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From: jim@ism780c.UUCP (Jim Balter)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci,net.philosophy,net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: A Sane Man Proposes A Time Travel Experiment
Message-ID: <3223@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Aug-86 02:11:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780c.3223
Posted: Mon Aug 18 02:11:43 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Aug-86 01:22:27 EDT
References: <646@ulowell.UUCP>
Reply-To: jim@ism780c.UUCP (Jim Balter)
Distribution: net
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 24
Keywords: time travel, murder
Xref: watmath net.physics:4905 net.sci:1523 net.philosophy:6561 net.sf-lovers:16124

In article <646@ulowell.UUCP> rickheit@ulowell.UUCP (Erich W Rickheit) writes:
>     I have plenty of holes to iron out, of course (such as, who loads the
>pistol?) but that, avoid the character development, was the base of the
>plot. The possibilities of a nonexistant item appearing within a time loop
>though, are staggering. What else could you  do with this? Am I the only one
>to have ever thought of such a thing?

I think Heinlein has been there before you.  Consider the character(s) in
"All You Zombies" who is his/her own parents, and who drafts himself into the
Time Service.  And while the dictionary in "By His Bootstraps" does not
appear via a time loop, the information in it does.

Your mechanism strikes me strongly as Deus Ex Machina, unless you can explain
why the character should expect to find a gun in the drawer when he opens it
to shoot his victim, since he has not yet planted the gun at that point,
nor why he should expect the drawer to be empty when he goes back to plant
the gun; there is no way for him to know that his action was the cause of
the gun being there.
Heinlein's treatment of the dictionary is much more subtle.
And in both his classic stories, the character never expects any of what
happens, until he reaches a point where he already knows that it was his
own future actions that set things into motion, and acts accordingly.
-- 
-- Jim Balter ({sdcrdcf!ism780c,ima}!jim)