Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Tereza Koblihová

Risk Management in Time-Travel Works by Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph.D.

2015

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

Table of Content

Introduction ...... 4

1. Possibilities and Limitations of Time-Travel ...... 8

1.1 Types of plots and risk management ...... 8

1.2 Paradoxes as limitations ...... 12

2. Changeable Reality ...... 19

2.1 Parallel Universes ...... 19

2.2 Bureaucracy and Sentient Reality ...... 23

3. Unchangeable Past ...... 30

3.1 The time-viewing fish bowl ...... 30

3.2 Causal Loops ...... 31

3.3 Determinism and Free Will ...... 35

Conclusion ...... 41

Works Cited ...... 44

Summary ...... 48

Résumé ...... 49

Introduction

In 1979, Thomas Cottle made a study about people‘s desire to travel back to the past.

Specifically, they were given the option to travel back in historical past or their own personal past – since their birth. This study shows that 16% of the participants were willing to pay 10,000 dollars to spend a year in historical past and 36% in their own personal past. When the money element was eliminated, nearly everybody said yes to time-travel (qtd. in Nahin 1993).

But what makes time-travel so compelling? Since H. G. Wells‘s The Time

Machine, time-travel gained popularity within the speculative fiction genre and is still appearing in literature and TV alike. The running theme in popular stories dealing with time-travel, such as Back to the Future (1985), Terminator (1984) or even Christmas

Carol (first published in 1843) by Charles Dickens is change. It is the idea of being able to change the historical or just personal past, the big ―what if‖ lingering in reader‘s mind. Furthermore, as suggested by Cottle‘s study, the participants were more interested in visiting their own past rather than the historical past, which contributes to the argument that what makes time-travel so attractive is correcting one‘s mistakes.

When it comes to traveling to the future, it is about learning what is about to happen, what awaits us, so we can learn from it or even try to change it in the present time.

On the other side of the argument, there are paradoxes questioning those stories or even the possibility of time-travel itself. For instance, the infamous ―grandfather paradox‖, which is, in fact, the plot device of the movie Back to the Future (1985), directed by Robert Zemeckis. The main character, Marty, is sent back to 1950s, where he accidently interferes with his parents falling in love, resulting in him disappearing gradually, since he could have never been born. Marty is then trying to reconstruct the past as it was before, trying to get his parents back together. What the movie does not

4 deal with, however, is the fact that if Marty did prevent his parents from falling in love, causing him to cease to exist, he could never go back to 1950s and change the past in the first place.

The works dealing with time-travel face limitation made by logic of the space- time continuum as we know it, but also ethical boundaries. Though it might be true that time-travel gives a writer endless options, what about the newly discovered ethical problems one has to face in a universe, where time-travel is introduced? From interfering with wars and global disasters as in the novel The End of Eternity by Isaac

Asimov, to works of Robert A. Heinlein, which deal with the possibility of having sexual intercourse with your own ancestor or even yourself, the possibilities are seemingly infinite. And although these things are unimaginable in the universe, where traveling in time is not possible, in these fictional worlds they become potential threats.

Through the actions we then learn about character‘s set of morals. Do they use time- travel only to further their own power or do they try to make a difference in the world?

Do they take precautions when facing the risk of dramatically altering reality or do they recklessly ignore potential threats? Will the hero kill Adolf Hitler to prevent World War

II or just use time-travel to manage the school timetable as Hermione does in Harry

Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Does the character have some unwritten responsibilities or rules to obey when he or she acquires the power to change the past or the future?

Before answering this, one has to, however, ask yet another essential question: Is the time-traveler actually able to change the past or are past events just inevitable? In other words: Are there more realities or just one? Both of these options offer different answers to the question above and both of these options face different dilemmas. Going back to Marty, the movie Back to the Future works with infinite number of realities,

5 since he is able to meddle with the past. However, if there was only one reality, Marty would possibly find out that his presence in the past was essential for his parents meeting in the first place. Or, in more extreme case, Marty would become his own father, creating an eternal loop.

Time-travel introduces a powerful device and character, who is able to use time- travel possesses god-like power. Therefore, there is a need for regulation of this power, boundaries and rules. Although Marty is able to change the past, any drastic change is prevented. Interfering with his parents getting together endangers Marty‘s whole existence. In the second scenario, Marty‘s presence in the past is not only safe but necessary.

Both of the instances mean something different for the risk management. The thesis consults Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s book The Black Swan: The Impact of the

Highly Improbable (2007) and applies the ―Black Swan‖ theory on events in changing- the-past plots, where something improbable has a significant impact and consequences.

Changing-the-past plots tend to express how dangerous time-travel is and there is a requirement of regulations. Whereas the ―causal loop‖ one-reality time-travel has no need for risk management, since the free will and chance are eradicated and so the

―Black Swan‖ event, which requires chance and probability, cannot occur.

Other secondary materials consulted included Time Machines: Time Travel in

Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction (1993) by professor emeritus Paul J. Nahin, which gives an overview of time-travel works, as well as theoretical physics‘ theories and attitudes of many philosophers towards time-travel.

This bachelor thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter introduces the main works selected to illustrate the claim and differentiates between three types of time-travel plots. It explains the term risk management and the ―Black Swan‖ theory,

6 applying it on common temporal paradoxes: ―grandfather paradox‖ and ―bootstrap paradox‖. The second chapter focuses on the time-travel plots, where the reality can be changed, whereas the third chapter is analyzing the one-reality type plots and discusses its ethical implications.

Authors selected to demonstrate the argument are Isaac Asimov and Robert A.

Heinlein. Both of the authors are considered to be the two of the ―Big three‖ of science fiction, the third being Arthur C. Clarke (Parrinder 2001: 81), who is omitted from this analysis, because his works are more space travel oriented. Isaac Asimov, born in 1920 and Robert A. Heinlein, born in 1907 are both American writers and contemporaries.

Isaac Asimov‘s novel The End of Eternity (1955) is a work often neglected in time- travel analysis, the reason might be that Asimov is better known for the Foundation series and ―The Three Laws of Robotics‖ (Turtledove 2004: 4). Robert Heinlein, on the other hand, is famous for his time-travel works and is considered to be the originator of popular ―bootstrap paradox‖ (Klosterman 2010: 60).

Speculative fiction stories with the time-travel element are often about risk management of time travel. The novels selected to illustrate this argument represent two main types of time-travel universes: The novel End of Eternity was chosen as an example of time-travel story that works with infinite number of realities, which displays high level of risk management, whereas Heinlein‘s time-travel universe has one reality only and does not deal with any risks that time-travel represents and is, therefore, of much lighter tone. The thesis also uses short stories ―The Dead Past‖ (1956) by Isaac

Asimov, ―All You Zombies—‖ (1959), ―By His Bootstraps‖ (1959) by Robert A.

Heinlein and other time-travel works as examples to support its claim.

7

1. Possibilities and Limitations of Time-Travel

1.1 Types of plots and risk management There are three major theories in speculative fiction literature concerning whether or not the time-traveler can change the reality. Each of them offers different possibilities and comes with different limitations. Therefore, it is crucial to determine which novel falls into which category. In terms of time-travel in speculative literature, this thesis differentiates between three types of plots: 1) changing the past, 2) observing the past, and 3) causing the past. The thesis illustrates the arguments on selected novels and short stories, which were chosen for the purpose of the present paper so that they can represent all types of plots.

The first type deals with the premise that reality can be changed, which is the case in The End of Eternity. The story revolves around Eternity, an organization controlling and bending reality to its best possible form, eliminating wars and illnesses, at the cost of suppressing technological progress, for instance, in space travel. The End of Eternity focuses on the character of Andrew Harlan, who is a Technician at Eternity, which means that he handles the Reality Changes in Time:

He had handled Reality. He had tampered with a mechanism during a quick few

minutes taken out of the 223rd and, as a result, a young man did not reach a

lecture on mechanics he had meant to attend. He never went in for solar

engineering, consequently, and a perfectly simple device was delayed in its

development a crucial ten years. A war in the 224th, amazingly enough, was

moved out of Reality as a result. (Asimov 30)

He then betrays Eternity for a woman named Noÿs and consciously causes

Eternity never being established.

