22 April 2006
Time to believe

In common, I suspect, with many comic readers, I’m a big fan of science fiction. There are simply acres of common ground between the super hero universes of DC and Marvel and the SciFi world of wondrous inventions, aliens and genetic experimentation. There is one area, however – and it’s common to both – with which I’ve never really felt comfortable. I’m prepared to suspend my disbelief long enough to believe a man can fly but, with one exception, I’ve always had trouble believing he could travel through time.

The very best science fiction and super hero comics both manage to do a number of things. Firstly, they tell a rattling good adventure story. Secondly, they explore an idea (ethical, moral or philosophical) which is fundamental to our understanding of ourselves. And, thirdly, they do it all within the parameters of recognisable science.

That last one is important. Without it, we’re in the realms of science fantasy rather than science fiction and that’s another ball game all together. First, just think about the story and the ideas.

What’s the big idea?

A lot of science fiction focuses on the adventure story to the exclusion of the “big idea”. Early comics (Dan Dare) and Saturday matinee space operas (The Rocket Man, Flash Gordon) were typical examples of this but there are plenty of more recent examples too (The Fifth Element, Resident Evil and pretty much all the TV adaptations of comic books including Wonder Woman, Spiderman and The Hulk). All rattling good yarns but what are they really trying to say? If it weren’t for the costumes, the stories are no different to those in a hundred cowboy, gangster or period dramas. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s escapism and it’s fun. But, without the “big idea”, it’s not achieving everything the genre is best at.

At the other end of the science fiction spectrum are those examples which set out specifically to cater to the demand for so-called “intelligent” SciFi. 2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps the most well-known example, hitting all the big targets from the origin of sentient life on Earth through to the future of our species (and all by way of the man vs machine dilemma). The success of that movie, however, masks the dangers of abandoning the adventure story format. SciFi fans might appreciate a good idea but they want entertainment too, not just a philosophical debate. Solaris, both as a novel and in its two movie versions, is a prime example of how to get the mix wrong. As is the first Star Trek movie.

The producers of Star Trek knew that fans of the TV series loved its cod humanistic philosophy and made sure that, in the movie, the fans got what they said they wanted. Somewhere in the mix, however, they lost sight of the fact that the majority of fans (i.e. those who didn’t go to the conventions or hang around online forums simply to lobby their opinions) also loved the camp Sixties humour and the weekly battles with alien life-forms. Fortunately, they realised this in time to get the formula right for the subsequent Star Trek movies.

The sum of the parts

Now, I like both intelligent SciFi and escapist SciFi. My point is that the best SciFi encompasses both. It has brains as well as brawn. It uses the format of the adventure story to make its ideas accessible.

Take Jurassic Park. The idea of scientists being theoretically able to clone extinct species from fossilised DNA might be interesting enough to fill two column inches of newsprint. But only just. However, if you wrap that idea in a story of a scientist who has successfully completed such an experiment and whose family is now threatened by a pack of escaped velociraptors then you have a smash hit novel, movie, theme park ride and enough merchandising to bury a tyrannosaurus. In addition, you’ve got a whole generation of readers and movie-goers now thinking about cloning and the ethics of tampering with nature.

Jurassic Park also conforms to the third requirement for good SciFi. The dinosaurs aren’t just mysteriously “discovered” (as in, for example, Conan Doyle’s The Lost World), they are created using a scientific technique which is only one step removed from our understanding of what is already scientifically possible. And that brings me back to my trouble with time travel.

Planes, trains and … flux capacitors

Time travel is one of the recurrent themes of science fiction. How could it not be? With every possible future waiting to be explored and the whole of history available for plunder, it’s tailor-made for adventure stories. In addition, the very act of contemplating travelling backwards or forwards in time throws up a host of moral and ethical considerations, not to mention philosophical perspectives.

Of course, first you have to find a means of travel. In true Victorian fashion, HG Wells decided his hero would need a machine (i.e. The Time Machine) to do so and many, many others have since adopted his approach. Time machines range from the sublimely stylish (such as Emmet Brown’s De Lorean in the Back to the Future movies) to the ridiculously prosaic (such as the phone booth, a design curiously used by travellers as diverse as Dr Who and Bill and Ted).

Other stories adopt the approach that the traveller is sent through time while his machine stays in the present (or at least his present). The Terminator films are perhaps the best known examples of this (thanks in no small part to the impressive physiques of both Arnie and Kristanna Lokken).

The third approach, is the technique of reversing the rotation of the Earth, often used in comics and seen on screen in, for example, in the first of Christopher Reeves’ Superman films. For reasons not explained in the movie or the comics, this does not result in tidal waves, earthquakes and the catastrophic disruption of the Earth’s magnetic core and/or gravitational pull. Instead it simply rewinds time like a video tape. What’s more, once back in time, Superman does not see the “earlier” version of himself and he alone is aware that time has been reversed. You don’t need a masters degree in applied physics to realise this is nonsense even within the story’s own terms of reference.

Ringing the changes

The problem is that old chestnut, the “Hitler Paradox”. You know the one. If you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler before he came to power? If the answer to that question is “no”, then why would anyone want to travel through time in the first place? The whole point of time travel is to change the past (and, thereby, to change the present and the future).

Now, this is far beyond the realms of the scientifically recognisable. Einstein may have speculated that time travel was theoretically possible but I’m pretty sure he never suggested that, in doing so, it would be possible to change past events. The consequence of changing things in the past is to create a paradox, best illustrated in the possible negating of your own existence (as in Back to the Future) which, in turn, would mean you could never have gone back in time to … well, you get the picture.

At the heart of many time travel stories there is at least a recognition of one or two paradoxes and some attempt to reconcile them. For my money, however, they invariably fail. The problem is that the number of paradoxes is infinite and this cannot be addressed within the story. Every explanation is instantly negated by another paradox. No matter how hard you try to tie up all the loose ends, there are always some left over. The logical conclusion, therefore, has to be that changing the past is impossible.

Back where we started from

So … if the concept of time travel creates too many paradoxes, the concept of a time travel story creates at least two. If you can’t change anything, isn’t the story something of a non-event? And, if whatever does happen is subject to change by the next mad scientist / super hero / space marine to step into a time machine or through a temporal portal, isn’t the whole story pointless even before it’s told? That’s pretty much my take on time travel stories. With one exception.

If he’d never made any other film before and if he'd never made another film since, Terry Gilliam would still deserve some sort of Lifetime Achievement award for Twelve Monkeys. Unlike almost any other SciFi story, it acknowledges that nothing can be changed. Unless you actually did do something ten years ago, you can’t go back and do it now.

The story loops round and back on itself again enough times to keep you guessing about the paradoxes it might be creating but, in the end, it always becomes clear that its feet have never left the path of the established time-line. What’s even more amazing is that, within this context of being able to change nothing, the movie still manages to be both intelligent and a fast-paced adventure. On these terms, I’m prepared to suspend my disbelief enough to concede that time travel might not be totally impossible. At least, no more so than a man who can fly.

[The substance of this article first appeared in a slightly different form at Comic Avalanche on 23 February 2005 and is reproduced by kind permission of Mr Avalanche. The views and opinions expressed in this column are entirely those of the author. If you wish to agree or disagree with any of the views expressed in this column, please leave your comments in the Forum].