Time travel fiction

So y'all probably know that I'm a big fan of science fiction. I watch science fiction movies TV. I read all sorts of science fiction books all the time. Send me your suggestions, please. But something that crops up all the time in science fiction, something those authors and those writers can't seem to resist, is time travel. The narrative opportunities opened up by being able to move your characters forward in time, or go back and meet themselves, or

I'm Kelly Wiener Smith, and I used to hold out hope for the kind of time travel you see in movies until I started spending.

Time with Dan.

Hi. I'm Daniel.

I'm a particle physicist, and I love crushing Kelly's dreams.

When you're so good at it.

It's not me, it's science.

Science has been ruining everything delicious since fifteen forty seven or whatever.

Yeah, no, I think you and I actually both pushed that agenda regularly.

And though you know, while science does say that some things you always wanted to do are impossible, it also opens doors we never expected and reveals crazy truths about the world. So sometimes science is on the fun side of life.

Well, and you know, we've got like all of human knowledge in a tiny little thing that fits in our pockets.

Now, like, that's pretty sweet. I have no complaints.

That's right.

You are listening to us because of some science. Otherwise you'd have to travel to Virginia and California somehow simultaneously to have a conversation with us. So science has made this possible.

And now you don't have to go to California. You're welcome. Sorry, you don't get to come to Virginia.

Though.

I don't think I agree that that's a benefit. But anyway, you are all auditorially transported to California.

All right.

Well, so today we are talking about time travel, and we're doing some incredible interviews with people who have written and made movies about time travel. So my question for you, Daniel, if you could go back in time and see anything, and you only had one place.

You could go, You could only use the time machine once. What would you see?

Oh wow, such a good question. So many things to see, you know. It frustrates me that there are facts out there about the universe which would change the entire way we see ourselves in the context of our lives if we knew them. You know, how life began on Earth, for example, or how humans evolve. All these things are

Oh that's interesting.

So you are not only assuming that you can travel back in time, but you are also assuming that your body can survive under conditions that it probably couldn't survive in, like you would go back in time in like a safe, protective bubble or something.

Well, who built this time machine?

Because if I'm responsible for it, then no, I'm not trusting it in the Big Bang. But if you know somebody who actually knows what they're doing, like an engineer put this thing together. Then yeah, I'm going back to the Big Bang. And you know what, even if I perish, I would still like to go back and know because that knowledge would be so powerful, knowing how our universe began, the one true story of our universe. Wow, that would be incredible to know.

Would you be okay with perishing even if it meant that the answer couldn't be transmitted back to the presence, Like, it's enough that just you know.

Maybe I could somehow leave a message for the future, you know, like in the pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation. That would be pretty cool. Wouldn't it be amazing to be doing research like that, to see photons in the night sky, to analyze the data, and then to see an awesome message in that data from somebody who had traveled back. Wow, that sounds like a great science fiction story.

Daniel says, it's forty two, Okay, So this is clearly a lot of fun to think about. So it's no surprise that it shows up in a bunch of movies and TV shows. And I was just at Disney and it was in like The Guardians of the Galaxy ride, and my daughter was asking a bunch of questions about whether or not they were right about the Big Bang, and then she zoned out five seconds into the explanation.

But I'll get there.

But you follow a lot of instances where this happens in books and movies and stuff. And so we are chatting with some people you know who have written about this. For POPSI that's right.

Time travel appears all over the place in science fiction, and so I'm always curious like how authors work the science of time travel into it, how they deal with the potential contradictions, you know, the mechanics of making a story work when you can basically make up the rules, and the rules don't always have to be self consistent. So today we're going to talk to two authors who have dealt with that in their books and in their movies. Books and movies I think are really fun and totally

Let's play a game and let's see if from our conversations I can explain if time travel is possible.

I'd love to hear that.

Okay, So my understanding from our conversations is that time can curve a little bit, and I guess I'm not one hundred percent able to remember and articulate the reasons why, but time curves. It's possible you could go back in time a little maybe for short periods, but you couldn't do it ever if it broke causality. Did I remember those points? Your face tells me I didn't get it.

One hundred percent.

