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Temporal Anomalies

Main Page
Discussing Time Travel Theory
Miscellany
Conversation
Other Films
Perpetual Barbecue
About the Author
Contact the Author

See also entries under the
Temporal Anomalies/Time Travel
category of the
mark Joseph "young"
web log
elsewhere on this site.

Quick Jumps

Introductory Remarks
Not Letters
Letters
Endnote

Conversation
Not Letters

Conversation
Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:
  First Response

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:
  Second Response

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:
  Third Response

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:
  Fourth Response

Vazor's Time Travel Questions:
  First Response


Conversation
Letters

Doctor TOC, 12 Monkeys Fixed Timeline
Doctor TOC, Woman on Plane
JKrapf007, Evil Dead 2 Not a Remake
Nathro, Evil Dead 2 a Sequel
JKrapf007, Travel Before Your Birth
Nathro, More About Evil Dead
Sauce96, Terminator and Star Trek
Sauce96, Presenting an Original Story
Sauce96, Defending Paradox
Muhammed, A Line from 12 Monkeys
Holger Thiemann, 12 Monkeys Fixed Time
Chad Hadsell, Local Infinity Loops
Chad Hadsell, Time an Abstraction
Holger Thiemann, Testing the Theory
Chad Hadsell, Travel to the Future
Chad Hadsell, Erasing Future Self
Holger Thiemann, Temporal Duplicates
Gecko, 12 Monkeys Analysis Incorrect
Jason Seiler, 12 Monkeys Static Time
Jason Seiler, Metaphysics Class Links
Etienne Rouette, Woman on Plane
Matthew Potts, Woman on Plane
Bart, Parallel Universe Theory
Bart, Clarification
Illumin8, Spreadsheets

Movies Analyzed
in order examined

Terminator
    Addendum to Terminator
    Terminator 3:  Rise of the Machines
    Terminator Recap
    Terminator Salvation
    Terminator Genisys
    Terminator:  Dark Fate
Back To The Future
Back To The Future II
Back To The Future III
Millennium
Star Trek Introduction
    Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    Star Trek: Generations
    Star Trek: First Contact
    Star Trek (2009)
12 Monkeys
    Addendum to 12 Monkeys
Flight Of The Navigator
  Flight Of The Navigator Addendum
Army of Darkness
Lost In Space
Peggy Sue Got Married
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Frequency
Planet of the Apes
Kate and Leopold
Somewhere In Time
The Time Machine
Minority Report
Happy Accidents
The Final Countdown
Donnie Darko
  S. Darko
Harry Potter and
    the Prisoner of Azkaban

Deja Vu
Primer
    Primer Questions
Bender's Big Score
Popular Christmas Movies
The Butterfly Effect
  The Butterfly Effect 2
  The Butterfly Effect 3:  Revelations
The Last Mimzy
The Lake House
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Hot Tub Time Machine
Premonition
Los Cronocrimines a.k.a. TimeCrimes
Timeline
A Sound of Thundrer
Next
Frequently Asked Questions
    About Time Travel

Source Code
Warlock
Blackadder Back & Forth
Watchmen
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
11 Minutes Ago
Men in Black III
La Jetée
Triangle
Midnight in Paris
Meet the Robinsons
Looper
H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
The Jacket
Safety Not Guaranteed
The Philadelphia Experiment
    The Philadelphia Experiment II
Time After Time
TimeCop
About Time
Free Birds
X-Men:  Days of Future Past
Edge of Tomorrow
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Predestination
Project Almanac
41
Time Lapse
Synchronicity
Paradox
O Homem Do Futuro
    a.k.a. The Man from the Future

Abby Sen
When We First Met
See You Yesterday
Mirage
The History of Time Travel
Copyright Information

The temporal anomaly terminology used here is drawn from Appendix 11:  Temporal Anomalies of Multiverser from Valdron Inc, and is illustrated on the home page of this web site.  This site is part of M. J. Young Net.

Books by the Author.


