Free Will and Time travel

[Joywitch]

No: HPFGUIDX 1500

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Susan McGee" <Schlobin at a...> wrote:
> Of course Heinlein did a ton of stuff about this in his Future
> History books

Including one book in which the main character goes back in time and 
has sex with his mother (paging Dr. Freud!) so maybe Heinlein isnt 
the best authority.  Although, personally I love his juvenile books, 
but the books he wrote for adults always have a main character who is 
a fat, bald middle-aged to elderly man who is inexplicably attractive 
to dozens of young, beautiful female characters.  Talk about 
unbelievable plot twists!

But enough ranting about sexist old sci-fi authors...

The problems inherent in time travel have been explored at length by 
Heinlein and many, many other sci-fi authors. Personally, I agree 
with Starship Voyager Captain Janeway who says something to the 
effect that when she joined Starfleet she promised herself that she 
would never get involved in those messy time travel paradoxes.  Plots 
with time travel in them always raise zillions of impossible 
contradictions, and after reading and seeing hundreds of them they 
have started driving me nuts, so much so that I really hope JKR stays 
away from them in the future.

Besides which, as Arthur C. Clarke points out, time travel (at least 
to the past) is clearly impossible, because if it werent we would be 
bumping into time travelers from the future right now.  Unless the 
people from the future were somehow unable to say anything about the 
future, or for some reason we couldnt communicate with them, or 
else............OH NO NOW I HAVE STARTED SPECULATING ABOUT TIME 
TRAVEL PARADOXES...SOMEONE STOP ME!!!!!!

--Joywitch