There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of
the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.
I znów mi się przypaliło—jedno spiralne ramie, od spodu, na trzysta parseków—i
znowu wybiegła mi słonecznica, i ścięło się, i będzie zgęstek, i powstanie
białko, przeklęte białko! I znowu będzie ewolucja, i ludzkość, i cywilizacja, i
będę się musiał tłumaczyć, usprawiedliwiać, składać we dwoje, przepraszać, że
to niechcący, że przez przypadek . . . Ale to
wy, nie ja!
English
I remember what someone once said; I think it was Einstein or somebody like that. He
compared time to a winding river, with all of us in a boat drifting along between two
high banks. And we can’t see the future beyond the next curve or the past beyond the
curves in back of us, but it’s all still there, as real as the moment around us. To
which I now add my own theory . . . that you
can’t drive into the past in a modern car because there were no modern cars back then,
and you can’t drive into 1926 along a four-lane superhighway, but my car and I—the
way I felt about it anyway—were literally rejected that night by our own time.
You see, it’s like . . . it’s like we’re stuck. You know, like a . . . like a
needle on a scratched record. It all starts at 12:01, and everything goes along fine
until one o’clock and then Bam! the whole world snaps back to 12:01 again.
So this will be the last time we do Groundhog together.
I wish every day was Christmas.
So much hot air rising above the tables in the Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like
smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was
going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.
“Time isn’t circular,”
she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a palimpsest.”
“Oh, dear,” he said.
“That sounds very vexing.”
“And memories are sometimes in the future.”
No, I’m not okay. I’m stuck in the same day, and it’s a fucking hell that you
can’t even fathom, and it just keeps happening. I wake up, life kicks the shit out of
me, and then I have an orgasm, and then I live the same day all over again.
“Look, I don’t know how to put this exactly,” I said, “but would you happen to be
trapped in a temporal anomaly? Like right now? Like there’s something wrong with
time?”
I already tried that.
Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.
* The other, of course, is Paul J. Nahin’s Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction, Second Edition.
Each of the foregoing cases involves a self-defeating act—an act
such that, if it were performed, it wold not be. Self-defeating acts are obviously
impossible, since the performance of such an act would imply a contradiction. Yet time
travel seems to make such acts possible. This suggests the following line of argument
against backward time travel:
(P1) If backward time travel were possible, it would be possible to perform a self-defeating act.
(P2) It is impossible to perform a self-defeating act.
(C) Backward time travel is impossible.
Harris: Wait, wait, don’t tell me. Literature, art: History of
DC comics with a focus on the Jack Kirby Years.
They told me that she showed up at their house yesterday, completely frazzled, telling a
wild tale about a week that was repeating over and over again.
I know this game. I’ve seen this game. State goes on a frantic late run and wins with
an off-balance three at the buzzer.
If the universe is giving me a chance to relive the same day over and over, then maybe
it’s just giving me a chance to get it right.
My life, a black vinyl record
After visiting his estranged wife, Jemma, at her top secret lab, retired special forces
agent and ne’er-do-well Roy Pulver finds himself endlessly repeating the next day,
which always starts with the same assassin in his apartment and always ends with Roy
dead, even as he learns more and more about Jemma, their son Joe, Jemma’s work, and how
to kill endless assassins.
English
<spoiler!>One reviewer suggested that the story would have been better told from Margaret’s point of view. Certainly she has an interesting story of her own—one of loss so intense that it stops her world and kidnaps Mark. And yet, for me, Mark’s story is both compelling and well told, and I’m glad the author told his story. He is sensitive and lost and looking for his way in an upended world. He’s not particularly aware of how others feel, but maybe he’s getting there, and somehow Margaret grounds him and provides room to grow to the point where he can offer unconditional friendship to her (and to others) exactly when it’s needed. Is that a corny, uplifting story about tiny, perfect hypercubes that were meant to be? Yes, enjoyably so. I also enjoyed the nods to other popular-culture time travel escapades, though not so much the handwaving attempt at grounding things in science with Mark’s algebra teacher.</spoiler!> Sorry. Sometimes I feel a compulsion to drop into critic mode myself.
Hi, uh, I’m Mark. I just had a quick question. . .
. I was wondering—this is gonna sound really strange, God, really
bizaare, but—are you experiencing any kind of temporal anomaly . .
. in your life?
All he could think was that this day was repeating. But that didn’t make any sense. The
idea was so absurd,he nearly leaned over the water hazard to splash his face, wake
himself up.
Aram: You know, when I first heard about psychedelic therapy, I
imagined something a bit more—
Was this the fourth, or the fifth time around?