The Book

Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies
unravels
Correspondence

I've received a great deal of correspondence since this site opened--more mail per visitor on this site than on any other that I maintain.  Often I get similar questions and comments--and not that I don't enjoy them (I do very much enjoy getting your comments and questions, and answering them--please feel encouraged to participate by writing to me at MJYoung@MJYoung.net), but I thought that some of you might benefit from my correspondence with others.

It has also happened in connection with this site that questions have been raised elsewhere, and I have been invited to respond.  I have copied some of those responses here, along with links to the original questions.


Introductory Remarks

I trust that those who have written these letters will thrice forgive me.  First, I have printed their letters sometimes without their permission; if any thought our correspondence secret or personal, I may have violated a trust of which I was unaware, and for this I am sorry.  Second, I have not printed all letters in their entirety--I deleted materials I thought unrelated to the subject at hand, and even left out letters which were part of the correspondence but which I deemed unimportant to the matter.  Similarly, I left out e-mail addresses of the authors.  I trust they don't mind my editorial hand as I present their views on my web site.  Third, I have left their errors intact.  There were some whose errors were minor typos, and perhaps I could easily have glossed these--but others are not native speakers of the English language, and reconstructing their sentences would have involved me in a rewrite which apart from being time consuming for me would have been unfair to them.  And equally unfair would it be for me to correct the pages with minor errors but not those with more significant problems.  Thus, apart from my aforementioned editing of less important matters, the material appears as I received it.

I want to acknowledge Chuck Buckley, who gave me this idea--several of my letters to him are installed on his web site (and more recently on mine), along with his answers.  More recent posts on other sites have led me to include these as part of the index here.

I am endeavoring to index the pages here, giving you some idea of what they are about.  Each of those in the "Letters" section includes a single letter to me and my reply.  Those in the "Not Letters" section contain only my responses, but are linked to the original questions (assuming these still exist and have not moved without my knowledge).

It should also be mentioned that at least the first dozen or so of these letters were written without the benefit of the information in the other letters--thus sometimes the same questions are asked and answered in similar ways.  (That was one reason for putting the correspondence here--not that I don't enjoy receiving your letters and writing my replies, but that it may save you time if your question is already here.)

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Not Letters

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:  First Response:  Chuck created some time travel problems on his site which I addressed by e-mail to him and he posted.  On this first response I cover such questions as whether the message will change the messenger if you give yourself the winning lottery numbers, some objections to standard theories of diverging dimensions, and free will.

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:  Second Response:  The conversation continues with comments on destroying the original history, destroying time, the problem with the concept of infinity, the problem of good, and the assumptions of science.

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:  Third Response:  The question of actual change as opposed to recognized change opens this entry, along with some discussion of divorcing linear causality from linear temporality, precognitive dreams, nested universes, and the significance of instant gratification to choice.

Chuck Buckley's Time Travel Problem:  Fourth Response:  The last piece of this conversation talks about whether drastic changes are necessarily recognizable, problems with parallel universes, precognition, changing history, and more on the path of least resistance and instant gratification.

Vazor's Time Travel Questions:  First Response:  Vazor found my site and raised some significant questions via his blog.  I answered here on the site, because my response was going to prove too complex for a blog post.  The discussion ranges from N-Jumps and the destruction of the future to problems with parallel dimension theory and fixed time theory.

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Letters

Doctor TOC, 1998 March 17, wrote to assert that 12 Monkeys was intended to defend the fixed timeline theory.  I challenge whether that is correct, but explain why it doesn't particularly matter.

Doctor TOC, 1998 March 19, wrote back to pursue his previous point, and becomes the first person to suggest that my interpretation of the woman on the plane is incorrect.  I continue to defend my positions, and the paradox of becoming your own grandfather is presented and resolved.

JKrapf007, 1998 May 22, wrote concerning Army of Darkness, claiming that Evil Dead 2 is not a remake of Evil Dead as I had been told, and arguing that Ash was always the fulfillment of prophecy.  I explain the theory, and why Ash cannot have gone back in time until time had reached the moment of his birth, and therefore he could not have appeared in the past of the original timeline.