The second time-travelling theory is that our reality cannot be changed, and a

8 time-traveler would be a mere observer of the past. This type of plot is in this thesis represented by Asimov‘s short story ―The Dead Past‖, which describes ―chronoscopy‖ or ―time-viewing‖. The short story is a portrayal of academic bureaucracy and its politics. One of the protagonists in this story is a historian, Professor Arnold Potterley, who wants to enrich his studies of ancient Carthage by using chronoscopy and view their culture as it really was. However, he is denied access to the device and decides, with a help of a physicist Jonas Foster, to build a chronoscope of his own. The story deals with the consequences that such device would mean to the society.

The third theory asserts that past can be caused, affected, but there still exists only one reality. The affecting-the-past time-travel is recurrent, for instance, in

Heinlein‘s works. The main focus of the thesis is his novel The Door into Summer. In the novel, the protagonist is an engineer named Daniel Davis. His former fiancée Belle and his best friend Miles scam him, and he loses his lifetime work of household robots he designed. Dan is then forced to take a cold sleep and wakes up thirty years in the future, where he learns that his inventions are widely used by a different company than the one that was stolen from him. The patent for these inventions is credited to D. B.

Davis. He also finds out Miles‘ and Belle‘s plan has failed, and they lost everything.

Miles has died and Belle has become an alcoholic. With his knowledge of the future, he then travels back to the past and ensures that everything happens the way he saw it happen. He then returns to the future with the cold sleep with his cat, Pete. Similarly, the short stories ―By His Bootstraps‖ and ―All You Zombies—‖ center on the circular,

―bootstrap‖ paradox, described in the next subchapter.

What all these time-travel stories have in common are the seemingly endless possibilities. Ideally, time-travelers are not limited by time as stated in The Door into

Summer: ―There is no time like the past to get things done‖ (Heinlein 1957: 89) and

9 they can change the past at will for personal gain, as is the case for the protagonist of

The Door into Summer, Dan, or for greater good of humanity itself, as in The End of

Eternity.

In Time Machines, Paul J. Nahin on this topic quotes speculative fiction writer,

Robert Silverberg: ―Suppose you had time machine that would enable you to fix everything that‘s wrong in the world… The machine can do anything… it gives you a way of slipping backward and forward in time… Call this machine whatever you want.

Call it Everybody‘s Fantasy Actualizer. Call it a Time Machine Mark Nine.‖ (qtd. in

Nahin 1993: 19) Time-traveling into the past erases all mistakes, time-traveling into the future gives time-travelers precious knowledge of their destiny. Traveling into future can be used to predict the lottery numbers, the crash of stock market or to avoid fatal dangers.

Other examples of the utilization of time-travel in literature can be changing the past into a touristic destination as in ―A Sound of Thunder‖ by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1952. The short story takes place in the future, introducing a company called Time Safari Inc. that offers its customers dinosaur hunts. The original idea behind the time-machine in The Door into Summer was the ability to ―send divisions forward or back to a battle you had lost, or were going to lose, and save the day. The enemy would never figure out what had happened‖ (Heinlein 71).

The same time machine also sends a young professor of architecture five hundred years back to the past, where he gets trapped. While missing his own time, he draws future inventions he knew from his time and becomes known as a Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci.

Asimov explores a similar idea; his short story ―The Immortal Bard‖ is about how a professor of physics invents a time-machine and brings William Shakespeare

10 with him back to present time. Shakespeare then takes a class on Shakespeare‘s plays resulting in him failing the course. Similarly as ―The Dead Past‖, this short story is a critique of academia.

Another utilization of time-travel is using resources from different times. Using resources can be an option for both forward and past time-travel. In The End of Eternity, one of the centuries invented anti-cancer serum (Asimov 62), and it was Eternity‘s job to take it where the society needed it the most.

In contrast, in The Door into Summer, Dan‘s original intentions for his travels into the future with cold sleep are to escape his failures and later he comes back because of his revenge.

However, even though Silverberg rightly calls time machine ―Everybody‘s

Fantasy Actualizer‖, Nahin describes time-travel stories as being similar to a ―three wishes‖ theme in fairy-tales. The protagonists get what they desire, but end up using the third wish on undoing the first two. Nahin states that these stories are ―the precursor to all modern change-the-past stories‖ (1993: 3).

It is true that time-traveler might be able to go back to the past and prevent a catastrophe, for instance, kill Adolf Hitler and prevent Holocaust or World War II altogether. However, that does not mean that there is not another time-traveler who will go back and save him or, furthermore, help him. No matter how beneficial time-travel might be, it poses an equal, or maybe even greater, danger: ―Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem like perfectly safe gifts for children and imbeciles. I mean what‘s the worst thing that could happen with a nuclear weapon? A few million people die: trivial. With time travel we can destroy the whole Universe, or so the theory goes‖

(Varley qtd. in Nahin 1993: 167).

11

The Institute of Risk Management, a nonprofit organization specializing in managing risks, states that risk is ―The combination of the probability of an event and its consequences. Consequences can range from positive to negative‖. Managing a risk means to evaluate potential threats and, if necessary, prevent them. An online dictionary with various business-related topics, such as marketing, entrepreneurship and management, BusinessDictionary.com defines risk management as ―The identification, analysis, assessment, control, and avoidance, minimization, or elimination of unacceptable risks‖. The idea that something might go wrong is not just important for businesses or engineering, but also in time-travel. Time-travel in speculative fiction stories is then often limited, either by reality itself, by paradoxes or by an organization controlling the temporal displacements, sometimes referred to as time police.

1.2 Paradoxes as limitations The evident problems or limitations in time-travel stories are paradoxes. A paradox is a situation that seemingly contradicts itself. On paradoxes, Hornshaw and Hurwitch state:

―By definition, a paradox is a statement or proposition that, despite apparently sound reasoning from an acceptable premise, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory‖ (2012: 54).

Philosophers who are opposing time-travel use paradoxes as an argument against the possibility of time-travel. In speculative fiction, however, they are very popular.

Even though paradoxes might directly attack the logic of a story, they are fascinating and thought-provoking enough to dominate debates about time-travel. Moreover, as

Lewis states, ―the paradoxes of time travel are oddities, not impossibilities‖ (1976: 145).

On the other hand, Isaac Asimov, when asked whether he thought time-travel would be possible one day, replied:

12

The dead giveaway that true time travel is flatly impossible arises from the well-

known ‗paradoxes‘ it entails… So complex and hopeless are the paradoxes… so

wholesale is the annihilation of any reasonable concept of causality that the

easiest way out of irrational chaos that results is to suppose that true time travel

is, and forever will be impossible.‖ (qtd. in Nahin 1993: 27)

However, Nahin dismisses the idea that paradoxes are a proof that time-travel is impossible. He says: Most physicist who have not thought very hard about time travel just ignore the paradoxes of time travel except to invoke them to ‗prove‘ time travel is impossible, much as Zeno‘s paradox was once used to prove motion is impossible, a proof shown to be false by the very act of moving one‘s hand to write the paradox down.‖ (1993: 42) Simply put, just because the human mind cannot comprehend such situation, it does not mean it is nonsensical. A similar idea can be found in Asimov‘s

The End of Eternity when there is a brief discussion about paradoxes: ―Consider how helpless the Primitives must be. They worry about a man killing his own grandfather because they do not understand the truth about Reality‖ (Asimov 121). He goes further on explaining that without any experience with time-travel, one can simply not understand the problematic. In the short story ―By His Bootstraps‖, the narrator comments on this issue: ―He knew that he had about as much chance of understanding such problems as a collie has of understanding how dog food gets into can‖ (Heinlein

113). Nahin then sums up: ―To prove by paradox is a risky business as all such a line of reasoning may show is a lack of imagination and insight‖ (1993: 42).

Time-travel works are not consistent with what actually happens when a paradox occurs. Time-travelers, however, are usual told to avoid paradoxes as they might have catastrophic consequences. Even though, this is often proven false, as in Back to the

Future II, directed again by Robert Zemeckis (1989). In this movie, the protagonist is

13 told not to meet his older self, as it may resolve in paradox and destruction of the universe. Nevertheless, a character meets her older self and the universe remains intact.

