It's About Time ( #IWSG )

 

        My current Battle of the Bands has a Halloween theme.  Please visit this post so you can vote for your favorite songs and costume themes between ghosts, witches, and vampires.  Get in the spirit for Halloween!

The Insecure Writer's Support Group

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month in Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group--a forum of writers who gather to talk about writing and the writer's life. For a complete list of participants visit Alex's Blog. 
     The co-hosts for the October 5 posting of the IWSG are Tonja Drecker, Victoria Marie Lees, Mary Aalgaard, and Sandra Cox!

October 5 question - What do you consider the best characteristics of your favorite genre?

   All the Time in the World (or Wherever)

         As I've mentioned in past posts, I've grown more drawn to non-fiction than fiction.  Most of my reading these days is non-fiction because I prefer reading about reality rather than fantasy.   This also goes for my writing goals.  If I were going to write something these days I might be more inclined to stick with non-fiction--most likely memoir.   However this is not to say I'd never write fiction.  There are still a lot of ideas for fictional stories in my head.

          When it comes to fiction, my favorite go-to genre is time travel.  There is so much that can be done with time travel and stories in this sub-genre can fit into many other categories such as sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and so on.  The possibilities with time travel are endless which is the first big plus in writing, reading, or watching such stories. 

          What I especially like about the time travel genre is being able to tap into and speculate about real events and people in history.   I enjoy research and when writing about reality from a fictional perspective it is imperative to get the history right if the writer hopes to gain credibility with an audience.  Time travel can contain the elements of non-fiction while allowing the writer or reader to take a story into realms of imagination.

         Personally, I'd love to be able to travel through time, and imagining and speculating about the experience can be almost as good as doing it without any risk or having to leave ones safe place.  Fiction is all about the what-if factor and since it's unlikely we'll ever be able to actually travel through time then imagining the experience is as good as we can ever probably do.

          Maybe someday I'll be able to time travel, but more than likely it's going to be through my writing about it and stretching my imagination to far-off places and times.   Probably the best part of the time travel genre is it's versatility.   Like space, time is limitless and the story potential never ends.  Time travel is truly a genre that can encompass all of the other genres.

 

             Do you enjoy time travel stories?   What are some of your favorites?   If you avoid the time travel genre, why? 

Newsprint Time Machine

 An abandoned Los Angeles Times vending machine in Covina, California, October 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         For the many working years after I moved to Los Angeles in 1991, I subscribed to the daily Los Angeles Times.  Sometimes when I didn't get around to reading the paper, I would save the paper to read later.  As things would happen I often didn't read that paper and put it in an ever accumulating stack of newspapers, now and then tossing aside sections that didn't interest me--sports, classifieds, fashion or whatever they were--and keeping sections that seemed like they would be interesting to read sometime later.

         Over the course of many years I acquired several stacks of news papers--some at work and some at home.   After the California branch of the company where I worked shut down for good and I was left jobless, I toted those work stacks home and put them in my garage.  Since I was no longer working outside of the house, I was able to dwindle my newspaper stacks at a faster pace.  In order to save money, in 2012 I cut back my L.A. Times subscription from seven days to weekends only. Besides, there wasn't that much in the paper that interested me anymore.  And the paper was highly biased and annoying for me to read.   Soon I switched to Sunday only, mostly because of the ad and coupon sections and the crossword puzzle, but then I let that go.  Now I no longer get any papers.  But I still have some news paper stacks in my home office closet.

          Some of the papers remaining in those stacks are from 2012 to 2013.  Then like anomalies in the geological strata, there might be small layers of papers from 2002 or sometimes even older.  These days instead of reading a daily paper I'll read the papers stored in my closet.  Sometimes I feel like an archaeologist making discoveries about the past as I read old news stories.  The odd thing though is that some of those old stories seem like the same things that are in the news now or stories that seemed to foreshadow later events then still to come.

