It’s Confession Tuesday again so: I’m an incorrigible time-travel story addict. One of my favorite things about time-travel fiction is the fact that it’s a purely mental construct, so there’s none of that silly reality stuff to get in a writer’s way. At the same time, I’m puzzled at my insatiable appetite for it because I believe that, except for the one-way, one-second-per-second miracle that turns the future into the past for everyone every day, time-travel is simply a hard-and-fast impossibility. And at yet another same time, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a more compelling desire to be wrong about anything.
In at least one time line, I just finished reading “Visitors,” the third book in Orson Scott Card’s “Pathfinder” series. It’s time-travel oriented Sci-Fi/Fantasy that starts out fairly convoluted and gets more complicated at every turn. The basic premise starts with a kid who has the (ostensibly) mystical ability to see the path left behind by any living creature, and what happens when he meets another kid who has the (also ostensibly) mystical ability to help the first kid latch on to an old path and transport them back in time.
It’s fun stuff, but my favorite aspect of the series is one of Orson’s rules that says, if you meet yourself in the past or future, you make a copy that persists in the “new” timeline with you and the first you, and if y’all go back and meet the new you twins just after that, all y’all will be four yous. And yes, all y’all can instantaneously loop until you’re an instant army of you---but of course, there are consequences. Nothing much to worry about though, because any one of you can hop to just after you first thought of it and, being careful to avoid yourself, leave a note for you to let you know that it got ugly, and it would be better to just die, which you might, but the second you, the one who wouldn’t ever exist in time-travel tales told by sane people, now exists, and won’t cease to do so even if the first you doesn’t live long enough to create you by going back to meet yourself and…
Anyway, you get the idea. This feature gives rise to a lot of the most interesting material in the series. It lets us lets us look at the “road not taken” questions we all have, because the copies start with only the difference caused by the initial time span traversed, but then they have experiences that shape their divergent personalities. Warning: In an attempt to keep things straight some of the copies decide to pick a new name, so it’s a bit like reading a Russian novel complicated by the traditional Science Fiction rule that says authors must use the most bewilderingly strange names possible. Take notes.
It’s a wonder that Orson keeps this stuff straight himself, but he does. I suspect he has a well-staffed continuity department helping him in that area, and I also suspect that they hate him. I can almost sense the conflict behind the conflict as they get all the leaves in a nice tidy pile just before Card has a new idea and joyously waltzes through the pile which makes it even worse than before. I’ve read so much OSC that I feel like I know him, and I relate; the only thing more important than organization is having some good chaos to organize, and creating chaos is infinitely more fun than creating organization. If I could team up with a writer that enjoys raking leaves as much as I enjoy scattering them, we’d be on the bestseller list in six months. He always seems to think of the same things I think of when time-travel is an option, but instead of carefully avoiding those things like most Sci-Fi authors do, Card stomps right into the big middle of them. “Why don’t you just go back (or forward) and _______ ?” Most of the conflict in Visitors comes from the gymnastic ways in which the author answers that question.
Pathfinder is pretty straightforward, Ruins gets complicated, but Visitors often seems hopelessly twisted. I kept thinking, “This is the most elaborately well-constructed corner any author has ever painted himself into. Well, you’re screwed now mister writer man.”---but nope. Card always gets out with the paint intact.
Since I finished it, I’ve had a strong sense of mourning for the characters, up to and including the irrational expectation that they may appear at any time. As it turns out, I finished it at a time when I was having a much more real sense of mourning for a real friend who seems to have found a reason to terminate our friendship without finding one to let me in on it, so the coincidence has me doubleplus sad. I’m not sure there is anything I can do about that situation, but I guess I could just get another book. I know making true friends is nowhere near as easy as buying books, but thanks to gifted writers like Card, sometimes I think it’s pretty close.
In at least one time line, I just finished reading “Visitors,” the third book in Orson Scott Card’s “Pathfinder” series. It’s time-travel oriented Sci-Fi/Fantasy that starts out fairly convoluted and gets more complicated at every turn. The basic premise starts with a kid who has the (ostensibly) mystical ability to see the path left behind by any living creature, and what happens when he meets another kid who has the (also ostensibly) mystical ability to help the first kid latch on to an old path and transport them back in time.
It’s fun stuff, but my favorite aspect of the series is one of Orson’s rules that says, if you meet yourself in the past or future, you make a copy that persists in the “new” timeline with you and the first you, and if y’all go back and meet the new you twins just after that, all y’all will be four yous. And yes, all y’all can instantaneously loop until you’re an instant army of you---but of course, there are consequences. Nothing much to worry about though, because any one of you can hop to just after you first thought of it and, being careful to avoid yourself, leave a note for you to let you know that it got ugly, and it would be better to just die, which you might, but the second you, the one who wouldn’t ever exist in time-travel tales told by sane people, now exists, and won’t cease to do so even if the first you doesn’t live long enough to create you by going back to meet yourself and…
Anyway, you get the idea. This feature gives rise to a lot of the most interesting material in the series. It lets us lets us look at the “road not taken” questions we all have, because the copies start with only the difference caused by the initial time span traversed, but then they have experiences that shape their divergent personalities. Warning: In an attempt to keep things straight some of the copies decide to pick a new name, so it’s a bit like reading a Russian novel complicated by the traditional Science Fiction rule that says authors must use the most bewilderingly strange names possible. Take notes.
It’s a wonder that Orson keeps this stuff straight himself, but he does. I suspect he has a well-staffed continuity department helping him in that area, and I also suspect that they hate him. I can almost sense the conflict behind the conflict as they get all the leaves in a nice tidy pile just before Card has a new idea and joyously waltzes through the pile which makes it even worse than before. I’ve read so much OSC that I feel like I know him, and I relate; the only thing more important than organization is having some good chaos to organize, and creating chaos is infinitely more fun than creating organization. If I could team up with a writer that enjoys raking leaves as much as I enjoy scattering them, we’d be on the bestseller list in six months. He always seems to think of the same things I think of when time-travel is an option, but instead of carefully avoiding those things like most Sci-Fi authors do, Card stomps right into the big middle of them. “Why don’t you just go back (or forward) and _______ ?” Most of the conflict in Visitors comes from the gymnastic ways in which the author answers that question.
Pathfinder is pretty straightforward, Ruins gets complicated, but Visitors often seems hopelessly twisted. I kept thinking, “This is the most elaborately well-constructed corner any author has ever painted himself into. Well, you’re screwed now mister writer man.”---but nope. Card always gets out with the paint intact.
Since I finished it, I’ve had a strong sense of mourning for the characters, up to and including the irrational expectation that they may appear at any time. As it turns out, I finished it at a time when I was having a much more real sense of mourning for a real friend who seems to have found a reason to terminate our friendship without finding one to let me in on it, so the coincidence has me doubleplus sad. I’m not sure there is anything I can do about that situation, but I guess I could just get another book. I know making true friends is nowhere near as easy as buying books, but thanks to gifted writers like Card, sometimes I think it’s pretty close.
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