Fredric Brown‘s short story ―Experiment‖ (first published in 1954) illustrates another possibility what could happen if the reality was forced into a paradoxical situation. The story is about a Professor Johnson, who presents a small-scale time- machine to his two colleagues. He sends a small brass cube five minutes into the future and the past. While sending the cube to the past, the cube appears on the time machine‘s platform five minutes before the professor places the cube on the platform. One of his colleagues then proposes another experiment:

―But,‖ he said, ―what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before

you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it

there at three o‘clock? Wouldn‘t there be a paradox of some sort involved?‖

―An interesting idea,‖ Professor Johnson said. ―I had not thought of it, and it will

be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not…‖

There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished. (Brown)

Brown‘s short story sees paradoxes as something that reality cannot handle.

Nahin comments on this example: ―This view assumes nature has no stomach for paradoxes, and if one should be forced upon her, then the Universe would be torn apart‖

(1993: 167).

Phil Hornshaw‘s and Nick Hurwitch‘s humoristic book So You Created a

Wormhole gives its readers advice on how to be safe during travels through time. It appeals on the time-traveler to avoid paradoxes, differentiating between four types of paradoxes: ―Paradox by Action‖, ―Paradox by Inaction‖, ―Paradox by Predestiny‖, and

―Paradox of a General Lack of Information About Paradoxes‖. Even though this is a

14 humoristic book, Hornshaw and Hurwitch make some interesting points about time- travel. Their division of paradoxes, for example, can be simplified to the paradoxes by activity and by inactivity. While the ―Paradox of Predestiny‖ and ―Paradox of General

Lack of Information About Paradoxes‖ are still an interesting idea, they would still fall under one of the two categories, because inevitably paradox will be caused by activity or inactivity.

The infamous ―grandfather paradox‖, for instance, would be the ―Paradox by

Action‖. The idea is that a time-traveler travels back to the past and (either consciously or unconsciously), kills his grandfather before his father was conceived, resulting in him never being born. This, however, also leads to him never being able to come back in time and kill his grandfather in a first place and so a paradox occurs. In this case, the undesirable activity, killing one‘s grandfather or ancestor, causes the paradox.

In terms of risk management, killing one‘s grandfather unconsciously is of more interest. Killing ancestor by accident while traveling into the past is an example of an event called by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk analyst, ―Black Swan‖. In his book The

Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Taleb uses the metaphor of a black swan to describe an event that must fulfill these three characteristics: it must lie ―outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility‖; secondly, it has to be significant; And lastly, after the event occurs, it must be explainable and, even though unexpected, it is still predictable (Taleb ch. 1).

Killing an ancestor in the past unconsciously follows all of the criteria: it is an unexpected event. It has a high impact that is creating a grandfather paradox, where the time-traveler either ceases to exist or destroys the whole universe. When it eventually happens, it is fairly explainable. As pointed out by science fiction writer Peter Schuyler:

―Ninety-five generations back you‘d have more grandfathers than there are people on

15

Earth, or stars in the Galaxy! You‘re kin to everyone… You as much as take a poke at anyone, and the odds are you won‘t even get to be a twinkle in your daddy‘s eye‖ (qtd. in Nahin 1993: 30).

The ―Black Swan‖ event occurs in most of the changing-the-past stories. As mentioned above, time-travelers might have positive intentions to change the past for the better. However, the consequences are unexpected and significant, so they need to use their power (using the ―three wish‖ analogy, they utilize their third wish) to change things back to the original state. The second chapter of this thesis further elaborates on this issue, using examples from the novel The End of Eternity.

In contrast, the short story ―Experiment‖, quoted at the beginning of this subchapter, would be the paradox caused by inactivity. The professor did not act as he should have – placing the cube into the time machine, therefore creating a paradox, or in the case of this short story ending the universe. This event could also qualify as the

―Black Swan‖.

The need for the professor to place the cube into the time machine so it could appear five minutes before is a ―consistency paradox‖ (Everett and Roman 136). This paradox is closely connected to the third type of time-travel plots, in this thesis represented by Heinlein‘s works. This paradox is also sometimes referred to as the

―bootstrap paradox‖ after Heinlein‘s short story ―By His Bootstraps‖. This short story is considered to be one of the first stories that featured this kind of occurrence

(Klosterman 60). The main difference between the two, however, is that the causal loop time-travel in Heinlein‘s works is deterministic.

―By His Bootstraps‖ is about Bob Wilson, who is writing a thesis about time- travel, when a Time Gate appears in his room. A man named Joe is trying to convince him to enter the gate. However, another man appears and fights Joe. Bob ends up falling

16 into the Time Gate and finds himself in the future, where a man named Diktor is ruling over the future society. In the end, Bob realized that all the characters he was interacting with were himself all along.

This paradox can also involve around an information or an object. In case of information, the example often given is that a time-traveler from the future, where time- travel is already invented, takes the plans for time machine back to the past and gives it to the inventor. He then thanks to these existing plans builds the first time machine.

Therefore, there is no actual original author, and there is no source of the information

(Everett and Roman 137). In ―By His Bootstraps‖, the ―information paradox‖ (Everett and Roman 136) can be seen as Diktor‘s plan to make Bob go on the same path as he did – to rule over the future society. He instructs Bob as he once was instructed by himself to get objects from the past that would later help him become a leader. Thus, there is nobody who initially thought of this plan.

Moreover, Bob can learn a future language thanks to Diktor‘s notebook that he stole. When he realizes that he was the one who made the notebook with the knowledge from his older self, the story reads:

The physical process he had all straightened out in his mind, but the intellectual

process it represented was completely circular. His older self had taught his

younger self a language, which the older self knew because the younger self,

after being taught, grew up to the older self and was, therefore, capable of

teaching. But where had it started? Which comes first, the hen or the egg?

(Heinlein 113)

In the case of an object, Bob acquires a notebook with translation from English to the future language, which helps him become the ruler of the future. As the dictionary becomes old, Bob makes an identical copy, which will be the copy he will give himself

17 one day as he had once obtained it in the past. Hence, even though he makes a new dictionary, it is still the same one, with no original author. Chuck Klosterman comments on this issue in his book Eating the Dinosaur: ―A loop in time eliminates the origin of things that already exists‖ (60). The third chapter of this thesis dedicated to the third type of plots discusses these so-called ―causal loops‖ in time.

These two, probably most popular, temporal paradoxes are an example of how the two main types of plots differ in terms of risk management. The grandfather paradox shows a high level of impact, either to the time-travelers existence or the universe itself.

Whereas the bootstrap paradox is dependent on whether or not the time-traveler has free will and can escape the loop, as in ―Experiment‖ by Fredric Brown. If free will is eliminated, however, this type of time-travel does not give any option of managing the risk. The bootstrap paradox does not contradict itself as the grandfather paradox does.

Therefore, in a way, bootstrap paradox is not a paradox. Heinlein comments on this in his novel Farnham’s Freehold (1964): ―The way I see it, there are no paradoxes in time travel, there can‘t be. If we are going to make this time jump, then we already did, that‘s what happened. And if it doesn‘t work, then it‘s because it didn‘t happen‖ (qtd. in

Nahin 1993: 184). The two following chapters are dedicated to each type of those plots, the risks they pose and the risk management required.

18

2. Changeable Reality

2.1 Parallel Universes The issue of time-travel has been explored in literature in many ways. The earliest works dealing with the motif introduced involuntary time-travel. Time-travelers would, for instance, get lost in an unknown place and later would find themselves in a different time than they have originally been in (Nahin 2011: 13). What made time-travel popular, however, was the novel The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (first published in

1895). The story introduced the time machine, a device that made time-travel voluntary, giving the travelers freedom and chance to choose their destination (Flynn).

This theoretical invention meant a revolution in time-travel works since the time-travelers now have gained a purpose for their travels; changing the past or taking destiny into their own hands. This shift from fantasy to science fiction made time-travel stories what we know them today. This chapter is dedicated to one of the most discussed elements of such works: the issue of changing the past.

Changing the past is what adds the dramatic element to time-travel stories, the idea that time-travelers might be able to change their past mistakes, or alter history altogether. Many philosophers oppose time-travel, mainly because of the potential possibility that history as we know it might get changed. Nahin points out that ―Modern philosophers who understand relativistic physics admit that the past cannot be changed and, further, that backward time travel in no way implies that it could be changed‖

(Nahin 1993: 180). In 2011, the Chinese government went as far as banning time-travel in movies and television shows. The reason being that they allegedly disrespect history and ―casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation‖ (Ho).

