Passage to Gomorrah
- by Robert F. Young
- Novelette
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Passage to Gomorrah” by Robert F. Young, Fantastic January 1959.
In a future of FTL spaceships, time storms between the stars, and male-only space explorers, young Berenice had run away to the stars as a sex worker. But when she inexplicably becomes pregnant, the powers-that-be book passage for her on Captain Cross’s ship to the exhile planet called Gomorrah.
—Michael Main
“But wouldn’t our objective reality be affected?”
He nodded. “It could be,” he said, “since, in the absence of any real passage of time, it would be in temporal ratio to our involvement in our pasts, which might force it into a different time plane altogether.”
Tags
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- Time Periods
- Themes
- Causal Loops: Bernice becomes in the past pregnant → She is consigned to Cross’s ship to be taken to the exile planet → She and Cross have intimate relations during the time storm → Bernice becomes pregnant in the past → . . .
- Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: Brief thoughts by Cross: “And then—No, she had no more free will, really, than I did. There is no free will in an A Priori storm, any more than there is decency or compassion or love in a civilization created and maintained by opportunities—”
- Mind Travel: A kind of blended mind travel where your mind and body merge with the past mind and body of someone (possible yourself) in the time storm. When Berenice and Cross are together in the storm, they experience their own and the other’s past experiences, and past-day Berenice becomes pregnant with present-day Cross’s child.
- Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: Time storms are the consequence of discrepancies in high speed travel that create a phase that contains “more time than space.”
- Travels into Yourself: In addition to experiening someone else's past, you also re-experience your own.
- Groupings
Variants
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- “Passage to Gomorrah” by Robert F. Young, Fantastic January 1959.