat-team narrative, which treats Israelis and Arabs with almost equal sensitivity

2. Longmire (final season, 6) Netflix: this series just got better and better every every season, and saved the best for last with a truly satisfying story that tied up most of the loose ends

1. Sense8 (season 2) Netflix: telepathy is a relative rarity in science fiction, and Sense8 did it masterfully and memorably; destined to become a classic which will be watched for decades to come

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015 and My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2016