According to Professor John Hospers, changing the past is logically impossible:

19

Many centuries B.C., the pyramids were built, and when all this happened you

were not there – you weren‘t even born. It all happened long before you were

born, and it all happened without your assistance or even your observation. This

is an unchangeable fact: you can‘t change the past. That is the crucial point: the

past is what has happened, and you can‘t make what has happened not have

happened. Not all the king‘s horses or all the king‘s men could make what has

happened not have happened, for this is a logical impossibility. When you say

that it is logically possible for you (literally) to go back to 3000 B.C. and help

build the pyramids, you are faced with the question: did you help them build the

pyramids or did you not? The first time it happened, you did not: you weren‘t

there, you weren‘t yet born, it was all over before you came on the scene. (qtd.

in Nahin 1993: 176)

It needs to be stated that in fiction, the rules of time-travel do not necessarily have to correspond with the laws of nature. Speculative fiction stories based on the premise of time-travel, however, have found ways to avoid such dilemmas, the two of which the present chapter discusses, as well as their risk management implications. The arguments are mainly illustrated on the novel The End of Eternity.

Even though Hospers states that time-travel is logically impossible, he then continues to suggest potential solution: ―All you could say, then, would be that the second time it happened, you were there – and there was at least a difference between the first time and the second time: the first time you weren‘t there, and the second time you were‖ (qtd. in Nahin 1993: 176). ―The second time‖ he is describing then might be another parallel universe. The parallel universe in which the time-traveler has changed the past and, in this case, helped to build the pyramids.

The multiverse theory works with the idea that there is an infinite number of

20 universes, coexisting next to each other. If the time-traveler is to change the past, he merely moves to a different universe – the universe in which the traveler changed the past, or where the past is different. In the documentary Time Travel: The Truth, a theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, supports the multiverse theory: ―Multiple universes is perhaps the cleanest simplest way to resolve all the time-travel paradoxes. There are no paradoxes at all if you believe in the many worlds theory‖ (National Geographic).

The existence of parallel universes in time-travel works eliminates the problem of the ―grandfather paradox‖. A time-traveler travels back in time to kill an ancestor, however, as he moves through time he switches between universes. Therefore, killing the grandfather does not cause a paradox, since the grandfather killed was a grandfather from another universe.

Richard Bullivant explains that the idea of parallel universes is hardly new; as an example he names Plato and his ―theory of Forms‖. The idea of ―theory of Forms‖ is that our world is just a shadow of the actual perfect world. In other words, our world is an imperfect copy of the real ―primary‖ universe (2014: 28). Bullivant then names other even older examples, such as Indian Vedic traditions, shamanic Siberian traditions and even ones from Africa and the Orient (41). Moreover, there is no need to go that far, since even Christianity believes in other worlds that ever so often come in contact with our own: for instance on All Hallows‘ Eve (48).

In literature and pop culture, the idea of parallel universes has become a mainstream. For example, many comic books explain different story arcs of one superhero by introducing parallel universes. The multiverse theory explains how the protagonist can die multiple times and safely return in another issue as was the case for

Superman in The Death and Return of Superman from 1992. Another example is a card game called Chrononauts, published in 2001, where every player is a time-traveler. One

21 way to win is to return home to your parallel universe. Each one of these unique universes is equal, and none of them is said to be more genuine than the others.

As far as The End of Eternity is concerned, parallel universes are also an option.

The End of Eternity works with an infinite number of realities. The organization called

Eternity carries out Reality Changes, choosing the outcomes that suit them or humanity the most. Choosing the right reality can be interpreted as selecting the best parallel universe.

What is not completely in line with the multiverse theory is the fact that Andrew

Harlan realizes there are certain ethical implications to the changes he is making. He feels responsible for changing the reality and for ending lives, which would not be the case if he was aware of simply traveling in between different universes, since no lives would actually perish.

The Door into Summer offers a somewhat different view of the issue. Heinlein generally prefers time-travel with only one reality and causal loops, to which the following chapter of the present study is dedicated. However, in The Door into Summer, there are still signs of the multiverse theory being a possibility. Dan, the main protagonist of The Door into Summer, takes the cold sleep and wakes up thirty years in the future. There, he wants to take revenge on his enemies, but finds out that everything has been solved for him. However, later he needs to become the man that actually does go back in time and makes the future that he has known as the only reality, creating a causal loop.

Nevertheless, in the epilog, where he contemplates his destiny and time-travel itself, he realizes that not everything falls into place:

But the explanation I tried to give does not explain everything. I missed a point

even though I was riding the merry-go-round myself and counting the

22

revolutions. Why didn‘t I see the notice of my own withdrawal? […] I should

have; I was there and I used to check those lists. I was awakened (second time)

on Friday, 27 April, 2001; it should have been in next morning‘s Times. But I did

not see it. I‘ve looked it up since and there it is: ―D. B. Davis,‖ in the Times for

Saturday, 28 April, 2001. (Heinlein 104)

Dan, even though he checks the newspapers religiously, misses his second cold sleep awakening, which would let him know about time-travel and its role in his story earlier, breaking the causal loop.

One explanation is that he simply overlooked his own name, but the second one is the explanation with parallel universes:

Did I bounce into a different universe, different because I had monkeyed with

the setup? Even though I found Ricky and Pete in it? Is there another universe

somewhere (or somewhen) in which Pete yowled until he despaired, then

wandered off to fend for himself, deserted? And in which Ricky never managed

to flee with her grandmother but had to suffer the vindictive wrath of Belle?

(Heinlein 104)

Dan later realizes that he could not have seen his name in newspapers. If he had, nothing that happened would have happened as it did, and that would contradict

Heinlein‘s one reality (Heinlein 104). Following chapter discusses the one-reality time- travel in more detail.

2.2 Bureaucracy and Sentient Reality The risk management is omnipresent in The End of Eternity and is conducted by the highly bureaucratic Eternity with established hierarchy with the ―Allwhen Council‖ being on the top. The Eternity universe is highly controlled and subordinated to many

23 rules. The organization has a firm structure. The Eternals are separated from their families and their Time and start their career off by being Cubs and then after graduation they become Observers. If they qualify, they can later become Specialists;

Computers, Life-Plotters, Sociologists or Technicians. Every aspect of Reality Change needs to go through Computer, Life-Plotter and Sociologist. The Technician is the one conducting the Reality Change, which is why the Technicians are feared and scorned upon by the Eternals, since they are the ones made responsible for the changes. There is a saying among the Eternals: ―A trillion personalities changed – just a Technician‘s yawn‖ (Asimov 29).

Furthermore, Harlan is speaking about getting permission to travel into particular times (Asimov 15), so his presence ―would not endanger Reality‖ (16). Later,

Harlan mentions ―twisting‖ reality ―in directions the Allwhen Council could not permit‖

(54). The caution implies that reality in The End of Eternity is fragile. The rules protect the existence of the Primitive Era, which is an appellation for history before the Eternity was established. Eternals preserve this part of history, so the reality remains untouched and without any changes, since any disturbance might result in Eternity never being founded.

Eternals also cannot marry or have a family to prevent any ―emotional entanglements‖ (Asimov 41). At the end, it is a woman that Harlan falls in love with that causes the end of Eternity. Also, Eternals are always assigned as far as from their

―homewhen‖, the time they were originally born in, as possible: ―Preference was given to Centuries with cultures markedly different from that of their homewhen. […] What was more, their assignments were shifted as often as their reactions grew suspect‖ (64).

Therefore, any emotional response to the time is eliminated, so nothing obstructs the change of reality and its consequences.

24

Rules and hierarchy are necessary for Eternity, which suggests how fragile reality is. The narrator in The End of Eternity states: ―Eternity was too finely balanced an arrangement to endure modification‖ (Asimov 27).