          It's like a story I was reading last week in a paper from 2012.  The section I was reading had an article about German Christmas markets where they sounded so fun and festive..  As I was reading though, I was thinking about the terrorism that came in 2016.  That story from 2012 stood out more for me now in the aftermath of the 2016 attack than it probably would have if I had read it back then.

          Lately I've been reading about movies that I hadn't realized had ever been released. Some I've added to my Netflix queue while most seem to be now mostly forgotten come and gone releases in the past.  Reading about films in retrospect makes me realize how much movie garbage actually does get released.  When I was reading contemporaneously to film releases, this ephemeral nature of pop culture wasn't always as evident.  How quickly we forget that next big thing after it has come and gone.

         Reading in the past might seem a bit absurd to many.  Consider that I'm no longer reading for the news of the day, but just to get a feel for the past.  Sometimes I wish those stacks contained newspapers from 20, 40, or even 100 years ago.  Old newspapers provide a window into events of days gone by.  The stories are history written from the perspective of those who were witnessing it.  Rather than the standoffish perspective analysis of history books written years later and based on research and author's interpretation, the old news stories are seen through the eyes and minds of those people back then as they perceived what was happening.

         If I could I'd much rather take an actual physical time travel trip back to old times to witness that world for myself.  Even if that world was something I had lived through, I'd like to go back with my mind of the future to see if what I remembered was really how it was.  Or to see if what I've heard from those older than I was really like how they described it all.

        Old movies and television shows provide some of that perspective.  But then that is part of the illusion of the past.  An image on the screen can never capture the actual immersion into that place in the past and having that experience of immersion is only a fantasy of my mind.  For now at least.  And probably forever.  Unless time travel ever does become a reality.

       For now I have a newsprint time machine in my closet.  The machine is dwindling as papers are read and deposited into my recycling bin.  No point in keeping them.  If I kept everything I'd eventually run out of room. I'd live in a past made of paper and newsprint.  It all needs to go.  And once I've rid myself of that time machine, I can read more of the books on my shelves, watch more of the movies I want to see, sort through old photos as I place them in albums...so much of the past with so little of the present to accommodate it all.

        What will the future do with all of the past anyway?

         Do you still read the newspaper?   What do you have a tendency to accumulate?   Will newspapers have much validity for future generations? 

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Time Travel, Revisionist History, and the Liberal Agenda

 "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."    1984 by George Orwell

A mosaic stitched image of Stone Mountain, Georgia, United States. Taken with a Canon 5D and 70-200mm f/2.8L at 200mm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         When the CW television network debuted The Flash in 2014 I was enthusiastically on board from the first episode.  Since I had been a big fan of the first short-lived incarnation of The Flash in 1990 and sad to see its demise after only one season, I welcomed the reinvention of the superhuman speedster in a television era where special effects technology would be so much better.  The characters in the new show were well developed and fun and the story was not so far-fetched that I could reasonably buy into it.  But then, as will invariably happen with such genres, the writers of The Flash went into realms of the absurd that I could no longer accept.  I've stopped watching The Flash.

         Superhero stories like most science fiction and fantasy typically require healthy doses of willing suspension of disbelief and yet there can be limits to just about everything.  In The Flash I could accept the increasing array of super villains and even the alternate universe.  However for me the entire "flashpoint" concept--the changing of a timeline where the Flash entered a world where he had memories of another timeline that no one else knew with subsequent plots revolving around events connected with the new timeline with plot points interjected from the previous timeline--this concept annoyed me.   To me an ability for someone or some power to be able to change the past or create an alternate past has no logic and becomes downright silly.

        Oddly over the past few years we've seen a number of television shows and films with similar past-changing plot devices.  This past TV season alone I've gotten caught up in Frequency (derived from the 2000 film of the same name) and Timeless.  In both, the element of going back in time in order to change the timeline of history does bother me, but the stories have been so engaging and are so well written that I was able to forgive the illogical premise.   I also recall seeing other films and shows that used the device of changing time (Looper comes to mind) but I can't name any others at the moment, but I've been less forgiving of most of them.

