How many ways are there for an author to send a character back in time? In the movie "Back to the Future," the mechanism was a Delorean. In "The Time Machine," it was a time machine.
In most of the stories I've read on SOL, the mechanism seems to include struck by lightning or, especially, involved in an automobile accident.
What are your favorite mechanisms in such stories (and, if you can remember, the name of the story that used it)?
Wandering into a cave or tunnel that comes out "elsewhen".
As a reward for kindness to a (usually elderly) person who inexplicably has the gift.
Watches,
Storms...
I really only have one do-over, where it was explained. And in that, I used the common way of having the main character die and return to their younger self.
I also wrote a kind of "Groundhog Day" story, but as it was told from the point of view of a person encountering the person repeating the same day, there was no need to explain anything about why or how. Just indicating that over the countless repeats of the same day, the person reliving that day had gone more than a little insane.
Mysterious bartender giving a strange drink (Here I Go Again: My Second Chance by Liza Devereaux).
A strange storm (without being explicitly struck by lightning), e.g. Rain? by cmsix.
Mysterious bartender giving a strange drink (Here I Go Again: My Second Chance by Liza Devereaux).
I had to drop that one because I didn't like how the MC was turning out to be a cold-blooded killer.
I had to drop that one because I didn't like how the MC was turning out to be a cold-blooded killer.
More people need to realise that "some people just need killin'" is a true and accurate assessment of the human condition.
More people need to realise that "some people just need killin'" is a true and accurate assessment of the human condition.
And that is the EXACT reason why the holocaust and all the other genocides happened, and will continue to happen.
And that is the EXACT reason why the holocaust and all the other genocides happened, and will continue to happen
Your comment is ambivalent.
I agree the holocaust happened because no-one killed the Nazi monsters before they started the "Endlösung".
Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Röhm, Heydrich, Eichmann and some others all "needed killin'"!
HM.
I agree the holocaust happened because no-one killed the Nazi monsters
And that again, is my point. When people make the decision that some people/minority/majority, need to be eradicated because of 'something' then you become no better than the people you have decided needed to be eradicated.
To try and explain it a bit better, is that you are saying that in order to avoid a genocide, you have to create another separate genocide...
is that you are saying that in order to avoid a genocide, you have to create another separate genocide...
No, only a few key people and this early, before the movement gets too much power. Oh, and this is then no genocide, just a surgical remove of a cancer.
Don't tell me removing the top will have no effect, because others will take over and continue in the same way.
It's similar to cancer, your best chance is to remove it in an very early state.
BTW, GB and France should never have signed the Munich Agreement, which more proper is also named the Munich Betrayal (Czech: Mnichovská zrada; Slovak: Mníchovská zrada), because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.
Trying to appease an expansionist will always fail and the price to pay finally will only increase.
HM.
Trying to appease an expansionist will always fail and the price to pay finally will only increase.
And here we are again making the same mistake with Vlad Putin.
The ability of autocrats like Hitler and Putin to misinform their public is terrifying.
AJ
And that again, is my point. When people make the decision that some people/minority/majority, need to be eradicated because of 'something' then you become no better than the people you have decided needed to be eradicated.
No. There are some people who cannot be stopped from murdering innocent people unless/until they are put to death. Putting one person to death is not genocide.
The odds are great that if Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, or Mao had not been allowed to retain power, some less insane leader would have been put in place, and tens of millions of innocent people would have not been murdered.
It's disturbing that you see no difference.
Putting one person to death is not genocide
It's never that simple. Assassination makes them a martyr and just makes the 'faithful' more zealous in their fervour.
The very nature of these individuals makes them charismatic and quick to gain a following. Look at all the people you named "Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Mao" I doubt assassination would have stopped the inevitable, for in order to realise that those individuals were going to be an issue, they had to have existed long enough to BE a problem, and by that time, the damage has been already done.
Time has allowed us to look back and say "They should have been drowned at birth", but the those in power at the time when it really mattered didn't have that level of hindsight. They had to make do with the intelligence they had.
There is always (the slim) chance that people will change. That's why we have prisons and not guillotines.
It's disturbing that you see no difference.
It could also be said that it may be disturbing that I have possibly killed more than the average poster on this site. To some I am a mass murderer, to others I am a hero and patriot. How you view that depends on where you stand, and that's the issue with the likes of Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler and Mao.
