Space, Time and Event in Literature: Time and Time and Time Travel
by Diana Gabaldon published in The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics
copyright © 1998 Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.

Time, Space...and other things

There must be some sort of cosmic convergence dealing with short pieces, because at the same time all these short stories were happening (I don’t want to give the impression that I have been fiddling away my time doing nothing but short stories and not writing novels--I have been writing novels, I assure you {g}-- it’s just that these pieces all cropped up within the last year) I was invited to contribute an essay to The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics, for their special issue on “Space, Time, and Event in Literature.”

Been a long time since I wrote a scholarly--or even quasi-scholarly--piece, and I sort of wanted to see if I could still do it. {g} So I did.

Figuring that most readers would not have easy access to the JTM, I’ve included the piece in The Outlandish Companion--but an excerpt from it, dealing with the Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel, is presented below:

Time is, time was, time will be--at least in terms of literature. What we’re usually talking about when we say “literature,” of course, is fiction, which essentially means telling stories. Good nonfiction can be “literature,” too--but the kind of nonfiction that makes literature is always told in the form of a story; it’s only the factual basis that makes a distinction. So what makes a story?

Well, the absolute essence of “story” is -- “And then what happened?” Obviously, the important words here are “happened,” (event) and “then” (time). “Then” implies an impetus, but more often indicates causality than direction; stories are often linear, but not invariably so (even when they are linear, they may be rectilinear, curvilinear, perpendicular, or told with a Moebius twist). The bottom line is that in a story, Something happened because Something Else happened. Or happens. Or will happen. But when? Well, that depends.

There are two kinds of time in general human experience; objective time and subjective time. There is a real physical basis for objective time, expressed not merely as an artificial standard of minutes or hours, but in terms of circadian rhythms, photoperiodicity, seasonal progression, atomic decay, and so on. Because of this physical basis, people are aware of objective time, though often in an semiconscious or unconscious way. Reading, on the other hand, is always a conscious act (yes, even if it’s Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter; you have to stay awake to turn the pages), but time is almost always expressed in literature in the same way in which it’s most frequently experienced by people--subjectively.

On the other hand, as I said above, stories that involve free choice on the part of the protagonists are both more interesting to write, and much more likely to be attractive to readers. In this particular time and culture, the idea that we do have individual power over our own destinies is not only widely accepted but highly desirable (the fiction of other times and cultures naturally may--and does--reflect different notions of individual power). How to deal with these opposing choices, then? That’s a decision for an individual writer; for myself, I decided to have it both ways--to allow free choice, but not to change major historical events (ah, what it is to be a godlike Writer!). The Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel depends on this central postulate:

A time-traveler has free choice and individual power of action; however, he or she has no more power of action than is allowed by the traveler’s circumstances.

A necessary corollary to this postulate does not deal with time travel at all, but only with the observed nature of historical events:

Most notable historical events (those affecting large numbers of people and thus likely to be recorded) are the result of the collective actions of many people.

There are exceptions to this corollary, of course: political assassination, which affects a great many people, but can be carried out by a single individual; scientific discovery, geographical exploration, commercial invention, etc. Still, the effects of events such as these depend in large part on the circumstances in which they take place; many scientific discoveries have been made--and lost--a number of times, before reaching general acceptance or social relevance.

Thus, the notion that knowledge is power is not absolutely true--knowledge is power only to the extent that circumstances allow that knowledge to be used. That is, if a time-traveler arrives in a society where he or she is merely a normal citizen, then the traveler has relatively little power to affect social events. Madame X arrives in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution, for instance. If Madame X is in fact merely a time-traveler, and is not taking the place of an extant citizen, then she is not an aristocrat, has no connections among the powers of the Revolution, and is thus in no position to affect the overall course of the Revolution.

Even if she should somehow gain access to the Petit Trianon, scrape acquaintance with the Queen, and hint that it would be injudicious to make remarks regarding cake...the French Revolution was a complex social phenomenon, emerging from the results of years--centuries!--of actions taken and not taken by hundreds and thousands of people. Madame X very likely can not take any individual action that would succeed in preventing the Revolution as a whole; that is/was a social event of such complexity that control of it is simply beyond the scope of any individual.

Madame X does, however, retain the power that any individual of that time has; she can warn a friend that it would be wise to leave Paris, for instance. If he listens, she may indeed save his life--and thus change “history” (but not recorded history).

To illustrate a bit further, consider the hypothetical situation that you yourself are a time-traveler from some future time, and know that the President of the United States will be assassinated on a specific date--next week, say. Always assuming that one wants to prevent this...what, exactly, would you do? You aren’t a government official, you know no one in power. You are, in fact, pretty much the way you are now, in terms of social position; a private citizen, outwardly respectable, but with no particular access to power. So how do you prevent the assassination--exactly?

Do you telephone the FBI and state that an attempt will be made on the President’s life? Imagine doing this, and then imagine what the response would be.

Do you arrange to be on the spot of the anticipated assassination, with the intent of foiling the assassin? Imagine the crowd outside a hotel, people pushing and shoving. Even if you know beyond doubt where the assassin will come from and what he looks like--are you willing either to shoot him (and then try to explain to the Secret Service just why you did this) or to throw your body between the assassin and his target?

You begin to see the problem here. Specialized knowledge doesn’t necessarily give you the means of using it to effect. Warnings will have no effect at all, unless the person you are warning believes that you are a time-traveler, which is probably not a bet with good odds (take a minute to imagine just how you would convince someone that you are really a time-traveler, rather than a TV personality, a Microsoft programmer, or a raving nut). Direct action--if it’s possible at all--will involve you in precisely the same risk that would apply to a citizen of the time in which you find yourself.

Ergo, a time-traveler can exercise free choice, and can effect small-scale, personal changes in the past--such as advising a friend to plant potatoes, thus averting the consequences of an anticipated famine. However, because large social events are usually the effect of the cumulative actions of large numbers of people, the time-traveler most likely cannot make a change in larger, well-documented historical events.

Ergo, from a “story” point of view, we preserve the philosophical and fictional advantages of free choice, without incurring the cognitive dissonance associated with changing “history,” as perceived by the reader.

Time is, time was, time will be--but when? Well, that depends.

[to be published in The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics--or maybe it already has been. Sorry, I don’t know the volume reference for it.]