        Time travel happens to be a favorite fictional genre of mine, but I have a hard time accepting the stories where someone goes back to change history.  To me that's like the story that has the "it was only a dream ending".  It's a gimmick that usually doesn't work well for me unless it's something on a less serious note such as the Back to the Future films.  If time gets changed to the point of a new outcome then was the outcome as remembered by the time traveler comparable to being only a dream?  And what does that traveler do with that memory and once returned to a future with a new outcome does that traveler have the memory of the new history line somehow implanted in their mind?

       For me there becomes an almost conspiratorial suspicion that this type of change plot line is a sort of liberal leftist agenda, whether it be purposeful or subconsciously devised, to become a part of the revisionist history movement that is becoming more popular in recent U.S. thinking in circles of academia and new progressive socialism.

        More often a tool of dictatorships and radical governmental change agents, the concept of historical revision is being seen in the movements to remove symbols such as statues of former heroes, primarily associated with the Confederacy, or the names of historical figures that offend certain people in new movements taken off of schools and other public buildings.  Many early explorers, founders, and shapers of the United States are now being looked upon with disfavor and gradually being eliminated from this nation's history or relegated to roles where they are deemed essentially unsavory.

       The agents of social change and certain academicians unable to physically go back in time in order to exert change seem to want to instead rewrite history books and change the landscape to no longer reflect an existence of anyone who engaged in anything that is now looked upon with an unfavorable eye.  The revolutionaries of the New Order of Thought would prefer future generations to understand a new and different history that is more reflective of the demographics of our time.

          Revising history is in the hands of educational institutions, politicians who exert the most power, social groups with the loudest voices, or whoever else becomes the victor in future struggles for dissemination of knowledge and lore.  The entertainment industry has been doing this for years as seen by theatrically released biopics and historical epics.

         More than once have I been disappointed after watching an interesting film and then, after being driven by curiosity to investigate further about the topic, to find that what I had seen was mostly a reinvention of actual history.  If in the future our textbooks and other references are changed to reflect the new history then who will know what the truth is.  Already we see a mythology of history appearing on the internet to the extent that we cannot always trust what we read.  This of course has always been the case to some extent in published materials, but with the internet it seems that revisionism could be getting worse.

         So George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were really jerks and not worth having a school named after them?   Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were part of an evil cause and should have their monuments removed from public view?   The United States legacy is really one of aggression and oppression?  Does the history of this country and the country as it now is deserve to be respected?  

         Oh, I'll still be watching the time travel shows and films.  I'll do my best to suspend disbelief as much as I can.   But nevertheless, this nagging fear will linger in my mind that maybe the trend to depict time travelers as being successful in changing history is really a nod of approval to the real history revisionists in our midst.  When society starts eradicating the truth, they might create an illusion that where we are now and where we are going in the future is wonderful, but they will also be building castles with foundations of sand.  

         What do you think of the revisionist history movements?    Do you like time travel stories in which history gets changed?   What is your favorite time travel television show or movie?  

          On Wednesday I'll be presenting a Battle of the Bands post which continues on the theme of today's post.  Two different songs from the seventies by two well known groups who went through numerous personnel changes over the years.  If you'd like to join the participants of Battle of the Bands to present your own musical battle then let me know so I can have your blog link added to the list.  It's great fun and we'd like to see some more musical tastes involved.   I'm sure you've got something you can add to the mix that will make things even more interesting that they are now.

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Time Travel ( #atozchallenge )

Time Changer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The films that I'll be listing in my April postings will not necessarily be films that I'd call my favorite films, but they will be favorites in the genres I'll be naming.   The A to Z genres are very specific micro genres as opposed to the broader genres like action, romance, or comedy.

        I imagine a few of you probably figured I'd be going for the time travel genre for the letter T.   It's the obvious choice right?