Harlan seems to be proud of his position as a Technician: ―Most of all, he had developed the feeling of the power of being a Technician. He held the fate of millions in his finger tips, and if one must walk lonely because of it, one could also walk proudly‖

(Asimov 35). However, he is also haunted by the responsibility laid on him:

Wasn‘t that good? What if personalities were changed? The new personalities

were as human as the old and as deserving of life. If some lives were shortened,

more were lengthened and made happier. A great work of literature, a monument

of Man‘s intellect and feeling, was never written in the new Reality, but several

copies were preserved in Eternity‘s libraries, were they not? And new creative

works had come into existence, had they not? (30)

Harlan is talking about ―great works of literature‖ that are being kept in

Eternity‘s library. The preservation of books would probably not be necessary, if the works were still retrievable in another parallel universe.

Even though the Changes that he conducts are reversible, they are still understood as being significant, with ethical repercussions. Asimov does not imply that all the realities coexist next to each other. There is one reality, and when a change is taking place, the reality simply ceases to exist and another reality is created. Or, if there are parallel universes, the Eternity is not aware of them.

Another way of perceiving the reality in The End of Eternity is to look at the time-line as being adaptable. In terms of risk management, this would mean that the threat is managed not so much by the organization Eternity but more so by the reality itself. The reality then might be sentient.

25

Various passages from the novel support this statement. For instance, a character named August Sennor, who is a subcommittee member of the Allwhen Council, the highest organ of Eternity, talks about the fact that there is inertia when someone changes reality, ―why does Reality possess inertia? We all know that it does. Any alteration in its flow must reach a certain magnitude before a Change, a true Change, is effected‖

(Asimov 121). Sennor explains that nobody understands why the reality possesses inertia. However, everybody seems to accept it as a fact.

Those Changes have a domino effect on the overall reality: ―The ripples spread wider, reaching their maximum in the 2471st, which was twenty-five Centuries upwhen from the Touch. The intensity of the Reality Change declined thereafter‖ (Asimov 59).

What this quote is describing is the ―ripple effect‖. Also called the ―butterfly effect‖, which plays a significant role in the speculative fiction short story ―A Sound of

Thunder‖ by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury explains that a mere death of one butterfly can have a catastrophic outcome on reality. Especially if this incident happened far enough in the past, so that it has an effect on other seemingly insignificant actions that put in motion more substantial events and so on and so on until it results in significant change in our reality. This is an example of above mentioned ―Black Swan‖ event.

Bradbury describes his butterfly effect as dominoes growing in intensity, whereas, in Asimov‘s The End of Eternity, the ―Change‖ is losing its power as time progresses. Sennor says that ―Reality has a tendency to flow back to its original position‖ (Asimov 121), which contributes to the idea that the reality is elastic and tends to repair itself.

Sennor then continues to comment on what would happen if one meets themselves. Sennor explains that by knowing one‘s destiny the reality itself is being changed. He refers to this situation as being a paradox:

26

In each possibility, the serious point is that A has seen B; the man at an earlier

stage in his physiological existence sees himself at a later stage. Observe that he

has learned he will be alive at the apparent age of B. He knows he will live long

enough to perform the action he has witnessed. Now a man in knowing his own

future in even the slightest detail can act on that knowledge and therefore

changes his future. It follows that Reality must be changed to the extent of not

allowing A and B to meet or, at the very least, of preventing A from seeing B.

Then, since nothing in a Reality made un-Real can be detected, A never has met

B. Similarly, in every apparent paradox of Time-travel, Reality always changes

to avoid the paradox and we come to the conclusion that there are no paradoxes

in Time-travel and that there can be none. (Asimov 122)

Again, the reality is described as being sentient, preventing paradoxes. Another character, Computer Laban Twissell, who in the story serves as Harlan‘s mentor, also comments on this occurrence. Later in the story, he reacts to what Sennor had said:

―Reality must change to correct your knowledge‖ (Asimov 145).

Contrary to the idea of ―butterfly effect‖ from ―A Sound of Thunder‖, where every misstep might result in a great catastrophe, the reality being adaptable would mean that the risks are not that high: ―History is a four dimensional web. It is a tough web… If a man did slip back, it would take a terrible lot of work to distort it. Like a fly in a spider web that fills a room‖ (de Camp qtd. in Nahin 1993: 40).

In term of the above mentioned ―grandfather paradox‖, this would mean that the reality itself would prevent this paradox from happening. Lewis describes what could happen in this situation: ―Tim can kill Grandfather. He has what it takes. Conditions are perfect in every way: the best rifle money could buy, Grandfather an easy target only

27 twenty yards away, not a breeze, door securely locked against intruders. Tim a good shot to begin with and now at the peak of training, and so on. What‘s to stop him?‖ (4).

He then continues that it is logically impossible for Tim to kill his ancestor before he conceives, in this case, his father. Therefore, even though the ―conditions are perfect‖ Tim will not be able to kill his grandfather. Lewis continues: ―You know, of course, roughly how the story of Tim must go on if it is to be consistent: he somehow fails‖ (5). The prevention of the paradox contributes to the argument that the reality is adaptable.

What this implies, however, is the fact that human‘s presence in another time is undesirable. Reality needs to correct human intrusions to be able to continue function.

In the case of the flexible reality, the managing of risks would be conducted by Eternity as well as the reality itself.

Both of the aforementioned theories are a real possibility for The End of

Eternity. What both of them have in common is the fact that changing-the-past plots in speculative fiction literature are in need of risk management and follow the fairy-tale

―three wishes‖ theme mentioned in the first chapter. As stated in the documentary Time

Travel: The Truth, ―No matter how attractive rewriting history might seem, any change would have consequences‖ (National Geographic). However, both parallel universes and elastic time-line are to a certain extent managing the risks time-travel poses.

Even with all the precautions, Eternity is destroyed, which only shows how hazardous such time-traveling organization is. Every change in Eternity goes through a careful system of approbation; however, the weakest part of the system appears to be the Eternals themselves. Harlan as a Technician can fall in love, smuggle Noÿs from her time into Eternity and then end Eternity when he decides it is more harmful to humanity than useful.

28

Moreover, Noÿs is the one who convinces him to end the Eternity in the first place. She finds the work that Eternity does unethical and suppressive of progress:

The greatest good? What is that. Your machines tell you. Your Computaplexes.

But who adjusts the machines and tells them what to weigh in the balance? The

machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster.

Only faster! Then what is it the Eternals consider good? I‘ll tell you. Safety and

security. Moderation. Nothing in excess. No risks without overwhelming

certainty of an adequate return. (Asimov 196)

Noÿs implies how dangerous the human factor is from a different point of view: she explains that every decision over the whole reality, in the end, lies on individuals in

Eternity. She then continues that with all the dangers and risks, triumphs disappeared as well. As IRM explains when introducing risk management, ―Avoiding all risks would result in no achievement, no progress and no reward‖ (Institute of Risk Management).

Noÿs understands that aimlessly changing the past leads to suppressing development, which is why Harlan ultimately decides to end the Eternity.

29

3. Unchangeable Past

3.1 The time-viewing fish bowl As stated in the previous chapter, the idea itself that one can change the past is problematic. Not only does it give incredible power and responsibility to the character who travels through time, but it can also have a catastrophic impact upon reality.

Moreover, changing the past seems logically impossible.

In science documentary Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman

(Discovery Science Channel, 2010), professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton

University, John Richard Gott, proposes that the past cannot be changed. He gives an example of a time-traveler who wants to avert the sinking of Titanic in 1912. The documentary offers the conservative view: the time-traveler tries to warn the captain of

Titanic. However, the captain does not listen to him and, therefore, the past will happen as it originally happened. The time-travel does not influence the past and is just a mere observer.

Asimov introduces a short story with the past-observing motif, ―The Dead Past‖.

This short story explores the dangers that arise from viewing the past.

The protagonist of the story is a historian, Professor Arnold Potterly, who wants to fully experience the Carthage culture by using a chronoscope, a device to view any event in the past. This device, however, is restricted by the government. Thaddeus

Araman, Department Head of the Division of Chronoscopy refuses Potterly‘s request.

The short story begins with this statement: ―Arnold Potterly, Ph.D., was a

Professor of Ancient History. That, in itself, was not dangerous‖ (Asimov 1). The quote sets up the story and implies that what makes Potterly dangerous is his obsession and curiosity. After encountering Potterly, a young physicist, Jonas Foster, states: ―A scientist shouldn‘t be too curious… It‘s a dangerous trait‖ (13).

30

Potterly believes that the government is deliberately suppressing a research on chronoscopy and decides to build a chronoscope of his own. Eventually, he convinces

Foster to help him.