No, that's the right spirit of it. There are a couple of technical issues there. You know, what do we mean when we say time curves. What we really mean is that clocks don't run the same for everybody. So for example, if you're near a black hole, I'll see your clock running slower and you'll see my clock running faster. So that's what we mean when we say, like time curves, it's really just time diletion. And you'll notice that in both those cases clocks.

Are running forwards.

So you can have weird things like I think this star blew up before that star, and you can think the opposite, that the order of events is different, But that's not exactly going back in time. That's just saying there is no universal clock in the universe, and people can disagree about how fast clocks are running and the order of events, so there is some flexibility there, But actually going back in time is a whole different thing.

All right, well, it's good we've revisited this conversation. Then.

Yeah, now I remember you talking about lights in the trolley and which one reaches the front, and that's all making sense now, Okay, So you would say going back in time is not possible, experiencing time at different speeds might be possible, as long as that experience doesn't break causality in any way.

Is that a fair summary.

That's a fair summary. But it's worth digging into the details, because there actually is one place in general relativity where time travel appears to maybe be possible, though most people think that's just another place where general relativity breaks down, like it does at the hearts of black holes. But let's start with the most vanilla thing, like why can't we just travel in time? I mean, in special relativity,

Right?

That would be beautiful. I want a beautiful equation that does that.

And it would save us so much time. But the issue is the one you mentioned causality.

Right.

We think the universe has this property where the future is caused by the past, and that immediately makes time different from space because space doesn't have this requirement that like the left half of the universe causes the right half of the universe or something that would be really strange. Again, but this is something we see in the universe. The information flows forwards in time, and it flows through space

Fly out away from me.

So imagine sort of a cone with a tip is me, and the cone is expanding out into space, and causality says, I can only influence things in that cone.

Okay, so let me see if I'm understanding. So, like say, I'm a very boring time traveler, all right, And so I travel back in time five minutes and I turn the light in my office off and that's all I do, And then I travel back to the future. Why couldn't the light still be off when I jump forward five minutes again?

So you go back in time and you turn off the light, right, And so the light was on and you turned.

It off, and then I jump back to the present.

But the you who turned the light off experienced the light being on in the present, right, and now the light is off in the present.

So you have a contradiction.

And does that you who thinks the light is off still go back in time to turn the light off when the light is already off?

All right?

So we can't even do boring things like flick light switches.

And here we're really implying causality. We're imagining Kelly is doing things by reacting to her situation, and that she's making decisions about the future based on the past. You're like a little causal agent. You're like reacting to the

That this is.

Something we impose on it to make sense of it because it's the way our brains work, and it's the way we tell stories, and it's just sort of natural and intuitive. It doesn't mean the universe has to read that way. It's just hard for us to make sense of anything else. And it's a base assumption in all of our theories. So if causality is not required in the universe, you got to throw everything out. So that

So if physicists are right right now, then you could never have any interesting space time fiction because the things you're allowed to do are so narrow. So everyone's going to have to break some of the rules of physics if they're gonna bend time.

And yeah, yeah, okay, yes.

With one exception, there is one place in general relativity where you can bend these light cones. So what happens to your light cone as your approach, for example, a black hole, Well, instead of your life cone just going forward in time, it starts to bend a little bit. It bends towards the black hole. And this is why we say, for example, when you enter a black hole, space and time get mixed up, and the spatial direction is the future. Like there's only one place you can go,

It's very strange.

Is this like Groundhog Day?

How is this different than groundhog Day?

Well, in groundhog Day, he remembers the other days. Right, this would have to be some arrangement where your memories never change, right, because it's always the same. Now, nobody takes this seriously as a physical prediction. It's even less seriously taken than like the prediction that there's a singularity inside a black hole, which everybody recognizes is like, this is probably a sign that general relativity is breaking down and needs to be replaced with another theory of quantum

But today we don't know.

So you know when people say our current theory is a physics out alot of time travel, and that's true except for this weird closed timelike curve which nobody really believes in, but technically is allowed according to theories of physics. So if you are an author out there and you want to write a really, really hard science fiction story by time travel, you can use close timeline curves until

And Daniel is available for consultation for.

A fee, no absolutely, and for free. People send me your science fiction. I'd love to read it. And give you tips on it.

All right, So on that note, let's introduce our first set of authors who had a teleporter in their amazing kids book.

