A Time of Magic

Let’s suppose you have a one-shot time machine and you can go back in time once… what would you change?

Most people come up with the old favourites like stopping the First World War. OK, why not? Well, let’s say you’ve fully researched the history of the period and know which key event needs to be changed. Let’s ignore any complications and assume that the war wasn’t inevitable and that you would actually be able to change the relevant key event so that the war didn’t start.

So you’d do it, wouldn’t you? Well, roll time forward to the present and you’d find yourself in quite a different world. Some key changes that happened as a result of that war wouldn’t have happened. Business leaders would still be upper class, women wouldn’t be going out to work, chemical weapons would still be legitimate weapons of war, the tank might not have been invented yet (and therefore soldiers would remain “cannon fodder”)Â and we’d not have the United Nations because we’d not have formed its predecessor.

OK, we could do without those to save the lives lost needlessly. On the other hand, we’d still have the Kaiser in Germany. In that Germany wouldn’t have been beaten down, chances are that Hitler wouldn’t get to be Chancellor but would the Kaiser’s descendants be any better? I suspect that they wouldn’t, and could be a whole lot worse. After all, Germany would be going into the equivalent of our second World War but with their economy in reasonable shape and with another 10 to 20 years of time to play with.

So, in effect we could end up with somewhat more advanced technology being used to deliver not bombs but chemical weapon payloads. “We” would almost certainly lose that kind of war.

Would you still stop the First World War happening?

If not, what else would you change?

In that time travel is theoretically possible you’d think that it’s a little surprising that nobody has turned up here from the future, wouldn’t you?

But suppose that they did, how would you know? More to the point, how would they prove that they were from the future?

Let’s make it easy… say you built a time machine and travelled back from 2007 to 1907. How would you prove to the people in 1907 that you’d come from the future?

Yes, you’d be wearing strange clothes more than likely made with materials that didn’t exist at the time. On the other hand, would they be able to tell that your polyester shirt wasn’t made from some form of silk? Most people back then probably wouldn’t and besides perhaps you’d just bought it in China.

What about your digital watch? If it only had a digital display it would certainly be a curiosity and if you let them open it up that would be a pretty good indication that you had some seriously advanced technology. Of course, that’s assuming that you or they could open it.

Now in the films you’d just tell them who was going to win the Grand National but since this isn’t the films chances are that you don’t know who the winner was anyway and indeed unless you’re into the history of that period, you won’t even know about major events that happened in 1907. OK, you know that the first world war would be starting in 1914 but even if you landed in 1914 that wouldn’t prove anything as anybody reasonably knowledgeable about world affairs would be expecting it too. In short, your knowledge of history isn’t going to prove you’re from the future.

What else? Well, your attitudes would be quite different for a start but it’s hardly going to prove much if you speak to the servants as equals rather than as though they were insects.

So, even if you ignored any issues relating to changing the future, you’d have quite some difficulty in proving that you were from the future and would probably end up in a mental institution if you did try. Perhaps that’s where we should look for time travellers from our future?

One of the amazing things about science fiction on TV and on films is that there’s lots of the technology which you can buy in the shops today.

OK, it’s going to be a while before you can nip out and buy something that will let you travel in time but, surprisingly, it’s something that should be available some day in that it’s not impossible going by present day theories and, of course, anything that isn’t impossible will surely be available someday.

However, if you consider the original Star Trek series every single item can be bought today with just two exceptions. We have a primitive version of the communicators (the Enterprise wasn’t tied to using transmitter poles!). The original version of the notepad was available in the late 1980s and is actually obselete having been replaced by present-day PDAs after a gap of 10 years or so. Talking computers were available in the early 1980s and are now commonplace (although strangely more primitive than those available 20 years ago!).

The exceptions? Well, warp drive is, in principle, possible but isn’t on sale just yet.

It’s the transporter that’s the one you’ll not be able to buy anytime soon as nobody has, so far, worked out even a theoretical way that such a thing would work.