Tag: Back to the Future

Yabe

On By Keith ParkerIn Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Emotion, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Television, Time Travel, TV4 Comments

Screen Shot 2013-09-04 at 7.40.13 PMWelcome to Yabe Auctions!

Ending times are nonnegotiable; condition assumes caveat emptor; quantity to be verified by purchaser, also caveat emptor; Just Buy The Damn Thing prices listed when available.  Current bid is given by the Yabe Auction username.

The following items, culled by the noisome scholars at The Parker Institute of Time Travel Studies (The PITTS), and submitted for distribution through the publishing arm known as Fish and #TARDIS Sauce, have been made available through Yabe Auctions, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Corporation of Redundancy Corporation.

Did we mention caveat emptor?

PSYCHIC PAPER

  • Ending: Anytime you want it to.
  • Condition: Vintage, as used by Second Doctor
  • Quantity: 15 in stock
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: £ 42
  • Current Bid: Don’t you already know?

TRIBBLE

  • Ending: Aboard Klingon warship
  • Condition: Trilling
  • Quantity: Geometrically increasing
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: For a Drink
  • Current Bid: <SOLD: Cyrano Jones>

STRANGE WINE

  • Ending: Auction is over
  • Condition: In the sewers
  • Quantity: Overstocked
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: You already did
  • Current Bid: <SOLD: Hitler, Selling Roses>

1961 FERRARI 250 GT CALIFORNIA

  • Condition: Wiped with diaper
  • Ending: Never
  • Buy It Now: N/A
  • Quantity: <100
  • Current Bid: <Mr. Fry>

K-9, Mark II

  • Condition: Robotic
  • Ending: In e-space
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: N/A
  • Quantity: One
  • Current Bid: <Romana>

CUSTARD

  • Condition: Spoiled
  • Ending: In the ER
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: Payment due when services rendered.
  • Quantity: Too much of a good thing.
  • Current Bid: <No bidders>

ISHER WEAPON

  • Condition: A Fine Weapon
  • Ending: When you think you are free
  • Just Buy the Damn Thing: Negotiable, auction only
  • Quantity: Based on market forces, of course
  • Current Bid: <Robert Hedrock, but he has plenty of time to wait>

All sales final

Copyright © 2013 Keith Parker

Bootstrap

On By Keith ParkerIn Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Emotion, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Science Fiction, Short Story, Star Trek, Television, The Twilight Zone, Time Travel, TV8 Comments

Sally SparrowThis week, The Parker Institute of Time Travel Studies (The PITTS) — in conjunction with State and Local Officials — has devised this warning for all time travelers and others involved in temporal excursions: Do not employ bootstrap time travel.

  • Bootstrap Time Travel (Encyclopedia Galactica*) — The bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first place.

A recent examination by investigators — hired by the autonomous Fish and #TARDIS Sauce Group — indicate that there is an alarming rise of bootstrapped articles appearing throughout the timeline. The genesis of this “fad” seems to have been the airing of the Doctor Who episode, “Blink.” The PITTS, therefore, has been forced to implement emergency and draconian measures to staunch the flow of now-uncreated objects and information. Recent examples of bootstrap incursions include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • A man from Nantucket took a freeze-dried lizard back to his childhood, gave the lizard to himself, which he (the younger) then kept until he was a grown man with a chance to travel back in time … the situation was frustrated by teaching his younger self a limirick.
  • A husky Russian émigré, intent on playing football for Vince Lombardi, recently overshot his mark and took his time vehicle to 1947 New Mexico instead of 1967 Wisconsin, ruining our research and playoff hopes in one selfish move.
  • An English woman, home from the laundry mat and feeling adventuresome, took the family Wellsian for a spin to Victorian England with a basket full of extra footwear, creating an impossible temporal vortex of missing socks that will confound 20th– and 21st-century men for eternity.
  • An Alabama man took an egg (cage-free, organic, with Omega-3s) to China, circa 6000 BC, to the very day that the first chicken became domesticated and, as a result of self-indulgent selfish motives, removed the chicken-egg paradox from modern thought.
  • A Jaffa woman recently returned The Holy Grail to its shelf at The Cenacle, thereby eliminating any possibility we could determine the origin of said graal.
  • And in 2007/1969 Doctor Who told Sally Sparrow, “Blink and you’re dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good luck.” The Doctor has been unavailable for comment.