So it's my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast illustrator Mark Fearing and author and agent extraordinaire Seth Fishman. Seth and Mark, thanks very much for joining us today.

Thanks for having us awesome, Thank you.

These two are the pair behind the new book Brandon and the Totally Troublesome Time Machine, a kids book about time travel. So, guys, we ask a lot of folks on here to talk to us about the science in their science fiction. But before we dig into the book, we want to ask you a question that we ask all of our authors, which is about teleporters in Star Trek. Do you believe that teleporters actually move you from place to place or kill you, dismantling you and recreating you

I think they're sort of both.

I mean, I think that they do move you, take you apart, something you die, That's my take on it. You are fully separated and you come back together. But I don't know why you have to throw the death in there. It seems totally fine.

You maybe don't know Daniel very well.

This is a.

Debate I remember having back in college, and I'm pretty sure you have to dismantle completely and rebuild from materials. So I think there is a death involved in a rebirth from fresh new materials at the quantum level.

Okay, I'll give you new body.

So then why don't we improve it?

Like if you're going to get a new body anyway, why not, like, you know, always be a little bit younger when they transport you somewhere. I think there's a lot of opportunities that have not been explored in the Star Trek universe.

No diseases, totally oh man, almost like they left open a lot of holes in this theory in Star Trek.

Yeah, there's a lot of things that could be happening.

Yeah, all right, so let's get into the topic of your book instead of Star Trek. How did you guys end up writing a book about time travel?

Yeah?

Well, this is my seventh picture book, and I have discovered over time that picture book inspiration comes from my kids usually and from me just sort of staring at their room, you know, and seeing what's going on or something that they say, and in general for this book, you know, I think time travel is something that kids think about a lot. So this came out of a question my son asked that I don't even fully remember, so vague like, how does time travel kind of thing

But in order to make that.

Work, that means okay, so he has to remember, and then a future one of him needs to set up the trash can back in the past such that it will release off a timer and at that very moment fall down on his dad's head. And that is such a powerful thing that you could just be there and say, remember the trash remember the There was also like a recording device and so I really thought that was just so fascinating, and so I was puzzling that over my head.

So the book is.

Built out of the idea of what about a kid being able to sort of call into being with the time machine the solutions to his problems. That's where it built for me. And then I was lucky enough to be able to work with Mark on this process. That's a perfect exploration of the medium via his art. So I'm super happy about it.

When you all talk to other people, including set your kids, about how time travel works, are you all kind of on the same page or do you get a lot of different people with different ideas about time travel?

I can say quickly there's a lot of debate about time travel. Ever since I was a kid. My dad read a lot, and I remember reading The Time Machine as a kid and trying to figure out how this could possibly work. And then you get older and you come like Slaughterhouse five, you know, and you start really thinking about space and time right travel, And so it's a great playground. And I think Seth just has a kid's take on it, which is not easy to do.

A big idea, that's what's so fascinating about it.

Well, do you think time travel is more complex for kids to understand or for adults? It's sort of mind bending and counterintuitive? But is that easier for kids who haven't like learned all the details of causality and physics so they don't have the objections? Does it make more sense to a kid's mind or to an adults?

What do you think?

I think that's exactly right, that it's easier because they don't have those what if moments or how about this moments at the same time. Isn't that like what these books are about, is like basically grabbing those moments when you're in high school.

Thing like Grandfather Paradogs, and like, how do we do that?

So there's a page in this book that also everything came out of this one joke that I started. So it's this page where past and future the main character's name is Brandon, are fighting each other and he decides that past brand is going to teach future Brandon a lesson.

So before he goes to bed, he sets up a pie trap.

And then the way I wrote it, it's just literally impossible to actually illustrate this way, which is what.

Mark had the challenge is doing. And that's why I want to ask you this question was like how did you approach this?

But the idea that I puzzled with is putting a pie He puts his pie trap, and then he gets into bed himself and he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, that pie trap hits him in the face, so it's actually hitting future Brandon, but it's very much him. But future Brandon's like, ah, past Brandon, but he set it up, so it's his fault. And I wrote that in and every edit for the first like five rounds were like it's too confusing, and I was like, this is the reason why I wrote this book.

It's going to be in there.

