TERZOP%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (05/08/84)
PLEASE ADD utcsrgv!mcgill-vision!mouse at uw-beaver TO THE SF-LOVERS
MAILING LIST
Date: Monday, 7 May 1984 10:48-EDT
From: utcsrgv!mcgill-vision!mouse at uw-beaver
To: terzop
Demetri....
I saw that sf-lovers digest you sent to Yvan and would like to say two
things. One, how can I get that automatically? Two, could you possibly send
the following on to the moderator in the meantime?
Re: psychic powers in Heinlein???
Those `kids' were hardly mentioned in Time Enough for Love (I can't recall
their being mentioned at all!). They were talked about rather a lot in
Methusalah's Children though.
Re: time travel `paradoxes'
"If I go back in time and kill my grandfather, will I cease to exist?"
This question assumes that time travel is possible.
Then, is there any meaning to this phrase "cease to exist" when you have just
assumed that you can cut yourself off from the normal framework of time? In
what sense can you start or stop existing when the concepts involve the
passage of time? In the sense of `the world', you already ceased to exist at
the moment you left at the "future" end of your time jump. You also started
existing at the "past" end of the jump in a similar fashion. If you want to
argue that you will have a `subjective' time in which such a thing can
happen, I reply that if you cease to exist, you haven't any subjective time
any longer (yes, I realize I'm also using passage-of-time language in an
inappropriate context, but time travel does that to grammar).
I read an interesting idea on this `paradox': The Overlords of War (or
something like that) by G. Klein (I think the G is for Gerard or Gerald or
some such name; and the book is a translation). This thesis is that if you
try to do such a thing, you set off a `timequake' -- a series of oscillations
in time which damp themselves out in some unspecified manner to get rid of
the disturbance (usually you!). In what sense you can have oscillations when
time is considered a static dimension is left to the reader's imagination. I
will try to dig out the book and send a full reference.
der Mouse