These are but a few examples of what has become a worldwide epidemic. At this rate, all material objects, articles, matter, data, information, and salmon will not have a place of origin. The effects of this activity on the eco-military-industrial-climatic-god complex cannot not be overstated without embellishment. Please stay tuned to this channel for further updates.

The past is prologue; so is the future.

Years truly,

Keith

* All entries from Encyclopedia Galactica are, in fact, plagiarized liberated from Wikipedia.org (English version).

Copyright © 2013 Keith Parker

The Time Traveler’s Life (Part II)

On By Keith ParkerIn Clocks, Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Fantasy, Fiction, movies, Science Fiction, Television, Time TravelLeave a comment

Lea 2The second part of this series on writing time travel fiction is precautionary. Hopefully it will help you avoid stuff that’s just weird.  A good example of weirdness is not Lea Thompson playing Lorraine Baines.  No, a good example of weirdness is that family photograph that Marty carried around in Back to the Future.  People loved that movie, so much so that it’s become a trope (very Back-to-the-Future), and its quotes have entered daily dialogue (“You’re my density!” and “1.61 gigawatts of electricity,” and “Great Scott!”).  But as much as people loved the movie they hated that damn photograph, and the way Marty’s family faded in and out depending how he was messing up the timeline.

With that in mind, here are a few other cliches you’ll want to avoid if you’re writing about time travel:

  • If the hero’s past and future selves encounter each other it’ll destroy the universe.  This one is just plain stupid.  And who’s to decide what’s stupid and what’s not?  I am.  It’s my blog.
  • The Butterfly Effect.  This one is just too worn-out or, as Doctor Who put it, “Just don’t step on butterflies, then.”
  • Overuse of Daylight Savings Time, the International Date Line, and clocks that run backward, and any other type of artificial construct.
  • Avoid having the hero travel back in time to give the time machine to himself.  This is actually my favorite paradox, but it doesn’t make for a good story.  You know what does make for a good story?  Characters.
  • Avoid the mysterious stranger who is revealed to be the hero’s past or future self.  Readers will spot this one immediately.  It’s much better to start with this as a premise and see how it goes from there, e.g., John the Younger has just discovered that spooky ol’ John the Older, who lives right next door, is actually his future self.  Have the story, novel, screenplay, etc, start there.
  • Going back in time 65 million years to be chased by a dinosaur.  If you want to get chased by a T-Rex just fly down to Isla Nublar. It’s much closer.jurassic-park
  • Repeating the same eras as destinations: I touched on this in Part I of this blog entry.  There are certain time periods that have captured our imagination.  Among them are prehistoric times, the Middle Ages, the American Civil War, the Wild West, World War II, the (not-so) good ol’ days of the 50s, and the Kennedy Assassination.  But if you just quickly browse any good bookstore you’ll realize that history is much more than this.  In fact, it’s been around for a long time.
  • Having the main character change sex as a result of time travel.  Robert Heinlein did this in “All You Zombies.”  It worked for him, but chances are you’re not going to ooh-aah anybody with that zinger these days.
  • Don’t make the future a dystopia.  A nuclear ash-heap of post-apocalyptic, angst-ridden, one-armed assholes carrying assault rifles fighting off hords of zombies and a virtual reality “Big Brother” is … tiring as hell.  I just made all that up, by the way.  So, if I can make up a cliche in thirty seconds there’s a damn good chance it’s overused.

This is just a snapshot of the cliches.   And also remember that if you’ve seen it once in a movie (e.g., Groundhog Day) it’s been done dozens of times in fiction.