And Mark's like he's shaking his head right now because it's like so hard to do. So Mark, tell me, like when you got here, like how did you get around?

How did you figure it out?

You know?

In picture books are interesting.

I've done about thirty of them now, and because of the media age we live in. A lot of authors tend to think in more animated terms, like jokes developing through time, and of course in a book, you are

There's a lot of very funny ideas.

I'm working out a new book right now, and it's like they were totally inspired by The Simpsons because they want these cutaways to things which don't work as well in a picture book as they do in Family Guy or The Simpsons. So there's always a little bit of stress I think on that, and even in my own work, I write. So you just approach it and hope you can find the right tone and let the reader bring as much as possible in their mind to what's happening in between.

That's like a form of time travel itself, because you're filling in the gaps between each panel, right.

Yeah, I mean it's narrative. Art is great at that.

That's what we're asking you to do is fill in those panels, and if you can find the right way to do that, you bring motion to the reader.

If I can fill up on that mark, I'd love to hear about how you made your illustration choices. When I was reading it, I was actually thinking Confidant Hobbes, the Transmographier box and all that stuff. Did you have a conversation with Seth about what was in his mind? Did this come just from your reading of the text? How does that all work?

In picture books you tend never to speak to the author.

In fact, it's kind of nice that Seth and I have been able to discuss this stuff and work together, because there's many books I've done that I've never talked to an author.

Of at all.

Why what?

Why not?

Publishers are looking to combine a author's point of view and an artist's point of view to create something sort of greater than either of them.

If Seth is an agent, you would know how to describe this better.

Oh, I hate it. I think it's absurd.

I think it's probably more built out of protectionism by a publisher of like whoever might be the bigger name person. If I'm really honest, the idea that there's not even like a form that I should fill out to like give some benchmarks. It's basically just the script an author can write in art direction and then it's totally up for the artists to do whatever they want with it, which is totally fine. But you know, I reached out to Mark because I wanted to say thank you.

It was looking great.

I usually like to wait for them to get their stamp on it, so that the stamp is in and then there's a conversation in my mind. I don't want to like it in there too early, but I find it crazy.

It's a weird way, and I think finding the right tone I illustrate in a couple different ways. I'm not a one style. I wanted to find that cartoony that's fun, that's frivolous.

That I think.

One of the reviews called it retro, which bothered me for a week. I had to call my agent and say, am I retro?

Now?

Is this my career over? But I wanted that looseness.

I wanted that sort of New Yorker style cartoon looseness to it. I didn't want it to be batten down and painted. So those are all just sort of art directions things that you come up with when you're working on it.

And Seth was happy with it, which is great.

I'm glad And it was a lot of fun to draw and be silly with it and creating the time machine in any way you know I wanted and being inspired.

I loved your time Machine.

Thanks. Yeah, it's a tone thing with art.

Love with the Christmas lights and the shower curtain and it's like you can really imagine that a kid had a ton fun in there, and they were like little reading books in there. Also, in between traveling through time.

It's a fort. Kelvin Hobbs really makes that clear.

It's an adventure, it's a fort, it's an escape, and that's kind of what a time machine is in a way.

So how much research goes into scenes.

Like when he goes back in time to visit the dinosaurs. Did you have to do like a bunch of research on the current state of what we think dinosaurs looked like or was it more like you had a picture in your mind and that's what you went with.

Yeah, some books demand a more encyclopedic approach if you are creating something, I wanted it to be more fun and a little more fantastic. And I do keep up on my palaeontology and archaeology.

I'm a geek.

I love watching the newest discoveries, you know, so I try to create something that sort of looks like you might imagine it more than being encyclopedic.

With don't sell yourself short.

For those of you who know I write nonfiction books too, those have a much higher level of you have fact checkers, reviews will rag on you if you say something that's metaphorical, you know, like you're in trouble here though there's a specific run of scenes, which is.

What Mark was referring to. With dinosaurs.

I gave sample art pieces or like links to places showing what I thought with each one, I mean, where they are from the science base.

All I wanted was feathers on the dinosaur.

Like that's really what I cared about, right, because I think that the idea if you ever see a dinosaur without.

Feather on it. Now, most dinosaurs, I'm like, what are we doing?

