A Little More On Time Travel

See here.

I said earlier that, in Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic series, the title of each individual volume is on the title page though not on the front cover. I see now that it is also on the spine but this is so thin as to be almost unnoticeable.

Volume IV, The Road To Nowhere, involves time travel. In any carefully written time travel story, it is necessary to heed any apparently inconsequential remarks that may turn out to be significant later. Of course, that is necessary in any fiction but time travel adds an extra dimension. A figure in the background of a scene may turn out to be a character who, later in the story, sets out to travel pastwards in order to observe or intervene in that earlier moment.

When Tim and Mr E pass through the sixtieth century, they are addressed by a disembodied voice that asks them where they are from and, when told "the past, the twentieth century," continues:

"We have a throwback to be punished/scolded/rehabilitated) not pleasing here [will you expropriate him to your time/?" (p. 21)

When Tim sounds uncertain, the voice, unconcerned, says that it has:

"...located your lodging date-line now ( will be jimdandy for the madchild...)" (ibid.) 

So someone will be sent from the sixtieth to the twentieth century because, in the sixtieth, he is regarded as a throwback, as mad and as a child. Does this correspond to any known DC character? I thought that it might refer to Mr E walking back from the end of time. He is a throwback and mad though hardly a child but maybe he seems such in the sixtieth?

Booster Gold is a superhero of questionable maturity who has time traveled from (maybe it is the sixtieth?) to the twentieth century but this seems like a different scenario. (Later: No, the twenty-fifth.)

Time Travel In The Books Of Magic III

See here.

In almost any narrative, whether factual or fictional, a causal sequence is also a linear temporal sequence. A caused B and also preceded B. Of course. We are so used to the identity between these two sequences that we expect it to continue even in a narrative featuring time travel.

In Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic: The Road To Nowhere (New York, 1991):

(i) Tim Hunter departs into the future with Mr E;
(ii) they fail to return;
(iii) increasingly concerned, E's colleagues send Tim's owl into the future to help him;
(iv) Tim returns...
(v) ...having been helped at the end of time both by the owl and by Death of the Endless.

(i)-(v) is an objective chronological sequence although, in Tim's subjective experience, (v) precedes (iv). Hence, the otherwise nonsensical phrase, "...having been helped (perfect tense) at the end of time (in the future)..."

We automatically accept that (iv) follows (iii). However, if Death had returned Tim to his starting point, then:

(i) Tim would have returned as he and E departed;
(ii) Tim would not have failed to return;
(iii) E's colleagues would have had no cause for concern and would not have sent the owl;
(iv) Tim would not have returned later;
(v) He would have been helped at the end of time only by Death.

However, Death saw the owl arrive in the future and therefore knew that she had to return Tim not to his starting point but to after the owl's starting point. This is circular causality: the owl was sent because Tim had not returned immediately and Tim had not returned immediately because the owl was sent.

Time Travel In The Books Of Magic II

See here.

In Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic, Book IV, The Road To Nowhere (New York, 1991), of the Trenchcoat Brigade, only Mr E can travel into the future but, when Tim Hunter has gone with E into the future and not returned, the remaining three manage to send Tim's owl to the rescue because of its affinity with Tim.

Doctor Occult tells the owl:

"Wherever [Tim] is...wherever he might be. Find him. Protect him. Help him." (p. 25)

This is a joint magical effort because Occult asks the Stranger for strength and Constantine for will and faith.

The owl must understand Occult. "Wherever..." should be something like, "Whenever he is now traveling to and will need help..."

At the end of time, Death tells E to walk all the way back, and it will take him a lot of subjective time to "walk" step by step through a hundred billion years, whereas she sends Tim "instantaneously," i. e., without any subjective duration experienced or endured by him. That might explain why the Stranger did not detect Tim's return but there is still E to be accounted for. At the end, the Trenchcoat Brigade speak as if they have lost E because he is "...making his own way back from the end of time..." (p. 44), whereas, of course, if he successfully returns from the future to the present, then he is now in the present, not still making his way back.

On the other hand, E said something to Tim which suggests that he might make it back to his starting point, then continue walking for a few decades more. In his childhood, he was taught how to walk through time by an old, blind man...

The Books Of Magic, Book Four

The individual title of each volume of Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic is given on the title page but not on the front cover so they come as a surprise. Book Four is The Road To Nowhere (New York, 1991). Mr E and Timothy Hunter, like HG Wells' Time Traveler, visit the near, then the far, future.

When asked whether he can travel into the future, John Constantine replies:

"Only like everyone else, boss. You know. One minute at a time." (p. 4)

One minute per minute is enduring, not traveling. Travel requires two kinds of units, eg, one mile per minute. One objective century per one subjective minute would be time dilation, not time travel, although, in certain circumstances, this is called "time travel." I discuss this on the Logic of Time Travel Blog.

I think that E contradicts himself. He insists that they are truly in the future, but then unhelpfully adds "...or futures" (p. 5), but then says that what they are seeing is only a possibility that may never happen (p. 7). He describes the future as many possibilities, none of them definite, and explains that time travelers visit only the most probable. It follows that time travelers setting off from different times will travel through different futures. This contradicts Merlin in Book One definitely stating that his future was single, known by him and unalterable. I know that Merlin was in our past but he was talking about his future.

There will obviously be a lot more to post on this topic.

Fiction On Fiction

Neil Gaiman writes fictitious characters who speak about fiction:

Arion of Atlantis to Tim Hunter:

"...where humanity gets it wrong, by your time, is in imagining Atlantis as having any kind of quantifiable existence.
"Which of course it hasn't; not in the way they imagine, anyway.
"There have been an awful lot of Atlantises, will be quite a few more.
"It's just a symbol. A symbol of the art.
"The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds.
"Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the West that is forever lost to us, but remains forever, true birth-place and true goal.
"It is Lyonesse, and Avalon, and Hy-Brasail."
- Neil Gaiman, The Invisible Labyrinth (New York, 1990), p. 27, panel 2.