Even though Foster succeeds in building the chronoscope, he finds out that no chronoscope can possibly see further into the past than about hundred years.

Nevertheless, the chronoscope has undesirable consequences. Mrs. Potterly becomes obsessed with the device since she wants to watch her dead daughter in the past when she was still alive. Professor Potterly finally realizes the threat the chronoscope poses and states: ―There would be others like her. Children searching for their dead parents or their own youth. We‘ll have a whole world living in the past‖ (Asimov 30). Hence the name ―The Dead Past‖.

Furthermore, he realizes the government was not trying to restrict them, but to protect them. He decides he needs to destroy the device. However, he fails and the research of the invention becomes public. Armand then comments on the events:

What kind of a world we‘ll have from now on, I don‘t know, I can‘t tell, but the

world we know has been destroyed completely. Until now, every custom, every

habit, every tiniest way of life has always taken a certain amount of privacy for

granted, but that‘s all gone now. […] Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to

everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever. (38)

The message of ―The Dead Past‖ is applicable to every time-travel story and shows overlooked risks like the loss of privacy that time-travel poses.

3.2 Causal Loops The philosopher Phil Dowe believes that there is a confusion between ―changing the past‖ and ―causing the past‖. If one objects to the power of being able to change the

31 past, a possibility of causing the past is not automatically ruled out. The documentary

Through the Wormhole shows the time-traveler trying to save Titanic from sinking somehow participating in the past. Gott explains this with a joke and says that it was the weight of all the time-travelers aboard Titanic trying to warn the captain that sank the ship and not the iceberg. There is only one reality, the one that already involves the time-travel. This is a prime example of many plots that hold a great popularity in speculative fiction literature, including many Heinlein‘s works, such as his famous short stories ―All You Zombies—‖ or ―By His Bootstraps‖ as well as the novel The Door into a Summer. The causal time-travel can be also seen in many popular science fiction movies, for instance, The Terminator (1984).

The causal time-travel is also often used as explanation of how time-travel can be possible. In his article ―The Case for Time Travel‖ (2002), Phil Dowe tries to defend time-travel with the following theory. As already mentioned in previous chapter, if something happened in the past, it simply cannot not happen. Heinlein himself wrote that ―A thing either is, or it isn‘t, now and forever amen‖ (Heinlein 1960: 413). Dowe gives an example of a man who died in 1950. If a man died in the year 1950, he could not possibly survive past this year. This, however, does not mean that a time-traveler cannot be the reason why the man in question died in 1950, because that is how it always was: ―there is no ‗first 1950‘ in which the man does not die‖ (Dowe 444). The time-traveler did not change the past; he caused it.

Compared to the alternative histories view, the idea of causing the past, rather than changing it, is hardly posing any risks. The past cannot be changed, there is only one time-line, one universe. However, this still would not make time-travel any less intriguing; time-travel is possible and the time-traveler‘s actions have an effect. The actions are already involved in history. Nevertheless, this has no effect on present time,

32 because the actions are not changing the past, but rather causing it (Dowe).

Same occurrence is described by Nahin:

This does not mean you will necessarily be ineffectual during your stay in the

past. Not being able to change the past is not equivalent to being unable to

influence or affect the past. You cannot prevent either the Black Death in the

London of 1965 or the Great Fire the following year, but it is logically possible

that you – a careless time traveler – could be the cause of either or both. (1993:

183)

The time-traveler cannot change the past, the history already involves him and his actions. This motif plays a significant role in Heinlein‘s time-travel works.

Authors often describe the one-reality time-travel as a loop. In the short story

―All You Zombies—‖, one of the characters is wearing a ring that can be a symbol of the deterministic time-travel: ―The Worm Ouroboros… The World Snake that eats its own tail, forever without end. A symbol of the Great Paradox‖ (Heinlein 1960: 404).

The ―Great Paradox‖ that the author is referring to is the ―bootstrap paradox‖.

The important term often used with regards to this phenomenon is ―causal loop‖.

Causality in itself is the relation between two events, where an event ―a‖ causes an event ―b‖, for instance, temperature below zero degrees Celsius causes water to freeze.

Causal loop describes a chain of events where event ―a‖ causes event ―b‖, event ―b‖ causes event ―c‖, and event ―c‖ causes again event ―a‖, creating a loop. This is often the case in time-travel: ―When time travel occurs, however, backwards causation occurs: an event c that occurs at a later time has a causal influence on an event e that occurs at an earlier time‖ (Monton 2). Hence, the causal loops give the foundation for the bootstrap paradox mentioned above.

33

Because it seems incompatible with our understanding of the laws of nature, the causal loop time-travel might be viewed as impossible. Ulrich Meyer attacks this notion and says: ―If the laws of nature cooperate then the events that make up a loop can be explained causally. To ask for more, and to request a ‗full‘ explanation of causal loops, is to ask for something that is impossible‖ (Meyer 263). However, the causal time-travel is popular in works of the speculative genre. As Monton states, ―Time travel stories often appeal to this loopiness to make the story interesting‖ (Monton 3).

What often occurs in this type of time-travel stories is that one character is becoming other characters as the story progresses. In other words, they do not realize that who they were interacting with is just their own older self. The protagonist evolves and becomes this other character. This motif appears in ―By his Bootstraps‖, a short story that is considered one of the first stories that used this device.

―All You Zombies—‖ takes this even further. Heinlein introduces a character who later in the story realizes he is both his mother and father and, therefore, his child is himself yet again. The recent movie adaptation of the story entitled Predestination

(Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, 2015) adds yet another layer, where the hero sees himself becoming the villain of the story.

In The Door into Summer, when time-travel is being explained to Dan, the inventor of the time-machine says: ―The same coin… or, to be precise, a later segment of its spacetime structure, a week more worn, a week more dulled - but what the canaille would call the ‗same‘ coin. Although no more identical in fact than is a baby identical with the man the baby grows into. Older‖ (Heinlein 79). Later this explanation applies to Dan himself and since he uses time-travel he is in the story twice: as his younger and older self.

Even though the time in causal time-travel seems linear, the time-traveling

34 creates a circle. Both of the novels referred to a circle without a beginning or an end, with no escape. In The Door into Summer, Dan is imagining he is riding the ―merry-go- round‖ (104) as he time-travels and, as he is reminiscing, says to himself, ―As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen‖ (104). In The End of

Eternity, when Harlan encounters this phenomenon, he keeps repeating in his head:

―Round and round the circle goes‖ (Asimov 139).

Even though The End of Eternity‘s universe has infinite number of realities, the causal loops still do exist. They can be, however, broken. When Harlan finds out that his student Cooper is or rather is going to become the founder of Eternity, Vikkor

Mallansohn: ―You see, Harlan, the situation is more full circle than you imagine. Much more so, boy. Cub Brinsley Sheridan Cooper is Vikkor Mallansohn!‖ (Asimov 125).

Nevertheless, in the end, the Primitive history is changed and the loop is broken, resulting in the Eternity never being established, hence the name: The End of Eternity.

Deterministic time-travel is then completely rebutted: ―There is always room for random variation. With an infinite number of Realities there can be no such thing as determinism‖ (Asimov 152). The Door into Summer and Heinlein‘s short stories are in contrast with this statement, because the main protagonist is not able to break free from the loop.

3.3 Determinism and Free Will In the present chapter, we have been referring to one-reality time-travel as causal time- travel or deterministic time-travel. Determinism in itself is what might make this time- travel theory problematic since there is not only just one possible past, but also only one future. Moreover, when the future is predestined, there is the question of whether free will remains preserved.

35

Determinism is often confused with fatalism. The difference between determinism and fatalism is that the predestination stems from a different source.

Fatalism says that it is fate that determines everything. Moreover, fatalism is also theological doctrine, where God or other divine power sets the fate (Rice 2010). A fatalist, in Richard Taylor‘s words, ―thinks of the future in the manner in which we all think of the past‖ (1962: 56). Hence, not just the past cannot be changed, but even the future is set and there is nothing one can do to influence one‘s fate. William Grey supports the same idea: ―We are all fatalists about the past, but reverse causating extends the same consideration to the future‖ (1999: 64).