Like we're teaching our kids poorly, right, And then we had other ones like the Colossus of Rhodes.

We went back and forth.

We had to do research because I always thought the Colossus of Rhodes was straddling the harbor and the boats went under. But after some research, it seems like, whow we don't one hundred percent know. Most suggest that he'd be standing to one side. So we actually did do real research to try and play that in there. And sometimes it's me and the author, sometimes the artists, and sometimes actually a copy editor sneaks in there and is like,

For sure.

I was always curious about your portrayal Alexander Hamilton, because you know, now he's such an iconic figure, but it's also like lin Minwelm Morando, which is not what he looks like, of course, so I was like, oh, you know, in my head, it's all these different thoughts there.

I try to look stuff up.

Definitely, the Colossal Roads is interesting because I was an ancient art history major in undergrad What path haven't they gone down? So that stuff is fascinating to me, And there is a lot of debate there. It is still very much debatable about exactly what that was. There's contradictory information, and of course I'll take a shortcut to what's most visually interesting. At a certain point, I'm like, I don't care. This is a lot of fun to draw if we

But yeah, we did have some notes on that.

But it's certainly not like a book where you're doing history of New York architecture or something where you're going to have people who are like, those are not the right size bricks and seventeen twenty they only you know. But it was fun, you know, kept it fun, and I appreciated the notes, that's right, I remember. And we did debate about the colossal roads. I remember looking that up myself in a couple of books online.

Well, that really touches for me one of the exciting things about the possibility of time travel, because there are so many big questions about the universe whose answers are just facts, facts that are lost to history. You know, what did the dinosaurs look like? How did the universe begin? How did humans evolve? All these things we could just know the answers too. If we could just go back and watch, it'd be fascinating. So it's so tantalizing to

So I feel like that's a great place to ask a final question, which is, if you could go back in time to anywhere, what would you go back and see.

I'm going to take sort of the easy answer that's not checking anything in my own history, which I wanted my character to explore.

But like you said, you're ancient art.

I was an ancient Rome history major, and I've always wanted to see Rome at the height and get the walk around and see what that's like. So I'd probably wander through there and then you know, find out those answers and then tell the historians, and then tell them what their methods were wrong, and then what the revise everything?

You know, That's what I want. No, I just want to go together at it.

Yeah, I'm very close.

I think just hearing the Latin that was spoken, you know, what was being spoken in the streets of Rome in one hundred AD or fifty BC, would be fascinating because we have so many questions.

I think I'd be tempted to go.

Alexander the Great would be a real pull to see what exactly.

Was going on, What was that? What was he?

I'm always partial to Athens about for eighty BC or something.

I'd love to see what was shaken.

Mark looks like we have to do like a history book together.

Yeah, we don't know where Alexander the Great ended up being buried, right, we do not.

You could figure that out.

That way if we could go to the end of it. We don't really know how he died.

We don't know the mood of That's why I don't think time travel could exist, because what we have seen some people poking around these places by now in there.

But I think Seth and.

I are a lot closer than Yeah, I imagine, but that would be fascinating. Or to see Caesar and try to understand what was going on there, Oh, fascinating, fascinating?

All right, thanks everybody.

So the book is called Brandon and the Totally Troublesome Time Machine. It's a picture book for kids, but it touches on the kid inside all of us who wants to go back in time and get the answers to all of these deep questions. Seth and Mark, thanks very much for coming and talking to us.

You're welcome, Thank you for having us on.

Its for so fun guys.

So it's my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast. My old friend Brad King. He runs a video gaming company. He writes science fiction, and he went to Los Alamos Middle School and high school with me. Brad Ley, So nice to see you again.

It's so nice to see you, Daniel. I appreciate em sciting the word old there. I want to say, I'm very excited to see you again, and I'm excited to meet Kelly. Daniel was like a really he was in speech and debate. That's really where I think we got to know each other. And Daniel was, you're ahead of me, and I think really kind of a funny, wise grounding force in an otherwise kind of chaotic motley crew, you know of like very intelligent people but a little manic.

Also, I didn't know you did speech and debate.

Oh yes, absolutely, extemporaneous baloney and Lincoln Douglas's debate.

It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, and that brought you here.

Dot here we are exactly.

