I love science fiction in general and I love tall tales about time travel in particular. As I’ve mentioned on previous occasions, some of my favorite stories of this genre are The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, By His Bootstraps by Robert Heinlein, A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, and Millennium by John Varley.
Although I don’t like to boast, I’m a bit of a time traveler myself. In fact, I’m traveling into the future as I pen these words, but I’m currently taking the scenic path at a relaxed pace of one day every 24 hours (give or take).
I also spend an inordinate amount of time pondering what trade goods I should take with me if I ever get my time machine working and decide to take a few days of vacation in the past. Obviously, I wouldn’t want anything of a technological nature that would get me burnt at the stake as a witch or anything of a culinary nature that would get me flogged as a Frenchman. If I were to go back to Roman times, say the year 65 in the middle of the reign of Titus Flavius Vespasianus, for example, then I think boxes of safety matches, stainless steel sewing needles, and small vanity mirrors would go a long way to making friends.
Having said this, to be honest, I’ve never really pondered the situation posed in a recent post to the Science and Math Geeks community of Quora.com, which read as follows: “You’ve traveled back in time 65 M years with no way to return. What evidence can you leave to ensure future humans will know of your existence?”
I wouldn’t have even known where to start until I read the detailed response by Dyjamerson Freire Campos. I find it hard to fault any of Dyjamerson’s reasoning, although the thought of having to chop off my little finger brings a tear to my eye. How about you? Do you have any thoughts you’d care to share on any of this?
I highly recommend “How to Invent Everything” by Ryan North.
https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/
My kids ate it up. It is the guide for the stranded time traveler. It has all you need to know.
If it’s good enough for your kids, it’s certainly good enough for me — I just ordered a copy from Amazon — I only hope it gets here before I fall through another time-slip 🙂
“If I have a time machine that truly works for this purpose, I expect calculating exactly where on Earth I am going to be located would be simple in comparison to building the machine.” Ah, a typical newbie mistake — let me know how you get on LOL
Max, I am including you with all the archaeologists. By the time you read this, I will have left already. My location is now 31.7054° N, 35.2024° E but I only went back to 4BC.
That’s strange — I was just there/then and I didn’t see you — what were you wearing?
I am back now. WOW. You wouldn’t believe what happened. Maybe I should write a book about it.
I just did, when I get a free moment I’m going to publish it last week.
You are just doing that because you are so competitive. I already returned to 1611 and published it then. For your reference, I did quote you a few times, so let’s stop this madness!
So long as you quoted me and made me sound like I knew what I was talking about 🙂
“For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past.”
Do you remember that episode of The Big Bang Theory when they were talking about tenses you should use when talking about time travel. https://youtu.be/VLpUlmiVo2k
I have had never had seen that one. Great!
I also travel into the future every day, but unfortunately I cannot control the speed. Last August and September went by so fast that I don’t even remember what happened. I have tried to find the accelerator pedal and the brake, but to no avail.
That happened to me with the 1980s — I blinked and an entire decade whizzed by.
This remind me of an incident in Timeline (Micheal Crichton) where the professor travels to the past, gets in trouble and sends a message back.
I read Timeline, and I liked it as I recall, but it didn’t make as great an impression on me as the ones I mentioned in the blog — speaking of which, have you read all of those?
I don’t remember reading “Sound of Thunder” and I’m sure I haven’t read “Millennium” but I agree that the other two created a much greater impression than “Timeline”.
the Sound of Thunder was a short story, as I recall, but a powerful one. They also did a movie version of Millennium that was pretty good.