A word of encouragement before I sign off … If you want your character to travel back to the Kennedy assassination  it’s perfectly fine to do so.  But what you need to do is find a fresh angle.  I’ll give you an example as a sort of writing prompt: Instead of writing about the events in Dealey Plaza why not write about the interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald by the Dallas Police and the FBI?  Make your time traveler one of the FBI agents.  He could’ve “just flown in” from Washington.  And not only does he have to deal with the stress of the situation he also has to deal with a culture that is hostile to Federal agents.  Food for thought.  Or, as they say in the UK, food for thought.

Pax,

Keith

Copyright © 2013

The Time Traveler’s Life (Part I)

On By Keith ParkerIn Clocks, Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, mad scientist, movies, Science Fiction, scientist, Steampunk, Television, Time Travel, TV2 Comments

Still-of-Lea-Thompson-in-Back-to-the-Future-24BJGVYFS3-moviereviewfeeds-comIt seemed apropos that, on Groundhog Day, I’d post a picture of the first actress I had a crush on  … oh, wait!  What I mean to say is that I’d be asked to post an article on G+ about the challenges of writing time travel fiction.  If you want to delve into this weird but amazingly fun genre (where you may indeed have a protagonist who looks like Lea Thompson) you need to know what you’re up against.  What I’ve tried to do below is compile a list of issues the time travel writer needs to be aware of.

As with everything else in fiction, of course, the way to attract readers is through character.  But this article doesn’t address character development; there are ample resources for that.  Right now, we’ll stick to time-travel obstacles.

• Paradox Lost – You’ve got to come to grips with the notion of paradox.  That means wrapping your mind around two conflicting ideas.  My favorite time travel paradox, for example, is the one where the time traveler goes back in time and gives the blueprints for the time machine to his younger self.  Thinking about cause and effect here requires some serious mental gymnastics, not to mention a tall glass of scotch.  However, you really should avoid using this particular paradox in your story; it’s an overused cliche.

• Who’s Out to Get Your Hero? – You need to realize the villain of your story may well turn out to be the hero’s younger or older self.

• Timeline – Stephen King wrote a phenomenal time travel novel in 11/22/63.  In order to do that yourself, you’re going to have to map out the timeline chronologically (ahem).  So if you had a present-day time traveler going back to witness the events in Dealey Plaza, you’d need a timeline from 1963 till now.  Otherwise things are going to be a tangled mess.  Index cards work well for storyboarding such a plot, with each card representing a major aspect of the plot.11-22-63

• Travel Agent Required – How does the hero travel?  Via H.G. Wells steampunk machine?  A spaceship?  Gateway?  Phone booth?  Sports car?  Magic? You need to decide.  And once you decide you need to stick with it.  Time travel is part of your setting.  You wouldn’t have a creek flow uphill, so why would you have a time machine that worked inconsistently?

• The Left Behind – When your hero travels he’ll abandon friends and loved-ones.  How does he feel about that?  That’s nontrivial and potentially traumatic.

• Culture Shock – When Doctor Who’s Martha Jones (a woman of African descent) arrives in Shakespearean London she’s worried about getting sold into slavery.  Think about that.  Takes some of the romance out of the “good ol’ days,” doesn’t it?

• Cause and Effect – If the hero buys a ton of Apple Computer stock in 1999 will he really get rich?  Or does his stock purchase affect Apple’s success?

• Think Out of the Box – Suppose the time machine is a simple door.  What happens if the hero steps through using his cell phone?  Does he still have coverage?  That’s not as weird as it sounds.  If he can see through the door (visible light) then cell phone signals (radio waves) can travel through it, too.

• Grandfather Paradox – Is the hero going to do something that keeps himself from being born?  Suppose it involves murder.  How does the hero cope with that?  Murder is murder, in 2013 BC and 2013 CE.

