Thinking about time travel
I really like time travel stories. Time travel stuff generally. I am defining 'time travel' extremely loosely here. The definition is 'anything I think is anything slightly related to or that reminds me of time travel.' I've just read On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, and an interesting article (linked below) so I thought it would be fun to think about time travel stuff.
As I said: On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. One person is stuck in a time loop, the other person isn't. I've read book one and I'd best get cracking with two and three because there are going to be seven. Book one, at least, is very chill. More philosophy than science on the time travel front.
I'm just going to admit to loving The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Look. The heart wants what the heart wants, all right? It topped the list of guilty pleasures I'm trying not to feel guilty about. I do have significant issues with it, which I expressed in 40k of fic.
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick was so great I started reading a library copy but had to buy it because I was making so many notes. It's non-fiction, about time and time travel in science, philosophy, art, and pop culture.
My wife really likes About Time, the film by Richard Curtis. I... do not. But I've seen it several times. All I can think about is how my anxious ass would handle being able to redo all these excruciating social interactions.
A French show I watched last year, Vortex, had far more interesting things to say than I thought it would. No one really 'travels' through time, it's all a bit computer-AI-hand-waving-science. But they communicate to find a murderer and solve crimes and things being changed in the past affect the present. Also I really appreciated that to 'age up' the characters they just made them look tired. Truth.
The Time Machine by HG Wells, the grandaddy of them all... is weird as all get out. By far my least favourite Wells.
Whenever there's a time travel episode in a TV show I get excited. TV shows now don't really have 'a time travel episode' though. Dark was good.
Some of my favourite youtube videos of all time: Marie Curie Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions And Gets Utterly Disappointed and adventures of a dissatisfied Victorian time traveller by Karolina Żebrowska.
Not technically time travel but I like it and it's close enough is people who get transported through time. The TV shows Ghosts and Sleepy Hollow, for instance. It's the 'person out of their time' part I like.
Recently read the article The shape of time In the 19th century, the linear idea of time became dominant, forever changing how those in the West experience the world.
Would I get in a time machine? Probably not. Not if I had to actually exist somewhere else. No. Would I time travel in a magical non-corporeal way? Probably yes. Why not.