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Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines

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In article <28b20d55-9c7a-47e5-85af-39a7e49469c8@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie  <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>On Sunday, 11 September 2016 03:13:07 UTC+1, William December Starr  wrote:
>> In article <ctbishop-2858AE.15355410092016@news.individual.net>,
>> Charles Bishop <ctbishop@earthlink.net> said:
>> 
>> > Don Kuenz <g@crcomp.net> wrote:
>> >> William December Starr <wdstarr@panix.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>> L. Neil Smith had a story in which the answer to the Grandfather
>> >>> Paradox was "If you travel back in time and try to kill your
>> >>> grandfather, you will die."  Mostly because the grandfather in this
>> >>> case was way faster on the draw.
>> >>>
>> >>> (Going solely by Smith's (very short) short-story title list in the
>> >>> ISFDB, I'm pretty sure it had to be "Grandfather Clause,"
>> >>> http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?94387)
>> >> 
>> >> Thank you. That's one way to eliminate the paradox.
>> >
>> > Does it add another one. Is the fact that he has killed his
>> > grandchild mean the grandfather's life has been changed, flapping
>> > butterflywise, so that the grandchild won't be born?
>> 
>> As I recall, the grandfather was visiting a (mostly empty) museum or
>> something with his obnoxious spoiled brat six-year-old grandson when
>> the adult version of the latter appeared and tried to kill him. At
>> the end of the story, the grandfather was making a promise to
>> himself to try and make sure that the kid grew up into a better,
>> less bitter person the second time around.
>
>Or maybe just to not take him to boring museums so often??  :-)
>
>> So yes there's a paradox, assuming that he's successful and that
>> would-be murderer incarnation of the adult version of the kid will
>> now never exist.
>
>Another story - in comics - that you may recognise, or not,
>involves a man visited by a series of different troubled future 
>versions of his (unborn?) son - as messengers of his imminent
>death.  Of course, if you're visited by your descendants from
>the future, it may not mean that - but it's worth asking.
>On the other hand, if you manage to survive the immediate
>danger, then you eliminate their timeline in which you didn't - 
>but that must be happening all the time anyway.


Not quite a grandfather paradox, but something you typed brought
this to mind:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html

And of course, there's the magnificent "Wikihistory":

http://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/

-- 
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

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Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Charles Bishop <ctbishop@earthlink.net> - 2016-09-10 15:35 -0700
  Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines wdstarr@panix.com (William December Starr) - 2016-09-10 22:13 -0400
    Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Cryptoengineer <treifamily@gmail.com> - 2016-09-10 21:47 -0500
      Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines David Johnston <Davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> - 2016-09-10 21:59 -0600
    Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Don Kuenz <g@crcomp.net> - 2016-09-11 04:55 +0000
    Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2016-09-10 22:37 -0700
      Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2016-09-11 04:26 -0500
      Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2016-09-11 21:07 +0000
      Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) - 2016-09-11 21:54 +0000
        Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@sff.net> - 2016-09-12 00:39 -0400
          Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2016-09-11 23:07 -0700
            Re: Examples where authors messed up Timelines Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@sff.net> - 2016-09-12 02:35 -0400

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