This is topic Time Travel Advice Thread: Tips to Make Your Trips Safer and More Enjoyable in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.
Nothing to say, really. Just that every time I see the travel advice thread, my mind keeps seeing "time travel" in there. So I thought I'd open that up for discussion.
Posted by Little_Doctor (Member # 6635) on :
Don't spit. It's a nasty habit.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Don't forget your towel.
Try really hard not to kill any of your ancestors.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
Make sure you have enough gasoline to get the car up to 88mph.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
Take today's sports section and bet on the horses yesterday.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
Go back and find the backs to all your earrings.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
Change the girl's name on your tattoo.
Posted by Allegra (Member # 6773) on :
Wake up on time for that test
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
Avoid sleeping with any of your ancestors.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
If your trip will be spanning eons, don't start from a mountaintop, or you'll be in for a nasty fall when you get there. Always begin big leaps whilst resting firmly on continental shield rock, Nova Scotia, for instance.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
If you see Scott Bakula tell him his car's been impounded.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: Avoid sleeping with any of your ancestors.
Unless you are your own ancestor...
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
quote:Unless you are your own ancestor...
That would take quite a bit of rubber hose.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Everything you do, you both must do, and mustn't.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Don't tread on any ants.
Wait . . .
Actually, smash all the ants you can. You're meant to, after all.
Posted by Zarex (Member # 8504) on :
1. Give you're future parents some investing and parenting tips.
2. Deliver the complete works of Shakespeare to Shakespeare before he writes them. That way we can all wonder: "Who really wrote them if he never did?"
3. Go back and become the premier inventor of the day, invent the lightbulb pre Thomas Edison. The assembly line pre Henry Ford. The elevator Pre Samual Otis.
4. Go stand in the copse of trees and see if there really is a kennedy conspiracy.
5. Get help on your history homework.
6. Sign the Declaration of Independence.
7. Buy not yet antiques, then go and have a moment of glory on antiques roadshow.
8. Shoot Mrs. O'leary's cow.
9. Give Hitler art lessons. (Just think: If he'd had enough talent to make it as an artist, world war two could have been avoided.)
10. Leave obscure prophecies, then come back and make them come true. E.G. "Someday, a man will walk into this town wearing a kilt and a raincoat, he will hop on one foot." Then, go back to the future and enter the town hopping on one foot while wearing a raincoat and kilt.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
And if you discover a slightly curved, yellow fruit the size of a carrot, introduce it to the past. Remember to name it "banana" after the genetic engineer, Anna Bannon, who sequenced it.
Posted by Pelegius (Member # 7868) on :
When in German airport, be prepared to be searched, and to show your pasport to six diferent people, even if you are just changing flights on your way from Athens to Chicago.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Oh, and [SPOILERS FOR TWELVE MONKEYS]
the army of the Twelve Monkeys isn't actually the ones you have to stop.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
If you meet your future or past self, make sure you kill them as to avoid any possible confusion.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
And if you don't meet 'em, try to kill your ancestors. Or if you head to the future, provoke your descendants into killing you.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
I can understand how you could kill your future self and still survive, but if you killed your past self wouldn't you cease to be and therefore couldn't kill your past self so then you do survive and then you can kill your past self and then (continue on into infinity).
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
The best advice I have for time travelers is this:
1) You can not change the past.
2) You can, however, effect the present.
Example:
If you travel back in time and give your father stock advice, it would cause him to become rich, thereby eliminating your cause of time traveling.
HOWEVER, if you go back in time, tell your father some stock advice, but tell him to live his life normally as if he didn't invest up until the day after you leave, never hinting to you about it, it will work. So long as everthing happens after you return from time traveling, things work out pretty smoothly. You get home, next day, your dad cashes in, and you guys are rich. Simple.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
Make sure your flux capacitor is in good working order at all times.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
If you ever lose your keys, go back in time and steal them from yourself before you lose them.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Well, if you subcribe to the theory OSC presents in Pastwatch, by travelling to the past we are eliminating this future; therefore, we may do absolutely anything.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
But by eliminating this future, aren't you eliminating yourself (and thus how would you have gone back in the past to eliminate this future in the first place)?
