I've always wondered this about books or movies which deal with time 'disruptions'.

I'll use an exanple from TEA. When Thursday is in the time warp, driving her car, she sees a figure in bed with an injured arm and recognizes herself in teh near past, the night she had the prophetic dcream. She says she 'knew what she had to say" and so did, in order not to disturb the time continuum. 'Cause if she didn't say, "take the job in Swindon", she wouldn't be in Swindon etc etc.

But as the story is being told to us should we assume this has been happening over and over in a cyclical fashion.. this happens in the past so that the futre can happen but in the future you must do certain things in order not to disturb the past... etc etc.

or is this the first time it has hapened?

Since Mr. Next can move about and change things and is familiar with different versions of Time, maybe this is the first time Thursday dreams she sees her future self in the fancy car.

and does any of this post make sense?



Post Edited (07-07-03 21:08)

The more I read of Jasper's use of time, the more it reminds me of those Tralfamadorians (now that I've actually read Slaughterhouse-5), who do not see Time sequentially but concurrently, and simply visit the times they like best as they see fit. I think Colonel Next views Time in very much the same way. Causality in this view of Time becomes a little fluid; in order for something to happen, something else must happen .... but not necessarily in any particular order, because if Time is not sequential, there is no order, and we only see it like that because our perception is limited.

Or we could just blame it on Quantum.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I don't believe it was a dream at all. Thursday really did see herself and Bowden in a car while she was in hospital (because they actually were there, briefly), and she really did return in the car with Bowden to visit herself in the hospital later. No dream involved, so far as I could see.

BTW, I suspect that if Thursday had said something else, she would have been sideslipped into a timestream in which that *was* what her future self had said while she was in the hospital, and that's how she would suddenly remember it.

Is that followable at all? It makes perfect sense to me.....

sorry, didn't mean to emphasize the dream-like quality of the incident. That wasn't my point at all. I wondered more about the cyclical quality of events. But as Jon points out, it's only my limitation of having to think 'linearly' that even causes me to raise the question.

When I was a child I used to think that time was a big circle. I still kind of think of a year that way, and I 'look' along the curve to the months ahead or back to the months that have passed. years are like parallel discs. OK, am I weird enough to be on this board now??

But yeah, Magda, I suppose you're right and:
> if Thursday had said something else, she
> would have been sideslipped into a timestream in which that
> *was* what her future self had said while she was in the
> hospital, and that's how she would suddenly remember it.

But to state the obvious for my own newbie sake, if she hadn't told herself to take the job she might not have, and then wouldn't have been properly placed for all that happened, including intercepting Landen's wedding.

That's always the problem with time travel - you can't help but set up paradoxes. Physicists have the same problem when they think about it. One theory runs as follows: it happens, so why worry about ti?



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I mean, I suppose we could just say "whatever, it happens" to anything in the books. You really have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy them. But it's waaaaaaaaaay more fun to speculate, non??



Post Edited (07-08-03 22:42)

My disbelief has been well and truly suspended.


By a noose, one suspects.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

These cyclical time thingies really don't break many laws of physics... not the important ones, anyway. A garbled version of something I've been reliably informed is a logical event follows:

a snookerball travels down the table. It is hit by another ball and falls into a pocket... which just happens to be a wormhole that sends it backwards in time, and a few inches in space so that it becomes the ball that hit itself in the past.

This sort of thing happens all the time on an atomic... or possibly sub-atomic... scale, and questions like 'what happened the first time' don't make sense.

Shift happens.

Rob, who has read too much pop-science for his own good

--
"What're quantum mechanics?"
"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."
Terry Pratchett, Eric

"Shift happens." -- LOL! I love it. thanks...



Post Edited (07-09-03 06:04)

Hi guys, im a bit of a new comer for both the forums and to Fforde books. i have only read "The Eyre Affair" so far, but am just getting started on "Lost In A Good Book". I dont mean to sound whiny or anything, but i am only kinda young, i dont know about the age of everyone else in here, but by your sense of general knowledge in so many things i have a feeling you would be older than me. I am 18, and i had to do an assignment on Jane Eyre at school... and this book really interested in me, i had some trouble with understanding a few things, but i am pretty sure that i managed to read it and throughly enjoy it.

I think with the whole time continum .... i think it depends on how you interpret the book, or how you interpret/see time itself. Whether you see it as a cyclical jounrey through life, or whether you see it concurrently like Jon said. I think its a matter of personal belife in what "time" is, and how you interpret the book.

Hi, meeba _

Welcome to the fforum. Many of us who were already here are older than you, yes, but there are also several others who are still younger than 18.

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

Hi Meeba - don't worry about being so young - being on here will soon age you :-)

Hey Meeba. Don't worry about age - I'm 17, I've been here ages and I don't feel left out or anything becase of my age.

Some of this lot have mental ages of younger than 18 anyway! (mentioning no names...)

I am always of the opinion that time is like spirals. It's all about those spirals. Don't ask me to explain- it usually involves a lot of arm-waving and bemused looks.



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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

I think I see where you're coming from with the spiral thing. It can accept the cyclical view of time but sidesteps the flaws by being ongoing at the same time. Did that make sense?

Yes, it did. That's precisely it. Sort of you have two views of time, Thursday view (say) and the general view. And Thursday spirals back onto another point in general time, whilst still heading forward on her own time.

Confused? You will be.



--------------

There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

I think the two best views of time I've ever come across was in the movies. "Twelve Monkeys" and "Donnie Darko" anyone?

Hello All who remember me and those who dont. Glad to see so many new people here anyway, the word is spreading which must be a good thing. Anyway my own view on this particular incident is that somebody (or something) engineered the original incident for Thursday, so that it would continue to happen, in the story it just says an accident happens, since reading TN3 I am getting more convinced that the Great Pan caused it, in her wisdom wanting Thursday to save the world from Hades. Both of them. Either that or Colonel Next. Anyway, she goes to Swindon because of something that seemed unreal because as a start it was unreal, and a vision conjoured my the Great herself unti; a subsequent universe it became real becuase Thursday was doing what she thought her predecsessor had done. Or something. But then I lsot my clear view on time distortion during the last Episode of Goodnight Sweetheart, so what do I know? For those who have seen it, the words should have come up as a whole, for those who havent, watch it!!!
Oh yeah B.T.W my unfinished business is that I haven't yet said thank you to PSD for the Christmas card of yester-year. So, thank you mate. Much appreciated.

Charles, welcome back!!!!! Long time no see... we missed you.

As Ford Prefect would say, "Time is an illusion, Lunchtime doubly so"...

...and my train was fiendishly late this morning. Would have been quicker by airship.