[HPforGrownups] Re: Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 16: Professor Trelawney's prediction

Bart Lidofsky bart at moosewise.com
Wed Apr 13 20:38:46 UTC 2011


No: HPFGUIDX 190222

June:
>
> I never said there didn't have to be rules in time travel. What I
> said was that there is not really any such thing as time travel
> (when was the last time you traveled in time Bart?)

Bart:

     I'm always traveling in time. Unfortunately, just forwards.

June:

> so the writers
> can make their own rules when writing their stories. How can there
> be set rules for something that does not exist? JK Rowling broke
> no rules because there are no rules.

Bart:
     Well, the short-short story I wrote showed that there have to be 
SOME rules. Here's the basic rule in fantasy writing: outside of the 
fantastic elements, the story and characters have to be as believable as 
possible. Leaving an unresolvable paradox is not believable. There is 
something in fantastic literature called a "time loop"; that is a 
reality that is based on someone traveling back in time and changing the 
past. There is often a question of how the time loop started. The 
easiest way to handle it is to have the person who changes time not 
change their own past (such as saving Buckbeak; whether Buckbeak 
originally lived or died would not have changed the actions of any of 
the time travelers).

     Harry's future self saving his past self creates a problem, because 
if he died before he had a chance to travel back in time, then he 
wouldn't have, and therefore he would have died. The only way to resolve 
the paradox is to assume that somebody else, in the original past, saved 
Harry; seeing that he was drooping down, the image he saw of a stag may 
have been mistaken. My best guess: Dumbledore, who seemed to know 
outside time, but, being a master manipulator, managed to arrange the 
time paradox.

     Bart




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