Quote from: Headless;1007985First sentence-  we all travel through time.  Only one direction though.  If you want to go faster. No problem. Slower, still no big deal.  Go backwards non-sense.

That wasn't my point, though.
Anticipation amounts to skipping a certain period and then going back and acting on that with pre-knowledge. Granted, usually that amounts to a very limited timeskip, but it still amounts to acting on the knowledge of something that has not happened.
If you can do that with purely mental skills, you can do better with a machine that allows you to travel. It's not a fundamentally different experience.

QuoteSecond sentence.  Words don't make sense any more dealing with time travel.

Except they do.

QuoteIf I go back to 1965, my being there can't be related to past experiences.  I wasn't born then.  I have no experience.  

Then go back to 1990, instead. Makes sense, doesn't it?

QuoteMost time travel stories are like trying to devide by zero.  Its not clever its non-sense.

No, it just seems to be your particular hang-up;).

Except that the thing you are anticipating hasn't happened and might not.  

Words aren't equations them seem to make sense even when they don't.  They are very powerful they can carry meaning both with and through non-sense.  

Go back to 1990?  Where are you going with this.  

You can have time travel stories.  You can have time travel shows which amount to going to a new place every week.  The new place is supposedly a different time but since every place is imaginary it doesn't matter.

If you try to have a plot based story where the plot turns on time travel it all falls apart on close examination.  Plot is a narritive about cause and effect, cause and effect are irrelevant to time travel.  It makes a mockery of them.

Quote from: Headless;1008386If you try to have a plot based story where the plot turns on time travel it all falls apart on close examination.  Plot is a narritive about cause and effect, cause and effect are irrelevant to time travel.  It makes a mockery of them.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong.  The entire concept of time travel is inextricably linked with Cause and Effect.  They stand astride Time Travel like a Colossus, influencing everything.  All you do while time traveling has an immediate effect as well as a temporal effect upon the Timeline (or Timelines).  Aside from academic research, in most stories the entire point of Time Travel is to cause an effect in the Timeline.

You all need to watch the new BBC 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' show. They are not attempting to film the books, but are using the characters for something new. The first season was good, the second is keeping the momentum going. Time-travel is a coherent and essential piece of season 1.

https://media1.tenor.com/images/66e7bdeb2ff88c7c31203de864ac3667/tenor.gif

Quote from: CRKrueger;1008387You couldn't possibly be more wrong.  The entire concept of time travel is inextricably linked with Cause and Effect.  They stand astride Time Travel like a Colossus, influencing everything.  All you do while time traveling has an immediate effect as well as a temporal effect upon the Timeline (or Timelines).  Aside from academic research, in most stories the entire point of Time Travel is to cause an effect in the Timeline.

Yeah two of the best Heinlein short stories are 'By His Bootstraps' and 'All you Zombies' where the cause and effect is central. 'All you Zombies' was recently adapted into the excellent film Predestination.

Quote from: Voros;1008399Yeah two of the best Heinlein short stories are 'By His Bootstraps' and 'All you Zombies' where the cause and effect is central. 'All you Zombies' was recently adapted into the excellent film Predestination.

"I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?"

I always found it interesting that Heinlein last short story was 'All you Zombies' and after that he wrote Starship Troopers. It's like he looked into the abyss (also sensed in Them, By His Bootstraps and The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag) and then turned around and ran the other way for the rest of his writing career.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1008387You couldn't possibly be more wrong.  The entire concept of time travel is inextricably linked with Cause and Effect.  They stand astride Time Travel like a Colossus, influencing everything.  All you do while time traveling has an immediate effect as well as a temporal effect upon the Timeline (or Timelines).  Aside from academic research, in most stories the entire point of Time Travel is to cause an effect in the Timeline.

Yes.  I recognize that.  And I catagoricly reject the entire genera.  Its all either non-sense or un-sense Asensecal.

The best is deliberatly outside of understanding.  But most of it is just deviding by zero and thinking its clever.

Quote from: Headless;1008403Yes.  I recognize that.  And I catagoricly reject the entire genera.  Its all either non-sense or un-sense Asensecal.

The best is deliberatly outside of understanding.  But most of it is just deviding by zero and thinking its clever.

Or maybe it's just a little beyond you.

Quote from: Schwartzwald;1002621Are there game settings you won't let a player into unless they are pretty familiar with it? I had a case where I let a guy who knew exactly jack shit about warhammer 40,000 into a game of dark heresy.

Let's just say the game became one of "let's explain to the FNG why we do everything grimdark here". I mean he just didn't get the settung at all.

I had him read a couple of my 40k novels and he finally got it then. Then he didn't want to do all that dark depressing stuff. :mad:

From now on anyone getting into a 40k RPG I'm running better know what it's about.

Any games you want players to be grounded in before playing?

Its difficult for total Newbies in an Exalted game unless you start off as mortals. There's allot of 'lore' established characters would know.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

There was plenty of wierd time traveling red head sex in the later novels.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;1008418Except Heinlein wrote a bunch of time travel novels after that.

I  meant the themes of existential dread in those stories not the use of time travel. I've never been able to struggle through the later novels which seem terribly written to me but I am aware they're full of Heinlein's solpilsism, but from what I dimly recall before I gave up on them they lacked the pathos of the stories I mentioned.

Well, time travel stories are not everyone's cup of tea I suppose. Personally I really enjoy them, but if they don't work for you, they don't work for you.

I am curious Headless, how do you feel about things like Back to the Future?

Quote from: Voros;1008402I always found it interesting that Heinlein last short story was 'All you Zombies' and after that he wrote Starship Troopers. It's like he looked into the abyss (also sensed in Them, By His Bootstraps and The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag) and then turned around and ran the other way for the rest of his writing career.

Short stories had stopped being "the backbone of SF" (meaning the way to make the most money) somewhat before then. His wife Ginny said that he continued writing them "out of habit." I think it might be easier  for the writer _and_ the reader to look into the abyss in the shorter forms.

Troopers was the last of thirteen novel written on his juvenile contract with Scribner's, so he had been running in that direction for over a decade. The deal was that the contract would end if and when his editor rejected one of them. When she rejected Troopers, he went out and sold it for more than he would have gotten from Scribner's. Even Ginny wasn't sure whether he'd written it expressly to end the contract.

I don't think he ever believed in any abyss but that wouldn't have kept him from writing about it if the money were rolling in.