Time Travel discussion

Are you new to our group? Are you a long-time lurker who never says anything? Have you been a member of this group for ages yet we know nothing about you? Introduce yourself here. It's always nice to match a personality to a name.

What should you say? You might tell us where you're from, what you do, something interesting about yourself, what you like to read, what your hobbies and interests are, why you like time travel, and/or where/when you'd go if you were able to time travel.

And then when you've finished here, jump into a conversation with us elsewhere in the group.

Greetings, fellow time travelers!

Hello everyone I have been in the group for awhile and really enjoy it.

Hello everybody!

I have been a member and Goodreads author for about a year now but only found out about this group recently. Most of the nine e-books I wrote, which I published online for free, concern time travel, a subject that fascinates me. Part of the reason for that is that I am also a big history buff, with a penchant on military history. I have many more book projects coming, including the seventh and last book of my series on the Time Patrol. For me, time travel stories are a way to tell readers about often obscure or poorly known time periods and, especially, to give an appreciation of those countless billions of people who preceded us and to show them as more than simple historical references.

Hello, Perry, Brooke, and Michel. It's great to meet you all. Welcome to our group. We try to keep things friendly and civil around here and hope you enjoy your time here. Let me know if you have any questions about how things work on the site.

Sorry, I've been lax in welcoming our new members who are always most appreciated.

Hope you enjoy our group & be sure to peruse past threads & feel free to comment or start one of your own.

Hello,

I have just joined the group. I live in the UK and my name is Damian, though I have adopted the standard SF/Fantasy naming convention.

I have downloaded a sample of The River of No Return, it looks like an interesting concept, and am planning on joining in the discussion.

I am a big fan of time travel stories, there is something special about the genre. I am not even sure precisely what this quality is. Perhaps that would be an interesting subject for a discussion in the group, if there is not already one.

I have also recently written a time travel novel myself and am currently working on a sequel. I thought it would be interesting to discuss the genre with other fans.

Damian

Hi Gang, my name is Tracey Richardson, and while I joined this group awhile ago, I haven't commented on anything until now (though I am happily reading The River of No Return)! I've always been fascinated by time travel books, and am an author who has written several novels (none yet to do with time travel). I actually had written a page or two of notes a few years ago about a story idea of someone who travels back in time to try to stop the JFK assassination... then wouldn't you know it, Stephen King, bless his heart, beat me to it! :)

D.P. wrote: "Hello,

I have just joined the group. I live in the UK and my name is Damian, though I have adopted the standard SF/Fantasy naming convention.

I have downloaded a sample of The River of No Return,..."

Welcome, Damian. I do like that there's a no -obligations option for downloading a sample of the book. A good book will hook you and make you have to buy the whole thing, so beware. I think you'll like it and have to join us in discussion.

For me, what's special about sci-fi is that it's full of the unexpected and the unknown. That adds a different depth to a story for me. But I like that the imaginative bits are things that could perhaps be possible, so it appeals to my logical side.

Good luck writing your novel. There are lots of time travel writers in the group, so you're among peers.

Tracey wrote: "Hi Gang, my name is Tracey Richardson, and while I joined this group awhile ago, I haven't commented on anything until now (though I am happily reading The River of No Return)! I've always been fas..."

With over 1000 members Herr and only a handful regularly discussing, it's nice to get to know our lurkers.

The great thing about this genre is that no two writers use the same rules or come to the same conclusions when their book has the same goals. So don't let Mr. King's attempt at stopping JFK's assassination prevent your characters from trying the same thing. :-)

Greetings, I'm Tor (short for Victoria) from Point Reyes Station (California). I've been lurking for about a month. I just finished River of No Return, which was the cherry on top of a delicious vacation in Kauai. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to a sequel. My favorite books usually have a time travel element in them. I've joined this group to find more books to enjoy. A recent favorite of mine is Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. I also enjoy books about people in the midst of personal transformation such as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
P.S. Jack Finney's Time and Again got me started on this theme in the 80's.

Welcome to our group. As a voracious reader of time travel since I read Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity when 12, and as a writer of time travel since my novel The Plot to Save Socrates (and a whole bunch of short stories) when I was a lot older, I can say that this is best time travel discussion group I've ever encountered on the Web.

