Deflating Hyperspace

[Daniel Harper]

On Sunday 01 April 2007 07:04, Monte Davis wrote:
> Daniel Harper wrote:
> > I've got a theory about the
> > science of ATD, in
> > particular: does anyone know if the words "quantum" or
> > "Einstein" appear
> > anywhere in the text? I didn't notice them, and I've been looking.
>
> "Einstein" appears just once, in the Candlebrow section, in the brief
> retrospective description of the First Internatonal Conference on Time
> Travel, p. 412: "Everyone in the world of science and philosophy had shown
> up - Niels Bohr was there, Ernst Mach, young Einstein, Dr. Spengler, Mr.
> Wells himself." Relativity gets three passing mentions. The word "quantum"
> doesn't appear at all.
>

Thanks for the reference.

<snip some>

> By the same token, time travel was right out. You can in principle have the
> Wellsian "time machine" experience by zooming so fast that the earth ages
> 800,000 years while only hours pass on your spaceship -- but you can never,
> ever go *back* even a fraction of a second. You can't bring Erlys back, or
> Webb, or undiscover the Vormance artifact, or silence the guns of August
> 1914.
>
> So just when we're geting all excited about "time as the fourth dimension,"
> and how loosey-goosey Einstein has shown the world to be... in fact, he has
> slammed a very big iron-bound door, very hard. There is now an absolute
> limit on speed, and a profoundly fixed arrow of time.
>
> I think Pynchon knows that very well. I think relativity is offstage in
> AtD, and Weird Science alternatives are singing and dancing 24/7 onstage,
> because that nice young patent clerk locked us into time and history more
> deeply than ever before -- and that is too terrible to contemplate.
>
> There may be a world of flying girls with aether wings, where Roswell and
> Merle can turn events to different paths by tweaking "the constant term in
> the primitive" -- but it isn't this one.

I think this is also a sort of metafictional funning that Pynchon is having, 
in that he's exploring the tension between science and science fiction. 
Scientists, by and large, tend not to enjoy SF (at least not the type that is 
written about their own fields), although there are many many exceptions, 
because SF tends to wave away all of the stuff that makes science, well, 
science. 

Consider Wells' _The Time Machine_. Project Gutenberg has it at: 
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35/35.txt. The opening sequence of the book is 
the Time Traveller discussing the theoretical basis of time travel to an 
assembled mass of Victorian scientists, describing the geometrical 
justification for seeing Time as another dimension of space. The others 
assembled object to the idea of time travel, pish-poshing the concept as a 
dream, until *voila* the Time Traveller pulls out a scale model of his Time 
Machine, and does a little demonstration.

=====BEGIN EXCERPT=====

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering
metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very
delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent
crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that
follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is an absolutely
unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that
were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with
two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism.
Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the
table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon
the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that
the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair
nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between
the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking
over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched
him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left. The
Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the
alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however
subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played
upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. 'Well?'
said the Psychologist.

'This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows
upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus,
'is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through
time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there
is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in
some way unreal.' He pointed to the part with his finger. 'Also,
here is one little white lever, and here is another.'

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
'It's beautifully made,' he said.

'It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when
we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: 'Now I
want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over,
sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.
Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will
go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a
good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy
yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model,
and then be told I'm a quack.'

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. 'No,' he said suddenly. 'Lend me your
hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual's
hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it
was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine
on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am
absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of
wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel
was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became
indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of
faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished! Save
for the lamp the table was bare.

=====END EXCERPT=======

And then it's back to theoretical concerns about why the Time Machine isn't to 
be seen or felt still in the room, and such. Notice how _physical_ the 
descriptions of the time model are, how "metallic" and clocklike the thing 
seems, without ever actually being _described_ in any realistic manner. 
Likewise, Wells never bothers to give even the slightest of details as to 
_how_ a clockwork mechanism of quartz and metals manipulates the fabric of 
space and time. (Modern-day SF writer Stephen Baxter has a lot of fun with 
this in his "sequel" to Wells' work, _The Time Ships_.)

In other words, all the stuff that a scientist has to be concerned with in the 
real world, is just totally skipped over by the science fiction author. 
Pretty much every SF work does this on some level -- if it didn't, the author 
would have to know how to make the stuff he or she is creating for real, and 
it would cease to be science fiction!

So _of course_ Einstein's work seems somehow limiting when compared to Wells' 
scientific romances. (Also keep in mind that while Einstein's work seemed to 
slam the door on the kind of time travel to be found in Wells, it opened some 
very real possibilities about time dilation and observer paradoxes, and the 
cosmology begun with the General Theory of Relativity a dozen years after the 
Annus Mirablis would give us other very real possibilities regarding time 
travel.

-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper
countermonkey.blogspot.com