The rules have been spurned.

I have begun to read "Mostly Harmless", by Douglas Adams. This is a fantastic book in a series of equally fantastic books about fantastic occurrences on fantastic planets. These books do not really follow a plot, so to speak, but have a seemingly never-ending series of unusual and humorous events that, at unexpected points in the book, converge towards a central occurrence. Therefore I cannot explain the "plot" of this book to you fully, but I will tell you what you need to know in order to understand this blog post.

Previously in this series of books, the earth was blown up to make way for a new hyperspace express bypass. There were only two human survivors of this explosion: Arthur Dent and Tricia McMillan. Arthur went on to devote his life to the fine art of sandwich-making. Tricia went on to becoming a sort of space-time traveling news reporter. She constantly travels through time and space, and each time her future is not altered. Douglas Adams' writing can get very confusing, so it is necessary to stop and think every once in a while while reading his books. So, as I was contemplating his writings on space-time travel, I realized he had broken all of the rules.

What I mean by this is that whenever a form of writing includes someone traveling through space-time, there are always consequences. Let's say I travel back in time and alter something, which then alters something else, which then alters something else, and by the time I get back to my home in my time, my world is completely different.

Another example is the whole "I went back in time and met my past self" scenario, popular with the movie series "Back to the Future". Going back in time and meeting your past self would just alter your past self and your past self's decisions, which would also, in time, (ha ha), alter your future. Your life would still be altered, albeit through a different way.

As a side note, there's also the fact that if I go back in time, then go back to my own time, then do the same entire thing again, I have left three of my past selves behind. There's my original past self, then there's my present self that went to the past the first time, then there's my present self that went back in time the second time. Basically, you count your original past self and the number of times you dipped into the past and you have the number of past selves you're left behind. This just goes to show how traveling into the past can influence your future in a major way.

Douglas Adams didn't think of any of these aforesaid rules. He just wrote. I suppose that was somewhat of a liberating experience, saved him a lot of time, and allowed him to write about occurrences that wouldn't normally be able to happen. It also made for a damn good book.

But I still feel like it was chicanery. At least a little bit.


Postscriptum -

Another thought is that every time you dip into the future, you're dipping into the past of that time's future. 

Just a thought.