Paul wrote: "Welcome to our group. As a voracious reader of time travel since I read Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity when 12, and as a writer of time travel since my novel [book:The Plot to Sa..."



https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Ah. But introductions are exempt. I'd consider this Paul's late self introduction.

Amy wrote: "Ah. But introductions are exempt. I'd consider this Paul's late self introduction."

Thanks, Amy. I'm glad this wasn't considered a self-introduction by the late Paul :)

Paul wrote: "Amy wrote: "Ah. But introductions are exempt. I'd consider this Paul's late self introduction."

Thanks, Amy. I'm glad this wasn't considered a self-introduction by the late Paul :)"

Ha.

heheh ... and I thought it was so funny :p

oh, looks like my picture in post #14 isn't working. kinda ruined the fun a bit there. ;-)

MK - In order to post a picture in a Goodreads comment, you need to first upload it to a photo-hosting site - such as Photobucket - and then follow the code shown when you click "some html is ok"

Paul wrote: "MK - In order to post a picture in a Goodreads comment, you need to first upload it to a photo-hosting site - such as Photobucket - and then follow the code shown when you click "some html is ok""

I think the issue was I 'hotlinked' to someone else's upload. It was a funny pic tho :p

I can see it :) And it was quite funny.

Nathan wrote: "I can see it :) And it was quite funny."

heh ... yay! :D

Okay. Now it's there. Ha.

Hi, I'm Padgett. I'm a writer. Only very recently started calling myself that. I've been on goodreads for about a month. I have joined some groups and lurked around others.

I had never been a big fan of time travel books until my sister, who was also a writer, challenged me to write one. Two years and 100k+ words later and I published my first work of fiction and am working on a sequel.

I still find time travel very confounding. But it is my opinion, you develop a theory and just stick with it -no matter how complicated it all gets.

I'm looking forward to reading how other authors handle it.

Any gimmick will do. You can make it as technical or bland as you like. The original [I believe] was Rip van Winkle who just fell asleep. ;-)

For my own book, I had the help of an online astronomy club lead me to a cool table showing eclipses that happen in the north of France, add an explosion and.. *voila!* There the three soldiers are [from 44AD, 1804 and 1914] and off we go to the races!

Very neat -an explosion and eclipses. Mine is your standard time machine. But I had to develop a technology around it. Fortunately, my husband is an electrical engineer. I would run made-up terms past him and ask if they sounded plausible.

Padgett- lucky you! I'll bet he understands all that techno-jargon on STAR TREK! Us rubes stick to fantasy or eclipses and such [worked for E.R. Burroughs, that makes it good enough for me].

Even with him as a sounding board, I kept the explanation of my "theory" short. I also loved Burroughs' -especially the Mars series. As for ST, even with all the techno-jargon, when it came to time travel -they just ran through a portal.

Hi everyone,

I'm Paul (from Brisbane, Australia) and I'm new to this group and pretty new to Goodreads as well. I don't know how I found Time Travels - I think I noticed it in my Goodreads newsfeed - or via a friend - perhaps I need to go back in time to find out.

Anyway, a short while ago I finished reading Stephen King's "22.11.63" and it rekindled my interest in Temporal Mechanics. I've discovered if you think too hard about it, you get a headache!

So...greetings to everyone, and I think I'm going to enjoy this lovely group of people.

I'd forgotten about that one. King's JFK book was excellent. It definitely deserves a place on the bookshelf.

Hello, Paul. Welcome to the group.

Padgett, we outline our book until we believe we have ironed out all the problematic points of time travel, and then discover more. We each offer suggestions, then the other plays the devil's advocate. So, get yourself a DA and go for it!

Great suggestion. I'm finding that the sequel is proving more difficult time travel wise than the first book. I'm trying to establish some more detailed mythology in regards to the "time traitors" and now I have to stay consistent with the first book.

I'll put out an ad for a Devil's Advocate :)

Have no idea what the specific details are you kids are discussing, but I get the gist of it - you've run into the paradox factor because events are happening you can't explain with the time mechanics you've created.