Putting one person to death is not genocide
I should probably point out that putting one person to death can still cause the death of millions. A point made by Gavrilo Princip, who thought he was doing the right thing. Many people would disagree with him.
Edit: Added "With him" for clarity.
Aliens who can put the mind of an adult into a teenage body - possibly with time travel involved. Several including Again by Timm.
Two scientists combine devices they worked on over their life to put their minds into their younger selves. 'Changing our Past' also by Timm.
Magic
Several stories don't have an explanation for the do-over opportunity.
Suicide/death and the intervention of a third (higher?) power is also quite common. It also has the advantage that with a mysterious third party, you don't have to explain the reason/logic why, because they are mysterious ...
Wise old stranger (The Wanderer / Odin trope?) In De Yaken's play it again Sam.
Nuclear blast in Kublicon's Play it again Same on Lit.
Magic bracelet and magic pendant in Flavian's
https://storiesonline.net/s/76293/out-of-focus
Greek goddess (Tyche IIRC) screwing with mortals in High School again, ugh! On the other site.
Death at the point of total eclipse of the sun in Lazlo's Emend by Eclipse. Happens to multiple people over multiple eclipses.
Retreads and Retreads Part Deux by Rotredrachen have a Norse God Loki giving the mc his do-over...and other Norse Gods are mentioned and appear in the stories.
I have some in progress where God gives the do-over and the mc does his best to help others and live by the golden rule, but who knows if I will ever finish any of my in progress stories.
https://storiesonline.net/s/51085/retreads
https://storiesonline.net/s/51683/retreads-part-deux
Several that I have read use the mechanism of surgery. "Once More With Feelings" by The Night Hawk is my favorite of them. Having a "dual do-over" and then meeting and becoming friends with yourself is, I believe, unique to the genre.
There's one — I'm not going to name it because it's a major spoiler — where there's no obvious trigger, but it turns out to have been a spell cast by another character, who, unbeknownst to the PoV character for most of the story, is also rewound.
But mostly it's death. Truck-kun is a common culprit, but early heart attack or stroke or the like seems to be at least as common.
There's one — I'm not going to name it because it's a major spoiler — where there's no obvious trigger, but it turns out to have been a spell cast by another character, who, unbeknownst to the PoV character for most of the story, is also rewound.
A story by that description is one of the ones I was thinking of when mentioning 'Magic'.
Beware, spoilers for anyone who hasn't read my story (Variation on a Theme):
In it, the only visible 'mechanism' is death (or, possibly, very near death, since there's no point at which anyone is aware of being dead in the moment).
I'm writing it that way because death is simply the point of transition. What I would consider the actual mechanism is unknown. Something funny happened on the way to the afterlife, presumably, but why? Who knows?
Anyway, for me, truck-inspired-disaster is the first death to appear, but the second is physical violence, and the third is a skydiving accident.
Note that a truck also strikes someone and they continue on unimpaired later in the story, so presumably not just any truck will do :)
Not exactly time travel, but H.Beam Piper (and Gina Marie Wylie)'s Paratime stories use whats basically a glitch in the system, where two machines traveling in opposite directions interpenetrate, and allow someone to enter one of the machines (and be dropped off in some other when.
In my do-over series, Fifty Something Teenager (FST), I don't explain the restart in the early stories. As the series progresses there are plot elements related to restarting in the past (e.g., on the one year anniversary, the protagonist must choose between returning to the current time, or paying a price to stay in the past).
In the FST series, the protagonist just completed two years in the past, and with the associated decision on the second anniversary more was revealed about what happened, but the details are still pretty vague at this point.
-DF
Edgar Rice Burroughs' character John Carter of Mars travels between the planets by means of astral projection, but when he dies on one he tends to wake up on the other. While not time travel per se, it might as well be since the two planets are completely disconnected -- Carter lives two separate lives, one on each. I've definitely seen something close in a Do-Over on this site, but can't recall which offhand.
There are a number of novels which deal with messages being sent backwards in time. The best known is probably Gregory Benford's Timescape (1980) in which scientists in an apocalyptic 1998 are sending messages to 1962 hoping to prevent the impending environmental collapse. Also in 1980 James P. Hogan released Thrice Upon a Time, which dealt more with the individual researches learning how to use (and abuse) the technology. It's been too long since I read either book, but both authors are the type to explain everything in detail.