Determinism, on the other hand, is the view that everything has its cause and that scientific laws influence the future events (Hoefer 2003). All actions are

―determined by prior events‖ (Doyle 2011: 145). Every event has its cause, therefore

―there cannot be such thing as chance‖ (Hoefer). Intuitively then, ―either something is chancy or it is deterministic but not both‖ (Frigg 2014: 1).

Determinism can be differentiated to ―hard‖ or ―scientific‖ and ―soft‖ determinism. (Doyle i) The difference is described mainly in the question of free will.

Soft determinism preserves free will, although the definition still says that individual choices have no effect on the external world (Doyle 64). Hard or scientific determinists do not believe in free will at all.

In his Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy, Bob Doyle distinguishes yet another variety of determinism, the so-called pre-determinism. Pre-determinism is ―the idea that the entire past (as well as the future) was determined at the origin of the universe‖ (Doyle 145). The pre-determinism in Heinlein‘s work would mean that Dan‘s fate in The Door into Summer was already decided and set with the creation of the universe. All his decisions were made; Dan would time-travel as it was predetermined

36 and there is no way it could have happened any other way.

Even though it might answer the question of free will, it is hard to say which type of determinism is the one in play in works of Robert Heinlein. The important idea, however, is that in a deterministic universe of any form, free will and chance are eliminated, because, as Doyle says, ―There is only one basic form of indeterminism.

There is only one irreducible freedom, based on a genuine randomness that provides for a world with breaks in the causal chain‖ (Doyle 146). In a deterministic universe, the time-traveler does not have freedom.

Paul J. Nahin asks an important question: ―Are humans the creators of the future or are they mere fated puppets of destiny? Is a time traveler to the past unable to alter events because that was the only way they could happen?‖ (1993: 30-31).

The idea of free will is that one makes choices freely and the outcome is dependent on one‘s self. This is mirrored with the idea of parallel universes, where a choice can have numbers of outcomes – each existing in their universe. A lack of free will, however, seems to be aligned with the idea that there is one universe only and the choice had already been made before any of the supposable options were even considered. Furthermore, Heinlein seems to dispute the idea of parallel universes in The

Door into Summer: ―There is only one real world, with one past and one future. […]

Just one… but big enough and complicated enough to include free will and time travel and everything else in its linkages and feedbacks and guard circuits. You‘re allowed to do anything inside the rules… but you come back to your own door‖ (Heinlein 105).

If somebody has free will, it means that their choices matter. In The Door into

Summer Dan seems to have a choice, he seems to be thinking about possible outcomes of his actions. However, the story ends as it was supposed to end in the first place. His choices do not matter. The narration in The Door into Summer supports this claim: ―You

37 can‘t do much if you do time-travel. As Fort said, you railroad only when it comes time to railroad‖ (Heinlein 105).

Throughout the works of Heinlein, the question of free will is always asked, but never completely answered. In The Door into Summer, Dan speculates: ―I had a horrid thought then: what would happen if I sneaked in and cut the throat of my own helpless body? But I suppressed it; I wasn‘t that curious and suicide is such a final experiment, even if the circumstances are mathematically intriguing‖ (Heinlein 94). The same idea, though less drastic, appears in ―By His Bootstraps‖, when the protagonist tries to break the cycle: ―You‘re a free agent. You want to recite a nursery rhyme - go ahead and do it.

[…] But under the unfriendly, suspicious eye of the man opposite him he found himself totally unable to recall any nursery rhyme. His mental processes stuck on dead center‖

(Heinlein 1959: 67).

The fact that none of the characters can actually break the cycle and, eventually, repeats everything their older self has done is called the ―principle of self-consistency‖

(Friedman qtd. in Nahin 1993: 184). The principle of self-consistency is the idea that one cannot possibly untangle themselves from the loop. The need to be consistent in their actions connects closely to the ―bootstrap paradox‖ and is recurrent in Heinlein‘s short stories.

Another important instance of the principle of self-consistency occurs in The

Door into Summer. As already mentioned in the previous chapter, Dan, even though he checks the newspaper for other cold-sleepers like himself, does not see his own name.

Even though it had to be there, as his older self has returned from the past with cold sleep. Dan then wonders what could have happened if he had seen his name in the papers and comes to this conclusion: ―The control is a negative feedback type, with a built-in ‗fail safe‘, because the very existence of that line of print depended on my not

38 seeing it; the apparent possibility that I might have seen it is one of the excluded ‗not possible‘ of the basic circuit design‖ (Heinlein 1957: 104). In other words, Dan does not see his name since that might had changed his actions and the reality would be changed; which is not possible in this case.

Dan even appears to be scared to do anything differently from his older self: he insists on naming the company the same as he has seen it in the future, having it in the same city. He comments his actions with ―That‘s how it‘s got to be‖ or describing them as being ―necessary‖ (Heinlein 1957: 92) and saying the events are beyond his control

(91). He seems to succumb to the idea that his actions are predetermined: ―The shape I was in, I was willing to believe that there was something, after all, to this ‗fate‘ business

– a man could struggle against it but never beat it‖ (91).

At the very end, however, the author states: ―Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true‖ (Heinlein 104). Therefore, he does not completely renounce the idea there still can be free will. The idea that there still can be some probabilistic causes within determinism is described by Doyle:

But some events may themselves not be completely determined by prior events,

which does not mean they are without causes, just that their causes are

probabilistic. Such an event is then indeterminate. It might or might not have

happened. It is sometimes called a ‖causa sui‖ or self-caused event. But a

probabilistically caused event may in turn be the adequately deterministic cause

for following events. These later events would therefore not be predictable from

conditions before the uncaused event. We call this ―soft‖ causality. Events are

still caused, but they are not always predictable or completely pre-determined.

(145)

39

The passage suggests that Heinlein‘s time-travelling universe, even though it is deterministic, is a case of soft determinism. Dan can make his choices, however, in the end they do not influence the outcome.

The question of free will and determinism becomes more apparent thanks to time-travel and thanks to the principle of self-consistency, because the character repeats the same actions as their older self without any detours. That is why time-travel makes the reader think about whether or not the characters in the story have free will or whether or not the whole universe is predetermined and there is nothing the protagonist can do about it.

The implications of this type of time-travel is that the level of risk is very low; the human factor is eliminated if free will is just ostensible and all the choices have no actual effect on the outcome. Therefore, even though Dan‘s intentions are very personal and selfish and the whole plot of The Door into Summer is about his revenge, the reality is not endangered in any way, because there is no actual change. The reality stays as it always was – with Dan having his revenge, securing his future, saving his cat and getting the girl.

The risk, in this case, is nonexistent since there is no way Dan can escape his fate. He gets trapped in the circle or the principle of self-consistency. Despite the fact that the possibilities are thanks to time-travel still endless, a higher power controls the actions of the time-traveler. There is no ripple effect, no catastrophic consequences on the present time. The only issue remaining is that the time-traveler realizes his choices are ineffective and that they never have had free will.

40

Conclusion

Evaluating potential threats and managing them is vital for time-travel works when changing the reality is an option. Time-travel stories are often about good intentions having catastrophic and unexpected consequences. Taleb states: ―Black Swan logic makes what you don‘t know far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected‖ (ch. 1).

In time-travel, disaster might be caused by not expecting the unexpected. Reckless time- travelers and their lack of knowledge pose real threats to the speculative fiction universe.

The speculative fiction works of literature and cinematography alike can be categorized into three types of plots that are distinguished in this thesis. The time- travelers can change the past at their will, which, however, gives them an uncontrollable power that is in need for regulations. As stated by Nahin: ―Time travel to the past is rich with the possibilities of ethical and moral conflict‖ (1993: 22). The protagonists of such stories must be aware of all the ―Black Swan‖ situations, such as accidentally killing their own grandfather or stepping on a vital butterfly as in Bradbury‘s ―A Sound of

Thunder‖. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov works with an infinite number of realities. These realities can be seen as parallel universes coexisting next to each other, as flexible realities being continuously replaced by one another or the combination of the two. Even though Eternity has a highly organized structure and rules to prevent accidents from happening, a self-disciplined man, such as Andrew Harlan, breaks rules to keep a woman he fell in love with alive, or rather not to have her erased from reality.

