Choose Your Weapon - Time Travel

Lee Dong Wooj in Tail of the Nine-Tailed Is the past repeating itself again?

Time Travel as a Weapon

You might think of time travel more as a mode of transportation, at least in film and literature, and you would be right. It certainly offers a way of moving characters into precarious and plot-twisting situations.

But it is also a weapon. 

If you don't believe me, read on to discover how deadly time travel can be.

In the 2016 series Travelers, future surviving humans send their consciousness back through time into people of the 21st century to change the path of humanity. Of course, they kill their hosts to do it...

Time Travel Defined

Think of time travel as a way to transport a) information (precognition as in The Minority Report) and/or b) characters forward, backward and sideways (into parallel universes). And note, even though Einstein's Relativity says time, travel or otherwise, is an illusion, quantum physics begs to differ. 

Brief Sidestep into Science

In quantum physics, we have the idea of time symmetry in that it flows both ways, forward from past to present to future, AND backward, from future, to present to past. The latter is the most common because an observer is essential to 'see' a thing for it to exist. 

As John Wheeler puts it, "...what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality'."

Don't you love how 'reality' is in quotes? 

Time becomes both complex and illusory, but that doesn't stop us from using fiction to get a handle on it.

Wheel of Time depicts time with a seven-spoked wheel marking the seven Ages. The turning of this wheel and the events of each Age generate the Great Pattern, a predefined plan which defines the past, present and future -  not unlike Hindu and Buddhist representations of time.

The Sub Genres of Time Travel in Fiction

Writing time travel in fiction offers a way to weaponize a character as well as play with the time/space continuum. And the best part of this, to me, is you can cross genres like crazy to do it. TT includes multiple classes of Speculative Fiction from SF, Fantasy and alternate history to even more obscure niches. 

We have books and films ranging from Fantasy, like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Dragonriders of Pern, to Fairytale like Rip Van Winkle to the War subclass like The Edge of Tomorrow (adapted from Hiroshi Sakurazaka's All You Need is Kill), Alt History like Outlander, comedy as in Groundhog Day and of course SF from H. G. Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine to comedy/SF Back to the Future. 

I played with the symmetry of time in deadly ways in the Quantum Enchantment series, specifically Arrows of Time.

Time can change the course of history.
Right, Mr. Queen?

As well, we have works across more Spec Fic subgenres like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Wheels of Time to the wonderful array of KDramas such as Lovely Runner and Mr. Queen.

Conclusions

The point is, that time travel isn't always a glitch in The Matrix. It can be used to correct the devastating collapse of humanity (Terminator), to win the battle and save the day, for example...

"By making use of time displacement equipment, agents from both sides (pro Skynet and anti Skynet) are deployed on missions designed to either ensure, alter, or eradicate the status quo as perceived by the participants at the time." - Terminator Universe 

Now that is some weapon!

On a more subtle level, there is the temporal fugue portrayed in Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny where our hero moves through time, adding himself to a causality loop so his 'copies' can join the fight. The possibilities here are endless!

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Do you have a favorite time travel book, film or game? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Choose Your Weapon Series 2024

Poison

The Perfect Storm

The Sword

Firearms

Ranged

Spells

Unarmed

Curses

Time Travel

Invisibility

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About Kim Falconer

Kim Falconer, currently writing as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. Currently, she is working on the third book, out in 2024.

Kim can be found on  AKWilder Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

Throw the bones, read your horoscopes or Raise Your Phantom on the AKWilder.com site

You Plus One

Black Unicorn by Michael Parkes

You Plus One Giveaway!

Thank you for all your BFF contributions and testimonies. That lights me up! The winner (selected by a random draw from the hat) is thatoneindiecindie. Congratulations! Please email Kim with your preferences  - book or Kindle, 2 titles and address/email. 

Thanks again!

To celebrate our theme of friendship, in and out of fiction, here’s your chance to win two books from any of my series, one for you and one for a friend.

