Time Travel

[martha]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Calliope" <julia at t...> wrote:
> Has anyone else read time-travel fiction, and wants to share the 
author's
> theories, in hopes of figuring out either the Harry and the 
Patronus confusion
> or the Ron!Dumbledore theory?

Now me (poking head out of Lurker's Corner):

I don't know how useful this is going to be in actually solving any 
mysteries, but the Stephen Fry novel "Making History" looks at what 
happens when someone *does* change time - I'll try and summarise, 
because it's fairly complicated (but anyone who likes this sort of 
thing shoud read it, it's fantastic, and it's Stephen Fry who is The 
Man). Ahem. Anyway, in the book we have Michael (the young history 
student) and Professor Zuckermann (the old physics guy) who are both 
obsessed with changing the past so that the Holocaust never happened. 
Zuckermann in particular hates that his father was an active Nazi. 
Anyway, neither of them want to actually kill Hitler, so instead they 
devise a way to send a male sterilisation pill back in time so that 
it contaminates Hitler's father's drinking water, and the entire 
world flips upside down. Turns out that even though Hitler was never 
conceived, the entire thing happens anyway, and the world is in an 
even worse state (I won't go into the details, but due to various 
events the Holocaust happens anyway and the civil rights movement and 
legalisation of homosexuality don't). It leaves Michael in an 
insanely difficult dilemma situation - but Fry explains all this much 
better than I can. Anyway, just a thought to add to the cauldron 
(dodgy metaphor??).

Hope that's useful, or at least vaguely interesting,

Martha