So before we talk about your exciting movie, we have a question that we ask all science fiction writers to sort of put them on the spectrum. In your opinion, what does a teleporter do in Star Trek? Does it actually move your atoms from here to there? Or does it disassemble you and we build you somewhere else? Is it a murder machine?

This question? This is very contentious. I'm sure you're aware. Yeah, I'll answer it. But there's also an aspect of it that I feel like is more contentious that I usually get into. But I mean, I can't get the head of the writers exactly. I'm an optimist and I like the idea that they are actually being transported. However, I recognize that I think it's probably more likely that they're

So does that mean you wouldn't step into a teleporter? But he would.

I'm like a cat. I'm so curious. I would get in, you know, like I.

Really yeah, I mean I assume hopefully that afterwards, whatever happened, I would either be blissfully unaware that I had been murdered or get to continue.

So I hope the murder was quick and painless. Yeah, then who cares what happens after that?

That's the hope. But if you guys figure something out otherwise in your field, please let me know before I.

Get we'll call you up to be a guinea pig on our next experiment. Since you're so optimistic.

Great, since you are totally willing to jump into these sci fi sort of pieces of technology. Were you always into sci fi or what got you into science fiction and movies?

Oh?

Thank you, that's a great question. You know, I grew up on Star Wars. I think, like a lot of us in that era, and I also was really into fantasy and play dungeons and dragons and you know all that. I think growing up in Los Alamos, of course I was around a lot of science, and I was hyper aware of science as a thing. I also recognized early on that I probably wasn't going to go into science. I just don't think I had the dedication, you know,

And so, what's the first piece of science fiction writing that you did?

Oh my gosh, that's really hard. I have the first piece of fantasy writing I did because engaged in elementary school. They made us print a book, so I.

Have that on the shelf.

But sci fi, I'm not sure I have a fun answer to that. You know, I just started writing a little short stories, I remember in college.

So then tell us how you decided to write a movie with sort of time travel and you know, seeing the future. This sint of aspects you sent me before we talked. This incredible spreadsheet you put together where you like, broke down the time travel motivations and mechanisms and all sorts of movies. You must have thought about this deeply before you got into it.

I break down a lot of movies. I'm very interested in, sort of borderline obsessed with the patterns in storytelling, and so I will watch movies and I have a constantly shifting sort of template. We're all, you know, feed in all of the information, and I don't think it's it's useful of a guide for creating stories, but more maybe as a reflective or diagnostic tool afterwards or after an outline is say eh, you know, am I sort of

Obviously.

I had a similar spreadsheet for zombie movies for a project I was working on once, and I actually found I enjoyed the movies more because I was thinking about them on like multiple levels and how they connected. Did it increase your joy or decrease your joy to be like filling in boxes as you were watching stuff?

Yeah? Absolutely.

I mean the first time I watch something, I try to just enjoy it, like I don't do this on first viewing, But yes, I think it enhances my enjoyment. And I think the discovery process of patterns again, it's like a drug to me. You know, when I observe a pattern, I get really excited. And so especially with

And so how did you land on this particular sort of mechanism for your movie? This information from the future, these questions about can you avoid what you see happening in the future? What about those themes opens up news stories for you? Or what story that you wanted to tell with those sort of topics and mechanisms.

I have a lot of anxiety, a lot of it focused on future. And I also was undiagnosed with ADHD for a very long time, so I have time blindness.

You know.

There's a lot of things around time that I think have sort of plagued me unconsciously, and sometimes I was working out through my art. But I would say I can't take credit for the initial idea. My co writer and producer BP Cooper, we were just sort of obsessing about my favorite time travel movie at the time, Time Crimes, which I don't know if you guys have seen that,

Takes picture of the future.

And for some reason, my brain, you know, locked onto that, and I went away for a weekend and to sort of roughly outlined the whole movie, you know, and then came back in for the next two weeks we worked on it, but I struggle with anxiety about the future, and I also as an artist and constantly struggling with inspiration and wanting to, you know, somehow get ahead of the difficulty of not understanding where a piece of art

But in your movie, it doesn't exactly give them confidence or let them relax, or to causes tension in the movie.

Yes, right, well, you know, I mean, it's cinema and it's a story, so we have to create as much conflict as possible. But I think all the themes that can be explored via time travel are very uh, hurtful and exciting. Yeah, it trolls me.

