Jonas Kjærgaard Pedersen 10. Semester English Master’s Thesis Page 1 of 74 Jonas Kjærgaard Pedersen 10. Semester English Master’s Thesis Abstract Time travel has since H.G Wells’ famous novel The Time Machine been an integral part of science fiction. Since the publication of the novel, the complexity of time travel narratives has progressed. This paper investigates the films: The Time Machine (1960), The Terminator (1984), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Donnie Darko (2001), Primer (2004), and finally the BBC television series Ashes to Ashes (2008), to see how the theme of time travel occurs differently in each of these. The paper also investigates how the theme of time travel is concerned with the ontological question of being. Here an understanding of conventional time travel paradoxes is discussed. The analysis of the films and series is based on theory centred on a general understanding of science fiction, apocalypse, time travel, and finally an intersectional angle to investigate, whether a feministic agenda is present in a time travel narrative. Keywords: Apocalypse, Time Travel, Science Fiction, Emotions, Films, Ontology, Psychology, Intersectionality. Page 2 of 74 Jonas Kjærgaard Pedersen 10. Semester English Master’s Thesis Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Theory ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 Science Fiction as a Cultural System ......................................................................................................... 6 Colonisation and invasion in Science fiction ............................................................................................10 The Apocalypse and the Post Apocalypse ................................................................................................13 The Concept of Time and Time travel in Science fiction ...........................................................................17 Types of Time travel ............................................................................................................................22 Reasons for Time travel in Fiction ........................................................................................................25 Intersectionality ......................................................................................................................................27 Analysis ......................................................................................................................................................32 The Time Machine (1960) .......................................................................................................................32 The Terminator (1984) ............................................................................................................................37 Twelve Monkeys (1995) ..........................................................................................................................42 Donnie Darko (2001) ...............................................................................................................................49 Primer (2004) ..........................................................................................................................................56 Ashes to Ashes (2008) .............................................................................................................................60 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................66 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................................69 Journals ......................................................................................................................................................69 Fiction and films ......................................................................................................................................72 Webpages ...............................................................................................................................................73 Books..........................................................................................................................................................73 Page 3 of 74 Jonas Kjærgaard Pedersen 10. Semester English Master’s Thesis We all have our time machines, don't we? Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward are dreams. - H.G. Wells Introduction In our perception of the world people usually discuss three spatial dimensions, but beyond there is also the fourth dimension time. Time is still one of the biggest enigmas, for what is time? Many people, such as scientist, philosophers, poets, authors, musicians have asked this question. Is time just something we perceive or merely an illusion? Looking at the general semantics of the English language there are three variations of tense: past, present and future, but is time merely seconds, minutes and hours or is it more than that? How do we handle time, and is it possible to alter time? H.G Wells had in 1895 his science fiction novel The Time Machine published where he through fantastical writing made the reader able to experience the awesome journey of the time traveller forward in time. This novel is believed to have introduced the theme of time travelling in contemporary writing and generally to have set focus on the topic, also in science. Time has also been seen as a tool of oppression; George Orwell expresses this in his classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1948). He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. This latter quote explains a connection between the use of power and time in order to control a population, this also points out, among others, why an understanding of time is so important. Several philosophers have furthermore discussed time as an important factor of our existence. Especially the existentialistic wave of philosophers such as Camus, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard have discussed how time is an important factor in the understanding of the development of our existence. Besides this, there has for a long time been an interest in finding out how old our planet is. This is present in the beliefs exclaimed in the bible where some people believe that the world is approximately 6000 years old. Contemporary scientific theories, however, suggests that the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old, and that the human race only has been around for approximately 85 million years. All this seems like an awful long time, but compared to the beginning of the universe it is not much. The most frequently discussed theory of the beginning of time suggests that the universe was created in a singularity known as the big bang 13.82 ± 0.05 billion years ago. According to the theory it also means that, time was created at the same stage, since the singularity before and Page 4 of 74 Jonas Kjærgaard Pedersen 10. Semester English Master’s Thesis during the singularity is not scientific observable. The question of time is also relevant in almost every field of science, for example when scientists claim that the universe is infinite, but how is it then possible to explain that the universe always is expanding? Some of the explanations to this question could be multiverses and other dimensions, specified through string theory. Another more fantastic aspect of time that has been discussed in science and fiction is the ability to travel forward and/or back in time. In our linear understanding of time it evident to everyone that we are all somehow travelling slowly into the future, which we observe by looking at our clocks. Einstein specified with his famous relativity theory that it is not possible for anything to travel faster than light. However, in recent years scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne have investigated phenomena such as black holes ,wormholes and theoretical ideas have been discussed making it possible to travel time. Besides this, faster than light travels and time travelling has for a long time been a discussed topic in science fiction, besides The Time Machine, several other science fiction texts have explored the speculative topic of time travelling back and/or forward in time. With this in mind, this paper will predominantly investigate time travel as a concept and the connection between being and time in science fiction. This will primarily be achieved by investigating several films discussing the topic of time travel. The films are The Time Machine (1960), which is based on the famous novel by HG Wells, The Terminator (1984), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Donnie Darko (2001), Primer (2004), and finally the BBC television series Ashes to Ashes (2008). These films and the television series have been selected since they explore different types of time travel paradoxes and furthermore investigates different psychological aspects of time travelling. To be able to analyse these films a general knowledge on the topic of time travel is needed. This will be investigated in the theory section. The theory section will discuss general markers of science fiction, and hereafter discuss the connection between science fiction