From HG Wells to the Doctor and beyond … how technology caught up with science fiction
Can you recall when you first heard of time travel? I doubt it. Nowadays, time travel is in pop songs and TV advertising. From morning to night, children’s cartoons and adult fantasies invent and reinvent time machines, gates, doorways and windows, not to mention time ships and closets, Back to the Future DeLoreans, and those special London police boxes. Animated cartoons have been time travelling since 1925: in Felix the Cat Trifles with Time, Father Time agrees to send the unhappy Felix back to a faraway era inhabited by cavemen and dinosaurs. In a 1944 Looney Tunes episode, Elmer Fudd dreams his way into the future – “when you hear the sound of the gong it will be exactly AD2000” – where a newspaper headline announces “Smellevision Replaces Television”. In The Simpsons, Homer accidentally turns a toaster into a time machine.
Two generations of TV watchers have been schooled in temporal paradox by Doctor Who, and when one Doctor gives way to the next, as will happen in the next series, the reincarnation generates almost as much speculation as the royal line of succession. Who will follow Peter Capaldi? She will be a Time Lord, after all.
When you write about time travel, you either pay homage to The Time Machine or dodge its shadow
We inhabit virtual worlds as avidly as the real one – in virtual worlds time travel could not be easier
Related: Relativity v quantum mechanics – the battle for the universe
Continue reading...via Science fiction | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2kD92ob
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