Concerning Time Travel
When Did Time Travel Come From?
A video tracing the origins of time travel fiction.
This episode was sponsored by the YouTube Red Original Series, Lifeline.
The primary source for this video is David Wittenberg's sweeping and profound book on time travel fiction, "Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative"
Time Travel In Fiction Rundown
Thanks to YouTube RED’s new original series, LIFELINE, for sponsoring this video.
For ages I’ve been thinking about doing a video analyzing time travel in fiction and doing a comparison of different fictional time travels – some do use wormholes, some relativistic/faster than light travel with time dilation, some closed timelike curves, some have essentially “magic” or no consistent rules that make any sense, or TARDIS's, or whatever. This video is an explanation of how time travel functions in different popular movies, books, & shows – not how it works “under the hood", but how it causally affects the perspective of characters’ timelines (who has free will? can you change things by going back to the past or forwards into the future?). In particular, I explain Ender's Game, Planet of the Apes, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Primer, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Back to the Future, Groundhog Day, Looper, the video game “Braid”, and Lifeline.