Bootstrap

On June 14, 2013June 14, 2013 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

This 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 20^th– and 21^st-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).

Change

On June 7, 2013 By Keith ParkerIn A Game of Thrones, Buddha, Doctor Who, Fantasy, Fiction, HBO, Jack Vance, Science Fiction, Television, Time Travel, TV2 Comments

This week The Parker Institute for Time Travel Studies (The PITTS) takes a hard look at three major changes that rocked the science fiction and fantasy world this past week. And when we say “hard look” we’d like to make sure you understand that this is serious. And by “serious” we mean sober. Except that it’s not really healthy to be too sober, so maybe we’ll have a cocktail to cut through the pressure. And if we’re going to have a cocktail, then we might as well have a glass of wine with our dinner, and if we’re going to have a glass of wine with dinner then there’s really no reason we can’t have an after-dinner cognac. And that’ll pretty much mean that we aren’t taking a “hard look” at anything at all. Instead, these are simply post-buzz ramblings devoid of emotional or intellectual depth …

So, without further ado, what happened? Well, primary to this blog is that Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who, creating a vacuum in the incredibly rich story that’s developed over the past four years, with an intense, mysterious chemistry between The Doctor and Clara Oswald, and a parallel mystery about the doctor’s name and (eventual) demise. Another occurrence in speculative fiction circles was the passing (read: violent, bloody death) of certain character(s) in A Game of Thrones.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that we lost one of the true giants of fantasy literature recently. One of the last of the Golden Age Science Fiction writers, Jack Vance, died on May 26th. If you’ve never read Vance, you need to run — not walk — to your nearest e-book reader and devour his writing. You can find his catalog here: http://www.jackvance.com/ebooks/shop/?q22_category_filter=dying

Bad things come, they say, in threes.

Is that the case here? It seems like it. Which makes me wonder about one of the main reasons I write this blog: time travel. What would happen if I went back in time to May 25th? If I were to do this, what could I possibly do to change these three events? Nothing. I desperately wish Matt Smith were not leaving Doctor Who, but even if I were to go back prior to his announcement, and if I cashed out my retirement and bought a plane ticket to the UK, and if I were to successfully track him down, what good would it do? Odds are, he made his decision weeks, if not months, ago. Or what if I went a different direction and landed my steam-punk Wellsian on the set of HBO? Could I actually do anything about the second season finale of AGOT? And then what about Mr. Vance? I do not know the circumstances surrounding Mr. Vance’s death, but he was 96-years-old, and had achieved status as one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy authors of the 20th Century. What exactly needs to be changed?

If you’re wondering who, as it were, I think the new Doctor should be, the thought that keeps circling back to me is that we need another Tom Baker; we need an actor or actress who is, in essence, the embodiment of the Doctor the way that Baker was. More than any other Doctor, the line between the character and the actor was very fine in those days. Beyond that, I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter. And I’m not sure it’d matter if I did …

And that is a segue into my closing thoughts: I’ve often said time travel is a form of wish fulfillment, but in this case the wishes don’t come true, do they? And maybe that’s a good thing, because I’ve developed a quasi-Buddhist attitude toward life in recent years and putting myself in a state of angst really does no good. The reason we suffer is because we try to control those things that are out of our control. I do not know if this is truly “Buddhist” but it was the best that my Western mind could come up with as I studied that beautiful philosophy. As the author of Elephant Journal put it:

If it can be fixed; why worry? If it can’t be fixed, what’s the point of worrying?
- Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/08/buddhist-rule-re-worrying/

And, of course, if you’re looking for a more “Western” approach, there was a Galilean who said something similar:

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
- The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 25:34

My goal is not to preach. My goal is to espouse optimism, to let you know it’ll all be okay. And to let you know that I think we all need to laugh more. Along those lines, let me redirect you to one of the funniest authors in the blogosphere. He goes by the pseudonym Mirkin Firkin, and writes some of the most outrageous and hilarious blog posts I’ve ever read. You can find his blog here: http://justjigglethehandle.wordpress.com.

Until next time, “Don’t Panic!”

Years truly,

Keith Parker

Owner, Fish and #TARDIS Sauce

The Time Traveler’s Life (Part I)

On February 4, 2013 By Keith ParkerIn Clocks, Creative Writing, Doctor Who, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, mad scientist, movies, Science Fiction, scientist, Steampunk, Television, Time Travel, TV2 Comments

It 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.

• 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?

• 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