Time Travel Fatigue

An interesting article about what can basically be seen as the erosion of the use of Time Travel in Science Fiction. Indeed : Compared to the way time travel was used to come up with new plotlines and infinite possibilities, it is now becomimg somewhat of a Deus Ex Machina to fix the script every time when the director gets stuck.

Somewhere between watching the first half-hour of the new Star Trek film and, five days later, the season finale of Lost, something happened.

You know how it is when you have that second piece of dessert? It tastes great at the time. The sensory delights linger through the after-dinner drinks and through the evening ... right up to the moment when you step on the scale the next morning.

It can happen with stories, too. There are themes and high concepts you love, then you have one more than the standard adult requirement.

For example, I reached this point with the alien-invasion theme on television four seasons back, when NBC's Surface, ABC's Invasion and CBS's Threshold were all airing at the same time.

It's happening this summer with a pair of Big Rock Hits Earth miniseries. ABC already aired Impact, and NBC is promising Meteor: Path to Destruction. This comes a decade after the dueling Big Rock features Armageddon and Deep Impact, which were two decades after dueling Big Rock novels, Lucifer's Hammer and Shiva Descending.

I was happily watching Star Trek, prepared to love every minute of it—which I did, right up until the time when the Romulan ship appeared from the future.

Let me say this again, possibly saving myself half a dozen comments: I liked this movie. It was a wonderful re-invention of the Star Trek franchise. Long may it wave. Can't wait for the sequel.

But I didn't need the time travel. I didn't need future Spock.

Five days later I was watching "The Incident" on Lost. Jack and Kate and Hurley were trying to work some time-travel-related magic on the Lost island of 30-odd years ago when I realized that two characters—Daniel and Miles—were in the story in different phases of their lives.

I've overdosed on time-travel stories.

Which is painful, because I love them. Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Robert F. Young's charming "When Time Was New." Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps." Lewis Padgett's "Mimsy Were the Borogoves."

Just last month I read Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine. Not long before that, I revisited Harry Harrison's The Technicolor® Time Machine—which if nothing else possesses one of the best titles in sci-fi history.

I grew up watching Peabody and Sherman and the Wayback Machine. I liked Time Tunnel. I enjoyed all of the Back to the Future movies.

I love the forms a time-travel story can take. You can leap forward and experience the near future, as in Gregory Benford's Timescape or Algis Budry's "Silent Eyes of Time," or, of course, in H.G. Wells' Time Machine.

I love it when characters go back in time, as in Connie Willis' Doomsday Book or, even further back, as in Robert Silverberg's Hawksbill Station or Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder."

Further reading : Time Travel Fatigue