h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in the subject of time travel. There are those who believe it's possible, and there's the rest. So, my question is, if it WERE possible, at what point in time would you go back {or forward} and where? Would you affect your own life, or a world event? You can add your own paradox if you like.....
Personally, I would go back to JUST before I met my last child's father.....and avoid him. Then come back and find out what's changed

Not a bad topic to start the evening with. Many a time have i though of diffrent ways in which we pass through reality. Many of them where thought up to justify time travel. But if i could travel id return to when i was young and teach myself a few good life lessons which would have saved a lot of time and effort.

Always Fergus

Hello Fergus, not exactly set the planet alight with this one, did I?
Still, there's plenty of time {LOL}.
Would you change anything in history, if you could?
I remember reading a sci-fi short story once, when a man invented a time machine, travelled back & taught the Romans all about medicines & cleanliness...and back in the future, with no infant mortality rate from the year Zero, all the citizens who should have never been born, had crowded the planet, so not one human had his own space, they elected one man, gave him a gun & sent him back to the arrival of the first man, and the second man shot him dead as he stepped out of his time machine. I remember the ending very well, it said "For untold billions, darkness blissfully fell".
So, we have to be careful out there.....
Eat Grimsby Fish!

Greetings again.
I cant think of anything of hand that i would change in history as everything i can think of to date has had a positive effect in some way. i guess we learn from our mistakes. But thats world issues. on the privite i may change some things i said or did which lost me good friends. But when you think about it ever thing we do cauzes ripples so if we did go back and change somthing those ripples may just alter the world as we know it.
Thats all for now.
Gotta finsh this assesment.]
Later
Always Fergus

If I could go back in time and change something, I would not have moved out from living with my girlfriend, back on Janruary 1st this year...

I immediatly regretted it, and it was too late to put it back together, and we seemed to get more and more distant, and more and more silly (and serious) things came between us.

I should have just had a week away with my family, and then gone back home to her and fallen into her arms.

Roll on the invention of the time machine.

TCK xxx

Your words remind me of a song...."If I could turn back the hands of time" by R. Kelly.....:~~~~(

part of it goes something like this?

"you had enough love for both of us
and I did you wrong, yes I know I did"

ummmm....

i musta missed that one
but ive heard the tina turner one.
'if i could turn back time,
if i could find a way....'
Later
Fergus

It´s not tina turner,it´s cher

Cher it was.....sorry Fr. Fergus.
Keeper, maybe you could become the Patron Saint of Pop Music?

I stand corrected.
im not inlightened about the whole 70/80's pop scene.
i was only young at the time.
but now i am that little bit smarter.
cher.
Later Fergus.

Hi, I've only just fallen over this thread and it set off lots of long daydreams. On a personal level I'd like to go back (quite a long way) to when I was 14 and choose sciences rather than arts for 'O' levels. Then I could've become an engineer rather than an EFL teacher. I'd still have got to travel but would have a vastly more healthy looking retirement fund. If I'd realised my husband was going to take off when the younger son was a few months old, there probably wouldn't have been a younger son, but there'd be an awful lot of laughter missing from my life.
I like to go back to the 1930s if I could have an open-topped car. I'd like to go back to the 1580's and London - Shakespeare would never get back to Stratford.I'd like to go back to the 1950's when flying was fun and long journeys were by sea. I'd like to go forward however long it takes for inter-planetary travel to be possible............

What a great post, thank you.....
I, also, would love to have been around for inter-stellar travel {though not in cryogenic suspension}....never mind, maybe in the next life....

I think that something better than a time machine would be what the Guide becomes in "Mostly Harmless". You know, the bird-thing that exists in multiple dimensions?
The theory is this - every time a choice is made, the universe splits into two, in each universe a different choice was made.
For example, a coin is tossed. In one universe it comes down heads, in another it comes down tails, and the universes splits apart.
This is happening an infinite number of times each second.
If it happens an infinite number of times, there must be an infinite number of universes, so if you think up any situation, there's a universe in which it has happened.
So Arthur Dent really did escape the destruction of Earth!
Think about it, you know it makes sense really...

Star Trek TNG did a great episode on that theme, with Commander Worf, the klingon crew member. He was being "bounced around" between his universes, in one he was married to Deanna Troi {no kids}, in another, married with 2 children {but no Alexander, Worf's son}, in another, the Borg had just about beaten everything in the Universe and "their" Commander Riker was trying to stop the repair {which had caused it all} so their Enterprise could stay in another universe!
All in all, a great story...ending with Worf, back in the right Enterprise, offering Deanna a glass of champagne......

I lost track of Star Trek a long time ago. I've like the "Next Generation", but my mum's perpetually stuck in the original series, and every time I go into Chemistry at school, our Chemistry teacher is talking about the latest episode, and says we'll get better grades if we bribe him with Star Trek memerobilia. But I see what you're getting at...

I like the sound of your Chemistry teacher....
Is he married? Would it help your grades to pass along my e.mail address? Tell him I'm a Star Trek buff, and single too....{no surprises there} hehe

I think he's married, but never mind...