But the big puzzle: how had he—his earlier self—known that a
piece of wire and a bus token would save his life? He had known,
all right. Known in advance. But how? And the other five. Probably they were just as
precious, or would be.
And then the
We fought in Korea. We fought in China. In Germany and Yugoslavia and Iran. It spread,
farther and farther. Finally the bombs were falling here. It came like the plague. The
war grew. It didn’t begin.
We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads,
buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead.
—remember the swibble slogan: Why be half loyal?
Unfortunately, for me, the unexplained time-travel paradoxes in the ending lowered my enjoyment, even though it was no worse than the inexplicable paradoxes in so many other stories.
Eleven times and always the same.
“Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve—no
offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.”
Every man has more to live for than every other man. I don’t have a cute chick to sleep
with, but I’d like to see the semi’s rolling along the Riverside Freeway at sunset a
few more times. It’s not what you have to live for; it’s that you want to live to see
it, to be there—that’s what is so damn sad.
I have no idea! I’ve never heard of him! But I’m supposed to kill him in less than
thirty-six hours.
Shorty: Look, if we know anything, we know that time travel's
not possible. Einstein proved that. Right?
No mega-jackpots, no long shots. The idea is to go unnoticed: That way I can keep coming
back.
Parts of Philip K. Dick’s original story are gone, such as the original ending, which must have been corny even in 1953; and part of the ambiguous revised plotline can be interpreted as time travel, although I suspect that adapter/director David Farr had a different meaning in mind. Regardless, I found Farr’s characters moving.