The other approach shortly discussed in the paper is that time-traveler is only able to observe the past. Nevertheless, even this type of time-travel demonstrated on the

41 short story ―The Dead Past‖ shows potential dangers in the form of losing humankind‘s privacy.

Lastly, the works of Robert A. Heinlein are thought provoking in terms of whether or not the time-traveler possesses free will. The actions in Heinlein‘s novel The

Door into Summer, as well as his short stories ―All you zombies—‖ and ―By His

Bootstraps‖ are predetermined and might be dependent on some kind of higher power.

If they are not deterministic, however, they seem to not have any effect on the overall outcome. Paradoxes do not concern Heinlein, as he makes a character who is both his mother and father and creates causal loops, where future event causes past event, a circle without a beginning or an end. In his worlds without chance, there is no such thing as a risk.

The thesis could be further expanded by applying the findings on more speculative fiction works, which would be challenging in the span of a bachelor thesis.

In terms of risk management, a different framework might be used, such as comparing the risks posed by forward and backward time-travel. In connection with time-travel ethics, further research might discuss whether or not should time-travel be ethical imperative as the Eternals in The End of Eternity see it.

Time-travel can be either highly consequential, as in The End of Eternity or not consequential at all. Heinlein‘s works show that with the free will eliminated there are no undesirable outcomes of time-travel, since everything is predetermined. In contrast, the existence of changeable reality poses countless threats to individuals as well as to the whole universe. Hornshaw‘s and Hurwitch‘s guide for time-travelers begins with insistent warnings to make the travelers reconsider traveling through time, ―The long and short of it is, you‘re probably going to screw this up. […] Ever imploded a universe before? Well, now is not the time to start‖ (viii). However, as Noÿs in The End of

42

Eternity points out: ―Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests‖ (Asimov 197).

43

Works Cited

Asimov, Isaac. The End of Eternity. New York: Doubleday, 1955. Print.

Asimov, Isaac. ―The Dead Past.‖ New York: Street and Smith Publications, Inc., 1956. eBook.

Asimov, Isaac. ―The Immortal Bard.‖ The Complete Stories. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

eBook.

Back to the Future. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. MCA

Universal Home Video, 1985. Film.

Back to the Future II. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. MCA

Universal Home Video, 1989. Film.

Bradbury, Ray. ―A Sound of Thunder.‖ A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories. New York:

Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

Brown, Fredric. ―Experiment.‖ Two Timer. Project Gutenberg, 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

.

Bullivant, Richard. Beyond Time Travel - Exploring Our Parallel Worlds: Amazing Real Life

Stories in the News. Amazon Digital Services, 2014. eBook.

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Carol. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. Print.

Doyle, Bob. Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy. Cambridge: I-Phi Press, 2011. Print.

Dowe, Phil. ―The Case for Time Travel.‖ Philosophy 75.293: 441-51. JSTOR, 2000. Web. 9

Nov. 2014. .

Everett, Allen and Thomas Roman. Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to

Shortcuts Through Time and Space. London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Print.

Flynn, John L. ―Time Travel Literature.‖ Encyclopedia Galactica, 1995. Web. 22. Feb. 2015.

ml>

44

Frigg, Roman. ―Chance and Determinism.‖ The Oxford Handbook of Probability and

Philosophy. Oxford: OUP, 2014. Print.

Grey, William. ―Troubles with Time Travel.‖ Philosophy 74.287: 55-70. JSTOR, 1999. Web. 7

Nov. 2014. .

Heinlein, Robert A. ―All You Zombies—.‖ The Golden Years. Oklahoma City: Mercury Press,

Inc., 1960. eBook.

Heinlein, Robert A. ―By His Bootstraps.‖ The Menace from Earth. New York: Gnome Press,

1959. Print.

Heinlein, Robert A. The Door into Summer. New York: Doubleday, 1957. Print.

Ho, Erica. ―China Decides to Ban Time Travel.‖ New York Times, April 13, 2011. Web. 14 Apr.

2015. .

Hoefer, Carl. ―Causal Determinism.‖ Staford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003. Web. 29 Mar.

2015. .

Hornshaw, Phil and Nick Hurwitch. So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to

Time Travel. Amazon Digital Services, Inc., 2012. eBook.

―Is Time Travel Possible?― Through the Wormhole. Perf. Morgan Freeman. Discovery Science

Channel, 2010. Television.

Jurgens, Dan, Louise Simonson and Roger Stern. The Death and Return of Superman. DC

Comics, 1992. Print.

Klosterman, Chuck. Eating the Dinosaur. New York: Scribner, 2010. Print.

Lewis, David. ―The Paradoxes of Time Travel.‖ American Philosophical Quarterly 13.2: 145-

52. JSTOR, 1976. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. .

Looney, Andrew. Chrononauts. College Park: Looney Labs, 2001. Card game.

Meyer, Ulrich. ―Explaining Causal Loops.‖ Oxford: OUP, 2012. eBook.

Monton, Bradley. ―Time Travel without Causal Loops.‖ The Philosophical Quarterly. Boulder:

45

University of Colorado, 2008. PDF file.

Nahin, Paul J. Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction. New

York: American Institute of Physics, 1993. Print.

Nahin, Paul J. Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. eBook.

Parrinder, Patrick. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of

Science Fiction and Utopia. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Print.

Predestination. Dir. Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig. Perf. Ethan Hawke. Sony Pictures,

2015. Film.

Rice, Hugh. ―Fatalism.‖ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.

.

―Risk Management.‖ BusinessDictionary.com. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

―Risk Management.‖ The Institute of Risk Management. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Arthur A. Levine, 1999.

Print.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The New York

Times, 22 April, 2007. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.

.

Taylor, Richard. ―Fatalism.‖ The Philosophical Review 71.1: 56-66. JSTOR, 1962. Durham:

Duke University Press. Web. 31 Mar. 2015. .

Terminator. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Orion Pictures Corporation,

1984. Film.

Time Travel: the Truth. Perf. Jimmy Hibbert. National Geographic, 2008. Television.

46

Turtledove, Harry. ―Introduction.‖ The Best Time Travel Stories of the Twentieth Century. New

York: Del Rey, 2004. eBook.

Wells, H. G., Time Machine. London: Heinemann, 1895. Print.

47

Summary

A prevalent theme in speculative fiction literature including the time-travel motif is the desire for change. However, this desire often has unwanted consequences. In time-travel works, unforeseeable and unlikely events can be game-changing for the overall story.

Nevertheless, not all time-travel works introduce the changeable reality element.

Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein have created significantly different time- traveling universes. Therefore, this thesis uses their works, the novels The End of

Eternity by Isaac Asimov and The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein as examples of this variety in speculative fiction. Other works by these authors used for this analysis are short stories ―The Dead Past‖ by Isaac Asimov, ―By His Bootstraps‖ and ―All You Zombies—― by Robert A. Heinlein. On these works, the paper illustrates that the most hazardous is The End of Eternity which contains changeable realities.

Whereas the deterministic works of Heinlein do not pose potential risks since they rule out free will.

48

Résumé

Převládající téma v literatuře spekulativního žánru s motivem cestování v čase je touha po změně. Nicméně tato touha mívá často nechtěné následky. Nepředvídatelné a nepravděpodobné události mohou v dílech o cestování v čase významně změnit celý děj. Ovšem ne všechny díla s motivem cestování v čase používají element proměnlivé reality.

Isaac Asimov a Robert A. Heinlein vytvořili dva podstatně jiné vesmíry, ve kterých je cestování časem možné. Z tohoto důvodu používá tato bakalářská práce jejich díla, a to romány Konec Věčnosti od Isaaca Asimova a Dveře do Léta od Roberta A.

Heinleina, jako příklady této rozdílnosti ve spekulativním žánru. Další díla těchto autorů, která jsou použita pro tuto analýzu, jsou povídky ―Mrtvá Minulost‖ od Isaaca

Asimova, ―Sám Sobě v Patách‖ a ―Všechny Tvé Stíny‖ od Roberta A. Heinleina. Práce na těchto dílech ilustruje to, že nejnebezpečnější se jeví román Konec Věčnosti, který obsahuje proměnlivou realitu. Zatímco deterministické díla od Roberta A. Heinleina v sobě neskrývají žádné potencionální hrozby, vzhledem k tomu, že vylučují svobodnou vůli.

49