It happens. ;-)

Let me tell you a little secret about Dues ex Machina that you may not hear from anybody else....

The reason Dues ex is loathed by editors [mostly] and everybody else [in general], is because it [almost] always comes at the end of the book and is a lazy way to end a story when the author either didn't plan it out well [the bad ones] or had no idea how else to do it and was facing a deadline [the good ones].

It used to be acceptable [well, for the Big Names], but as SF became more mainstream and acceptable in critical circles, the practice was shamed out of the building and is considered the mark of a lazy writer or noob.

That being said - you *can* sneak it in *if* you do it right.

Don't drop it at the end to explain everything away. Include it at the beginning of the book and either add additional characters or look back for shady characters that were never quite fleshed out - even better if they were 'killed' under shady circumstances.

The new Dues ex now becomes your salvation [use it to explain how everything your protagonists 'thought' they doing/controlling was actually done under The Master Plan of the new Bad Guys]. It gives you new directions, new plot twists to explore and conflict galore to end your series with a big splash!

'Thus endeth the lesson.'

:-) I hope.

Your Buddy, Chester

I've actually learned a lot in just these few posts. I write basically when I can and don't have much opportunity to hear from other writers. Thanks.

Glad to help - hope others will chime in with suggestions. The more you get, the more plot twists we get. ;-)

Your Buddy, Chester

Padgett wrote: "I've actually learned a lot in just these few posts. I write basically when I can and don't have much opportunity to hear from other writers. Thanks."

Maybe we need a time travel writers thread. We certainly have plenty of writers here. Everyone has their own rules of time travel, but it might be nice to converse with those who also are writing/have written time travel stories/novels.

I think that is a really great idea.

I agree - and it would be better way for authors to integrate into goodreads - rather than just turning up and saying "buy my book"

I'm in.

Our new Time Travel Author Forum is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hello! I'm Samantha from Ohio, and I just joined the group.

I discovered Connie Willis last year and adore her Oxford Time Travel series, and I found myself stumbling upon a lot of other great time travel related books around the same time. I'm fascinated with the subject because I'm a big history enthusiast, especially early film, which for me is the closest we can get to time travel, to see people who are long gone in motion and sometimes to even hear them. The visual brings it all to life.

Hello, Samantha, welcome. You have an interesting hobby. One of my favorite movies is Night of the Hunter. There was a true artist behind that camera.
And didn't the pre-1960's movie stars seems so very elegant?

Have you ever watched a movie called "I miss Mamma", or "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison"? More favorites of ours.

Oddly, no, I haven't seen any of the movies you mentioned! They're definitely on the list though.

I consider myself to be a Dick Powell expert and I love the Our Gang series, Mary Pickford, Van Johnson, and June Allyson. My favorite film era is the time between the late silent era and through the enforcement of the production code in 1934, but I'll watch anything pre-1960s. You're right, there was a class and an elegance about the world back then that I wish I could have experienced for myself.

Greeting to one and all. I come from the present, and hope to find good reason to participate from this moment forward in the goings-on of this forum. Like, I suspect, many, if not most of you, I'm an author as well. In my case, I've been moved to participate because I just published a book on Amazon (okay, I self-published) and now feel the need to get involved. In case you're interested it's called "Deadline 70 AD".

Jim, welcome.

I see from your profile page that you like History & interesting things.

Me too:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Yes, I have spent a lot of time reading history books and even visiting historical places when possible. It's part of the reason time-travel was such an attractive option for the setting of a novel.

Jim #46

Go Man go

Welcome to the group new comers...I hope you enjoy reading and contributing to the discussions and reading the book of the month as well. Of course do whatever you enjoy. Come on in and enjoy the summer with us or winter or whatever time frame you find yourself...or hemisphere.

Jonathan #49 likes History:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

And Physics:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Welcome, Jonathan.

Hey all. Just joined yesterday (or was it the day before?). Thomas is my name and time travel is my game.

I've been interested in the concept of time travel for a very long time, despite my belief that it's not actually possible. But that certainly didn't stop me from writing a sci-fi/fantasy series about it.