Nathro, 1998 May 23, also wrote to inform me that Evil Dead 2 was a sequel, not a remake, and to encourage me to view it.

JKrapf007, 1998 May 23, wrote back to clarify a few points on which he was confused, including whether it was possible to travel to a moment before your own birth.  My answer includes two paradoxes and an explanation of why an original timeline must exist in order for an altered timeline to spring from it.

Nathro, 1998 May 23, wrote back to provide more information about the Evil Dead films.

Sauce96, 1998 May 25, wrote about Terminator and Star Trek Generations.  Concerning the former, he defended a fixed time theory in which Cyberdyne always had created SkyNet from terminator parts brought from the future.  The latter he in essence agreed with my position.  I maintain that if John Conner cannot be born unless he is born, then he will not be born, again showing how an original timeline must exist before it can be changed.

Sauce96, 1998 May 27, wrote again, presenting a story of his own.  I found a hidden flaw in his resolution of an unusual paradox.

Sauce96, 1998 June 10, attempted to defend the existence of temporal paradox by analogizing it to linguistic paradox, and so suggesting that John Conner could always have been the son of the man he sent from the future.  I counter that linguistic paradoxes are a wonderful aspect of language, that we can describe things that are impossible, but that reality must follow rules, and time is part of that.

Muhammed, 1998 August 7, finds a confusing statement in 12 Monkeys.  I offer an explanation for the statement, but suggest that it must be a mistake in the script, assuming an impossibility.

Holger Thiemann, 1998 September 22, wrote the first of several excellent letters exploring the nuances of my theory.  In this note, he defends the notion that 12 Monkeys is a defense of fixed time theory, and that paradoxes might be explained by parallel dimension theory.  I argue that fixed time theory does not adequately explain the film or solve the paradoxes, and that my theory does both.

Chad Hadsell, 1998 September 29, took issue with whether an infinity loop would affect the entire universe or only the person who created it.  I explained why it would be universal.

Chad Hadsell, 1998 September 29, wrote back to suggest that time is an abstraction, not a reality; I explain how distance and time are both realities, and only the measurements we use for them are abstractions.

Holger Thiemann, 1998 September 30, wrote back to test the theory on several fronts, including free will, and the concept of point D.

Chad Hadsell, 1998 September 30, wrote back to suggest that travel to the future was a problem.  I explained why travel to the future is only a problem if it is accompanied by travel to the past.

Chad Hadsell, 1998 October 2, brought up a very important point, that travelers to the future would not find their future selves in the AB timeline.

Holger Thiemann, 1998 October 16, wrote again to examine the problem of the temporal duplicate, and raised Stephen Hawking's theories.

Gecko, 1998 October 21, wrote to say that my 12 Monkeys analysis is entirely incorrect, and that Einstein was also mistaken about time dilation.

Jason Seiler, 1998 October 22, wrote to insist that 12 Monkeys presents the static timeline, which, he claims, supports the grandfather paradox.  I explain what the site's purpose is, and why the static timeline doesn't support the paradox.

Jason Seiler, 1998 October 23, wrote again to inform me that the site had become part of the curriculum at his college, and to provide a couple interesting links.

Etienne Rouette, 1998 October 24, brings back the question of the woman on the plane in 12 Monkeys, which I consider in some detail, holding to my original position.

Matthew Potts, 1998 December 20, also raises the question of the woman on the plane, to which I expand my answer.

Bart, 1999 January 12, presents and defends a version of the parallel universe theory.  I explain my problems with this theory.

Bart, 1999 January 12, attempts to clarify his position, and again I explain my problems.

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Endnote

I continue to answer questions about these pages, receiving several letters each week.  I don't post them anymore, as it takes more time to post them than to answer them, and I find myself writing the same answers over and over (which is why I added the theory section, so you might want to see if your answer is there first).  But feel free to Write to me about anything on this site, or any time problems bothering you.

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