Paranormal Romance? YA Dystopia? Science Fantasy? Pick your pleasure.

This is the opportunity for you to win a book for yourself and introduce a friend to the world of speculative fiction!

To win, leave a comment naming one of your BFF's or a fiction friendship that you love. That’s all you have to do, and I’ll send the winner two book, or Kindle versions, you decide.

Click on a cover to read the blurb.

Let’s all take a moment to celebrate our friendships! How wonderful is it to have them in our lives!

Blessings,
Kim

 

 

 

 

Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at kimfalconer.com or on the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter. She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month. Her latest release is"Blood and Water" in Supernatural Underground: Vampires Gone Wild.

Happy Friendship!

It's all in the Name

The menu is not the meal. - Alan Wilson Watts

Back in the 16th Century, early critics cautioned against reading too much into a title, saying,

The title is usually received with mocking laughter and jokes. But it's wrong to be so superficial when you're weighing men's (and presumably, now days, women's) work in the balance. Good advice, but don't titles sell books these days? I think it pays to consider them carefully.

The purpose of the title is to attract, intrigue and compel. It’s the headline, the very first sentence and it must hook the reader. It wants to sound good, to roll of the tongue, but not be overly predictable or clichéd. 

A good title can have double meanings, though it’s best to be careful there. For example, Mouse Work’s 1995 title, Cooking with Pooh is questionable, though funny.

Catchy titles can work, like Big Boom’s If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs but that’s not quite the style fantasy and paranormal romance readers are after. Maybe.

There are other considerations. Titles have to fit on the book cover. I’m not sure how Crown got ‘Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam’ squeezed together with the author's name, Pope Brock, and a billy goat (I’m serious) but they did. 

Short titles can be preferable. George Orwell first called his masterpiece The Last Man in Europe until changing it to 1984.

I did a search and found there are rules to follow for selecting titles. Some writers ignore them, to their great success. For example:

Rule #1 – Don't use noun-adjectives, like Pamela Palmer's Desire Untamed (NY Times Bestseller)

Rule #2 - Don’t use proper names in the title, like JK Rowling's Harry Potter . . . right.

Rule #3 - Don’t use words like Lord, Magic, Moon, Sea, Wizard, as in bestselling JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea, or Patricia Briggs' Moon Called.

Rule #4 - Don’t use adjective-noun titles like Jeaniene Frost's bestselling Once Burned, Twice Tempted Or Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games.

Rule #4 - Don’t use needless complexity, like Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Rule #5 – Don't be ironic, like Kerrelyn Sparks' bestselling Eat, Prey, Love, or Charlain Harris's Dead and gone.

Rules aside, there is a website where you can put your title to the test. This program generates the odds a title has of becoming a bestseller. If it’s accurate, my next book is going to sell a zillion copies! However the Dead Until Dark, Charlain Harris's book that spawned True Blood shows only 10.6% chance of succeeding, so maybe take it with a grain of salt.

My first two books were named organically, like pets. Book #1 in the Quantum Enchantment Series, The Spell of Rosette was just ‘Rosette’ for years. She got ‘The Spell’ as the story matured. 

Book #2, Arrows of Time was named for the narrative structure. It’s based on the theoretical notion that time is fully symmetrical - arrows going both ways and around in circles. I named Strange Attractors before I wrote a word of it. The idea of ‘strange attractors’- a pattern that appeared chaotic until seen from the right perspective - intrigued me.  

My most recent release, the novella Blood and Water in Vampires Gone Wild, was originally the idea of a series of books in this genre (paranormal vampiric romance) called Of Blood and Water. Those who have had a look know why!

Has anyone a favourite ‘title story’ to tell? Is there one that particularly compels or repulses? I’d love to hear about it. Comments welcome!

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Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels. She also co-directs Good Vibe Astrology, an astrology and law of attraction school.

You can find out more about Kim at kimfalconer.com or on the 11th House Blog. She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month. Her latest release is Supernatural Underground: Vampires Gone Wild.