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
Which is why if you time travel, you must make sure that you exist outside of the time continuum. The problem, however, is that when you return, there are going to be two of you, thus upsetting the balance and causing the destruction of the universe. It's just best to make sure you don't mess up the past.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
Reverse impulse beams are a great way to close time anomalies.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Maybe we just need magic. That fixes everything.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
Dude, magic is what ruins everything to begin with. That and the Q.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
True. Any time you see a paradox, you just say a wizard did it.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
1) Do not destroy the space time continuum. It is fragile, held together mostly by duct tape and prechewed wads of bubbiliscous bubble gum.
2) Do not us any Star Trek franchised time travel services. The number 1 rule for successful time travel is consistant knowledge of the rules governing time itself. Since those rules are never the same in any episode, and may drastically change in the middle of the episode, odds of both you and the time continum survive a Trek Time Travel Tour are 50%.
3) If traveling by TARDIS, do not travel with a Time Lord named "The Doctor". Nearly 60% of those traveling with him end up dead, married and living in another dime period, or stranded in some parellel finite universe.
4) If traveling by TARDIS, do not travel with a Time Lord named "The Master". Nearly 90% of those traveling with him end up dead, on purpose.
5) Do not travel with any franchise of the Heinlein travel agency. While they have a remarkable survival rate, of 92%--of those that survive 98% end up in incestous relationships (as do 48% of those who die).
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
How's the Pratchett time travel agency?
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
I already posted this thread next week.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Wow, now that's impressive!
And I dobied your thread a year ago under my other handle.
Posted by Mr.Funny (Member # 4467) on :
quote:Originally posted by T_Smith: Reverse impulse beams are a great way to close time anomalies.
I thought that it was tachyon beams.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
Well, maybe in your timeline.
Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
Don't be suprised if you leave immigration sprouting an impressive white beard, but 3 months earlier than you entered the queue.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
It's happened before.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Whatever you do, don't forget:
Thirteen unpatched paradoxes, and the universe goes boom. No one wants that.
Well, except for Crazy Joe.
Posted by Treason (Member # 7587) on :
Remember to get youself into stasis before the accident happens.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
Just on Saturday, my son and brother in law were discussing travelling back in time. My son thought that the farther back he went, the greater would be his advantage, since he would benefit from his advanced knowledge of modern ideas and technology.
I disagreed. The skill set that we have as modern folk is so different from what is necessary even 100 years ago that we would be at a decided disadvantage. I don't know my way around a horse, I require modern plumbing, stoves, and refrigeration in order to cook; I don't sew.
Maybe I could work as a nurse, but nursing has changed a lot over the years, and I would need retraining in doing things the old fashioned way.
My son thought that he would be like a Super Human if he could travel back 2000 years.
2000 years ago, in New Jersey, no one spoke English, and I doubt that the Leni Lenape Indians would be that worshipful of a stranger who arrived, unable to communicate with anyone, and who can't do the most basic tasks -- like get food, light a fire, walk around without getting hopelessly lost...
So, if I were going to travel back in time, I'd have to seriously learn some survival skills before I left.
I travel to the future all the time though. Every day, I go another day into the future.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by pfresh85: I can understand how you could kill your future self and still survive, but if you killed your past self wouldn't you cease to be and therefore couldn't kill your past self so then you do survive and then you can kill your past self and then (continue on into infinity).
There's a Galloway Gallegher story about a guy who reached into next week and killed himself. I think it was "The Time Locker".
And if you killed your past self, you'd probably take your own place.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
If H.G. Wells shows up with something that looks a bit like a sleigh, run. If some guy named Tempus shows up, don't bother. It's already too late . . .