I've been travelling through time at a rate of one second per second for my whole life .

In fiction my three favorite time travel tricks are :

1 . Give up and call it magic.

2 .Self consciously play with the SF rules of time travel Red Dwarf/Doctor Who style .

3 . Alternate universes. No time travel but in an infinite cosmos there is someplace that exactly replicates another place up to the point where the travellers arrive . This is the Marvel comics method .

Geez!! You'd'a Thunk I'd have remembered Dr. Who!! Well, you'd have to know me to know that...My daughter would be laughing herself sick if she knew I'd left out Dr. Who. (Considering she knows my favorite Dr. Who was Tom Baker)

Parallel universes!! Comic books! Oh there are much better places than that to find parallel universes.

Heinlein (it's 3 am, if I spelled it wrong I'm sorry) did some delightful work with parallels but I can't remember the titles right now.

Then, of course, there's my personal favorite, Richard Bach. (Hey, everyone has their guilty pleasures.) He wrote a book about parallel universes. Actually, it didn't strike me so much as parallel universes as it did alternate paths that could have been taken on the same earth.

Every where, and/or when, they went they kept meeting their alternative selves (he and his wife, Leslie Parrish). The title of that book is "one."

I have to find a new copy of it. I have this problem with Richard Bach's books. As much as people laugh at the idea of reading them in front of other people, they sure don't mind borrowing them and keeping them.

You're right there are many takes on time travel and parallel universes .

I've read Illusions and Jonathan Livingston as well as comic books and I'm not apologizing for either .'Twas either Michael Moorcock or Stan the Man that first explained to me the multiverse concept. Er... or was it Asimov ?

You might like Einstein's Dreams it's a collection of poetic shorts on different ways time might operate .

You like Tom Baker (me too ) but have no opinion on Red Dwarf? It might be too silly for you, but fans of the Doctor have a head start the Dwarf .

Should I mention Johnny Darko ?

You have to pardon me a little bit. It's been so long since I've seen "Red Dwarf" that I was having a "duh" moment and wasn't recognizing the title. (Shame on me!) My daughter would be ashamed of me!) LOL!! I love "Red Dwarf."

Why would anyone want to apologize for anything that encouraged them to read? Classic Comics was the first place I ran into the classics of literature (Dumas, Bronte, ect.,).

And as for Richard Bach, I once had a friend say to me (in the 1990's), "Don't laugh at me, but have you ever read 'JLS'?" I reached back and without looking pulled it out of my bookcase. Then he said, "You should find 'Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.' I think you'd like it." That's when I laughed. I did the bookcase trick again and handed him a copy of that one, too.

He sat there looking at the two them. They were rather worn and taped together. They still looked like the pages were ready to fall out.

I turned the table and asked him if he'd read "one." And that's where I'm going to leave the conversation with him.

Since then, I have run across people, who laugh at the idea of reading Richard Bach and people who are open to it. The biggest problem with it is that my copies don't always find their way home. I loaned one out in FL and found it a used bookstore in SD, go figure! (Bookplates)

Ah, yes..."Illusions..." I love that book so much that in 1993, I found several gorgeous jpgs that matched each verse in that book and made a set of wallpapers out of them. It was amazing how many people I met that wanted copies. They were just coming out of the woodwork asking for copies. So, I was forever e-mailing them away.

The part that struck me differently (I've gotten used to it by now) people ask me for advice like I actually have answers. Even total strangers. I've gotten used to it, but its still weird.

Before I drop "Illusions," and go on to "one," I have one other question. By any chance have you read "The Secret?" I couldn't help but giggle when they told a story about a feather. The way that it felt reading their story about the feather, was that they borrowed the story Bach and Shimoda in the diner with the blue feather on the milk carton and changed the details. I swear I have have the strongest feeling about that.

Now, back to "one." Have you read it? My personal opinion is that I'd rate it right up there with "Illusions." And when I have a few bucks to spare, I'll replace "Illusions," and "one" when I get "Einstein's Dreams." I love the cover of "one," a mobius strip twisted to the symbol for infinty.

Say Asimov, and I always think of the first story of his I read. I was 10 or 12 and the story was about a little boy would not accept the new robot/nanny his parents got for him. And the only thing they could do was go to the factory and find the old one and bring it back home. I'm not sure of the title, but I thought was "Robie, the Robot." (Watch me be wrong.)

Ok, on the subject of Johnny Darko, I really don't know anything. I've heard the name, but I've never seen a movie or read a book.

BTW...I'm greatly enjoying this conversation :)

I haven't read The One yet . On your recommendation I read the first couple pages at the corner B.Daltons . I'll pick it up at the used bookstore in the next week or two .

I must admit that I'm fascinated by spiritual and mystical things but I'm also a sceptic. I don't concern myself with questions of afterlife or reincarnation except for mental exercise .

One of the strengths of the Bach's work is that presented as fiction it's there for me to enjoy and ponder. I get frustrated with films and books like the Secret because they use suspect evidence and sources to make claims I'd truly like to believe.

As a Discordian I keep my concept of karma simple : when you do good you make the world better , when you pee in the cosmic pool not so much.( I should learn to take my own advice ).

Back to topic "Johny Darko " is a movie many people told me to see, it is probably about time travel.I say probably because figuring the movie out is part of the fun. It is not a happy film. It's available cheap at the superstores and so is one of the smarter, popular takes on the topic. I hesitate to recommend it because it is dark and confusing.

Me too ;-)

Alright so I'm gonna lay it out.

Here goes:

I will start out by saying that its a basis for my sci-fi.

I have been thinking about this for many years... I have started my scifi on a blog tht I won't shamelessly promote... or the corelating books...

Entangled pairs of photons and Atoms.

That is time turned into an object.

Realise that there is Southward motion: The Earth is falling to the South at a rate of 40 miles per second.

then the entire galaxy is falling at a rate of that same 40 miles per second, and are other objects and groups of objects such as our sun, and entire star systems.

Now think or look up what the habital zone is in the galactic arms. And those arms are spinning.

So say 1895 is leterally a very long way away from the location of the earth now.

So from the spot we are at when you started reading this to the spot of the earth in 1895 may take you a life time at the speed of light to reach.

But if time(a moment) were turned into a small object(s) like a photo, or a visual memory where there is a photon entangled then, and chemically bonded to light in the now. All we may need to figure out at first in how to take advantage of that inertial barrier.

So even if the Flat disk paradox can offer up the reality of common everyday gravity wells: and we could make a big one just off the Earth so that we don't transort everybody(cf; Brian Greene Elegant Universe for actual source on Flat disk paradox reserach. that is the fluxuation of 3.14..., in spinning circles).

I believe the only possible thing even close to time travel is the story of Rip van Winkle.