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> I was annoyed that, after going to great lengths to explain how time travel
> isn't really possible and these are actually trips to alternate timelines ...
> the whole plot hinges on "clues" sent forward in time from our own past by
> the people stranded there. And again at the end, when, back in the present,
> the heroes visit the grave of their friend who remained behind.
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> Except, according to Crichton's explanation of how this all worked, that was
> all on another Earth! So how did the clues and his grave get to ours?
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They were left in our world's past by the people who went there
from "one world over". This version of "time travel" does at least avoid
the paradoxes. If you kill your grandfather by going back in time, you
have really done this one world over. You come back to your own world,
and nothing has changed. In the world where you killed your grandfather,
you don't exist. So you don't go from there to the next world, your
grandfather survives there, and "you" exist in that one. The process
continues, with the two kinds of worlds alternating. No paradoxes.
The real problem is how one finds worlds which are almost identical
to ours, except that they are offset by a certain amount of time. Well,
there is that bit about finding alternate worlds where they know how to
reconstitute people who have been sent through quantum foam...
To me, _Timeline_ is NOT science fiction. Crichton wanted to
write a story where people from our time went back to the late Middle
Ages. So he wrote one, inserting a bit of plausible crap to explain
how it was done.
---David
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