So what are the challenges of writing a movie like this where the rules are a little bit fuzzy, where you get to basically make up the rules yourself instead of just like you know, a movie that happens in our universe according to our laws of physics, where you're already bound by rules.

Everybody understands.

That's a great question. I was a little nervous about getting on this podcast because I have friends who are into, you know, hard science fiction, right, so yeah, A day behind heard science fiction is that all the science is real, and if it's set in the future, that it's at least not violating any of the known laws of science right now. And I'm very obviously more of a soft science fiction writer. I almost treat it like fantasy. And I've had people say, well, why don't you just write fantasy?

I love soft sci fi, and I feel like as long as you create a world and then you're consistent with the rules that you've created for that world. I'm just there to have fun. I'm not there to fact check. That's my personal philosophy.

Kelly. I appreciate your support, and even.

As particle physicists, we can enjoy soft science fiction. Also, just because I grew up in los Almost doesn't mean I roll my eyes when something weird happens in a movie.

Oh. So much support here, so much solidarity.

I really appreciate it.

Hey, it's a positive vibe kind of podcast. We weren't going to ask you on the podcast and then, you know, quiz you on general relativity or anything.

Oh gosh, all right, I would fail if we did that. Do you enjoy other time travel movies? So you've made that spreadsheet, so you've clearly watched a lot of them.

Do you have like pet peeves for things that people do in time travel movies or things you really like?

Yes?

I should clarify this. Documents very hastily thrown together. I actually have hundreds of movie downs, and I meant to tackle this earlier in the week and give you guys something really comprehensive.

I just did not have time.

So this was me very hastily this morning, be like, oh, what can I get them?

You just go into your time machine and go back and do it and then come.

Back exactly extely. Yeah.

I think, you know, depending on what's going on with me, I can either be more filled with regret or more obsessed with the future. And so that might color which time travel movies I'm you know, more interested in, you know, time loops I think are really fascinating. I'm interested in

Bit in my movie.

It's almost a throwaway, but it's like the characters are certain they will die if they deviate from these photographs. But then the scientist shows up part way through and says, I don't think that's necessarily true, you know, and we never resolve that, which I like, But I would like to explore that more deeply because I feel like people seem to be getting more polarized into their little paths of confirmation bias, and it seems like a problem.

So you've written a movie about time travel, but you're also just a natural storyteller. Tell me why do you think people are so drawn to movies about time travel. I mean, nobody's experienced it, so it's not something we all connect with or resonate with, and yet people seem to accept it. It's not like something weird and alien in stories. Why is it something that we find so easy to connect with when we've never had this kind of experience?

Right Again, I don't want to hammer the regret or future worry thing, but I do think those are universal experiences and often define people's lives, you know, especially if something terrible is happened in the past or they're very

I think.

So we feel like constrained by the mechanics of time in our universe and we want to break out of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Theoretically attached to bred as a yearning to be able to go back and change what you did wrong, and the future worry attached to that as a desire to be able to go forward, and of course consciously logically we know we can't do that, but once you get put in a fantasy world where you can, I think it becomes compelling.

So then let me ask you a personal question, which is, if I built a time machine that lets you go back in time and change something in your life, what would you do. Would you use it to go back and inform bradly about the consequences of decision, or would you like go deep into the past and learn something scientific.

I'd like to think I've had enough therapy to say that I wouldn't go back to try to change anything.

You know, It's like that.

I appreciate how you know, my mistakes have formed me. I would say, in this moment, I'm in a very challenging phase, and so I would be more tempted to try to go back and change something.

Although thanks to.

Time travel movies and books, you know, we're all sort of hyper aware of the perils of going back and changing things. But by studying something, going back to any other era and just being able to sit there and observe, you know, I think would be from a nonfiction.

Standpoint, obviously great.

But from a fiction standpoint, you know, the verson militude that you could probably extract from some other era would just be gold, you know.

All right, wonderful, Well, thanks very much for coming on the pod.

Everybody.

This is Bradley King and he's one of the writers and the director of Time Lapse Are a really fun movie you can all check out. And Bradley's working on several new projects, so we hope to hear more from you soon.

Great, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

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