Sci Fi: Back to the Future?
Scott Schenke
June 24, 2022
Considering the popular theme “time travel” to determine how much “Sci” to put in your “Fi”.
Source Material:
- Can we time travel? A theoretical physicist provides some answers by Peter Watson
- Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say by Matthew S. Schwartz
Prewriting:
After reading current science on time travel, decide how closely you wish to follow science in your work. Questions to frame your thinking:
- Given some of the limitations we presently understand, how could your work be guided by those constraints?
- What if you could only travel in one direction (e.g. traveling backward is possible but forward is not)?
- What if you had to stay once you were there?
- If you traveled to the past, what if you could only watch, but not affect what happens?
- If the future, what if evolution puts you at a significant disadvantage (i.e. everyone else is too advanced for you to keep up with)?
- Do these limitations help you create Sci Fi, or do you want to purposely eschew them?
Prompt: Assuming time travel is possible, would you want to go back to the past or forward to the future, and why?
Scott Schenke
Scott Schenke (he/him) is a musician, singer, songwriter, home recording enthusiast, canine coddler, frustrated vegetable gardener, disgruntled viewer of far-too-many sports, and Sci Fi fanatic. When he’s not staying up all night watching YouTube videos of Korean rain storms, or attempting to converse with neighborhood animals in proper English (as though they should understand him perfectly), he serves as YCA’s Technology Manager.