• History Mystery – The hero wants to witness the Kennedy assassination.  Great subject, but you better damn well know your subject.  As the writer, can you tell us who the Babushka Lady was?  Or what was on Dallas TV right before the news broke?  Which motorcycle cop had his two-way radio on?   What was the weather like?  What’s the distance from the Book Depository to Kennedy’s car?  What did the “Treason” leaflets say?  What did the Manhattan businessman say about JFK’s killer? Zapruder-Film-Frame-366

• Action or Reaction –  How does the hero react to witnessing a really brutal murder?  The President, after all, had his brains blown out, literally.  If you’ve ever seen the Zapruder film you know it was a grisly, ugly, and sickening sight.  Now imagine being there, with the sights, the screams, the smells …

Time travel is not for the feint of heart.

In the next installment of “The Time Traveler’s Life” I’ll explore some of the pitfalls you need to avoid.  And in a later chapter, I’ll recommend some books and movies.  Stay tuned, same Chiroptera time, same Chiroptera channel!

Pax vobiscum,

Keith

Copyright © 2013

Is Time a Goldfish?

On By Keith ParkerIn Clocks, Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Science Fiction, Time Travel4 Comments

The way we think about time travel really depends on the way we think about time.  Right?  And in order to move in the dimension that H.G. Wells called duration we have to be able to have a concept of what time is, don’t we?  And how the heck do we do this?

Tavern ClockSome of the greatest thinkers of all time, as it were, have given this considerable thought, put their finger to their lips, tilted their heads, and finally said, “I dunno.”

A mind no less impressive than Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, put it like this: “What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.”

BLANK STARE … thanks, dude.  That really clears it up.

Once upon a time (pun intended), I asked a good friend of mine what he thought time was.  My friend, Tim, is a practical man.  He said he always thought of time like this: He’d see himself sitting on a rock while a river of time flowed around him. Fair enough.  I asked him if he ever fell in.  He said only when he was out drinking with me.  Again, fair enough.

Does that mean time is a river?  Perhaps, although it makes me wonder why we decided to use a circle to measure time, like the tavern clock in the photograph above.

A river, though, is the most common notion.  But then, are we all sitting on rocks watching the river go by?  Or are we humans the ones who move?  What if the river is still and we’re fish swimming through it, trout on their way to their place of birth?

Most of these ideas stem out of the original idea that time is a dimension.  A kitchen table has length, width, and height.  And if you draw it you draw it using lines.  The same follows for time.  IMG_3159

In Back to the Future, Part II, Doc Brown draws time as a line on an old chalk board.  In his diagram, Marty’s plight is a series of branches with more than one version of 1985.  There are a couple of incidents in 1985 I wish I had a choice about.

But why all this thought about a line?  Does time have to be imagined like this?  Sometime in the early 1970s I saw my first digital clock.  It looked a bit like the one on the right, like you’ll see on microwave ovens and coffeemakers everywhere.  If we changed the way we display time (as a circle), then does that mean we can change the way we perceive time?

And that leads me to my next question.  Why does time have to look like something we draw on a sheet of paper?

What if time is a giant snowstorm, and time travel the melting water during the Spring thaw?

Snow

But maybe these are not good comparisons, either.  What if time is actually a lamp, a globe, the distributor cap of a 1957 Chevy, a matryoshka doll, or the fine pen used by a Japanese calligraphy artist?  What if time were simply an oven mitt, a way to keep us from getting burned by the casserole dish of the universe?  If you wanted to write a story or come up with a movie script to rival Back to the Future, how could you use one of these ideas of time?

And then, of course, is my personal favorite: The eponymous goldfish.  This is what time is inside my mind.  Time is a goldfish.  It is a pleasant thing, all shiny, with wavy fins protruding from its scales, that gives a sense of peace and tranquility if you’ll let it.  But if you try to swallow it, like those damn fool frat boys did in the 50s, it’s going to give you heartburn!

IMG_3158

So what is your opinion?  Before you write about time travel, you might want to solidify your own idea of what time itself is. It’s certainly something to chew on.  Just make sure you’re not chewing on my fish.

Until next time …

Peace, from Keith

Text and photographs are Copyright © 2012, Alan Keith Parker.  All Rights Reserved.  If you steal my stuff my fanged goldfish will get medieval on you!