Here are some of the ones I've enjoyed:

The Terminator (1984)--This film starts out a franchise which is outstanding all the way.  I love them all.  Smart scripts and great action.

Back to the Future (1985) --The whole series is great.  The first installment is a film that's fun and funny and highly imaginative.

Time Cop (1994) -- My wife loves this film and so do I.   We are big Jean-Claude Van Damme fans.

Time Changer (2002)--This low-budget film concerns a professor from the 1890's who travels forward to modern day Los Angeles.  Comic situations are blended with serious issues.   I appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to do here.

The Jacket (2005)--This is one of those films I need to watch again because I don't remember it much.  I recall liking it a great deal and I gave it the highest rating on Netflix.  Yeah, I need to see this again.

Deja Vu (2006) -- This is kind of a mind-bender with some interesting implications.  I liked it--with reservations.  It's a film that made me think.

Crusade: A March Through Time (2006)--Also known as Crusade in Jeans, in this film a teenage boy goes back in time to change the outcome of a soccer game where he has screwed up, but instead ends up about 800 years in the past where he joins up with the misguided members of the Children's Crusade.  I thought the issues of being sent back to that time were fairly well done.   Well, maybe not language wise, but that's often a problem in time travel films.

Timecrimes (2007)--This is a Spanish film that is available in a dubbed version that works very well as such.  A man who witnesses a crime goes back in time to prevent it and finds more complications than he expected.  This one may have you trying to figure out the conundrum presented.   I'd heard this was going to be made into a U.S. version in English but I'm still waiting.  

Source Code (2011) -- This is another film with enough twists to turn your brain into a pretzel.  Fun and action packed.

          Oh, I know I left out a bunch--talk to me.   Do you like my choices?    What do you think makes a time travel story work best?

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Back From the Future Blogfest

You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. 

You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. 

What's in it? 

The Truth About Time Travel

         When it comes to time travel I adhere to some strict laws of logic and ethics.  Well, ethics don't have all that much to do with the time travel laws since for me those laws are like unchanging laws of physics.  The way I see it, you cannot change time--past, present, or future.  Whatever happens or is going to happen is the way it is and nothing can change it.

         This is what I hold against movies like Back to the Future  and Looper.  Since B2F is a comedy I can let that one pass.  But even though I like Looper,  it has broken the cardinal rule of time travel and therefore cannot be taken seriously.  You can not come from the future to change something in the past so it will change a future outcome.  Can't do it, it's against the laws of time physics.  What's set in time cannot be changed.   Anyone care to dispute that?

          You can argue that there could be multiple alternate time dimensions with an infinite number of outcomes, but I find that theory somewhat difficult to accept.   I suppose split time tracks could be possible, but I prefer the single time thread theory.  

What's in the Box?

          To establish the parameters of my Back from the Future fictional scenario, I will first presume that I will be very rich in ten years.  If time transport were actually possible in ten years, it would more than likely be restrictive to most people other than the very wealthy or influential.   Since I am not on track to become politically influential or powerful in any other ways of achievement, then wealth would be the way I would be able to get in on time transport.  

         How would I become hugely wealthy?   In the box I would send a number of winning lotto combinations which I would play over the years in order to accumulate huge sums of money.   I would also include some stock market outcomes and other finance information that I could use to make investments that would give me lucrative payouts.   I would also send an assortment of popular candies just to treat myself with sweets of tomorrow.

         This would all make sense since I would not be changing an outcome, but enabling what was going to happen.  Everything that would happen between now and ten years from now would be totally logical, would adhere to the laws of time physics, and would be as it was meant to be with the appropriate outcome.

         What do think?    Is my time loop neatly constructed?    Why would this not work--assuming that time transport were possible?


M Pax, Suze, and Nicki are hosting the Back From the 

Future Blogfest on March 1. Visit their sites for the LInky 

list so you can read what others wrote about.

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