There have been many Atlantises because every author imagines the lost island differently. Arion inhabits one DC Comics Atlantis but other versions have been visited, for example, by Doctor Who and a companion and by time travelers in Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis.

Titania to Tim Hunter:

"You wish to see the distant realms? Very well.
"But know this first: the places you will visit, the places that you will see, do not exist.
 "For there are only two worlds...your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy.
"Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there.
"These worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power, provide refuge, and pain.
"They give your world meaning.
"They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. Do you understand?"

Tim: "No."

- Neil Gaiman, The Land Of Summer's Twilight (New York, 1991), p. 34, panels 2-5; p. 35, panel 1.

It is harder for Tim to understand because, although Titania says that his world is the real world, he also is a fictitious character visiting fictitious realms - so how is he to see the difference? Titania spells out that our real world would be meaningless if it contained no non-existent fictions.

The Books Of Magic, Book Two

The DC Comics character, Deadman, is a ghost who acts in the world by temporarily possessing living bodies. During Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic, Book Two, Deadman addresses Tim Hunter several times from different bodies, under his original name of Boston Brand.

John Constantine to Tim:

"I said I'd be introducing you to a few people, didn't I? Well, most of them live in America, so that's where we're going."
- Neil Gaiman, The Shadow World (New York, 1990), p. 2.

In other words, DC Comics are published in the US so most of their characters live there! British writers, Moore and Gaiman, created the British characters, Constantine and Hunter.

Constantine elaborates:

"...when I was a kid, I thought America was a magic land...They had all this incredible stuff, you know, pizzas, and fire hydrants, and Hollywood, and the Empire State Building. And they had superheroes, and magic, and aliens, and, I dunno, all we had was Supercar." (p. 4)

"Supercar" was before Tim's time. Constantine must be referring to the TV series, produced in the UK, not to any real Supercar, because the series was set in the US.

In Hy Bender's The Sandman Companion, Neil Gaiman says:

"...there was a generation in the UK who'd grown up reading DC Comics from a bizarre perspective...The idea of a place that looked like New York, the idea of fire hydrants and pizzerias, was as strange to us as the idea that anyone would wear a cape and fly over them."
-The Sandman Companion (New York, 1999), p. 20.

Reality, Gaiman's experience, and fiction, Constantine's experience, overlap.

The two Brits visit the stage magician, Zatanna, daughter of Zatarra, seen in Book One. Tim had seen Zatanna on Jonathan Ross, "...that guy who does Letterman in England."  (The Shadow World, p. 34) Ross reads comics, knows Gaiman and would certainly interview Zatanna if she visited the UK so that, here again, reality and fiction come very close.

Describing the DC character, the Spectre, Constantine tells Tim:

"...sometimes it's practically the most powerful thing in the universe. Sometimes it's little more than a bloke in white tights and a green hood. It's been up and down the occult league tables faster than a whore's drawers." (p. 11)

Please, Constantine, this is a comic book about magic and Tim is twelve. What he is describing here is the ways that different writers have treated the Spectre.

In the US, they meet or at least see:

Boston Brand;
Madame Xanadu;
the Spectre;
Doctor Fate;
Baron Winter (in fact, they visit Winter's house where Zatarra and Sargon died in a seance);
Jason Blood (Constantine had consulted Blood about the Lupus affair which, according to The Sandman, took him to Alaska for six months);
Doctor Thirteen, the debunker;
Zatanna;
Tala, a queen of evil working as a waitress between engagements;
Tannarak, owner of the Bewitched Club where Tim suddenly realizes that even the animal-headed people are not wearing masks;
the Wizard, Zatarra's former opponent;
Felix Faust, a Justice League of America villain;
Hyacinth and Leander, a two-headed guy who may or may not have appeared before.

The Books Of Magic, Book One

Warner Brothers publishes Harry Potter films and Tim Hunter comics. Potter and Hunter are British schoolboys with glasses and powerful magicians with owls. Neil Gaiman created Hunter for a four issue Prestige Format mini-series, The Books Of Magic, to define the place of magic in the DC Universe under the categories of past, present, future and the far lands, although this excludes extraterrestrial magic which had existed in the earlier, pre-Crisis, DC multiverse.

Hunter's mentors are the Phantom Stranger, Doctor Occult, John Constantine and Mister E, three well-established characters and one who, at about the same time, appeared in his own miniseries. Constantine tells Tim:

"...don't try to bite me. There are things in my blood stream you really don't want in your mouth."
- Neil Gaiman, The Invisible Labyrinth (New York, 1990), p. 10.

In his own title, John Constantine: Hellblazer, Constantine received a blood transfusion from the demon Nergal and prevented a cult's divine incarnation by contaminating their Mary.

Tim tells the four-man "Trenchcoat Brigade" (p. 5) that he believed in magic when he was a kid and sometimes wishes "...there was magic..." (p. 11). Gaiman tells us elsewhere that he believed in the Sandman when he was a child and swore that he would always remember.

The Stranger shows Tim the past by time traveling invisibly, mostly without interacting. They see:

the void;
the beginning;
the silver city, which the Stranger cannot approach (in Alan Moore's Secret Origins story, the Stranger was a neutral angel, cast out by both sides after the War in Heaven);
Lucifer falling;
six archangels;
the molten Earth;
demons;
dinosaurs;
Arion of Atlantis, who addresses Tim without seeing or hearing him because he knows by spells that he is there;
cave magic;
the Nile;
the Yellow River;
a werewolf;
Pan;
the witch-queen;
Merlin, canny enough to see them;
Jason Blood;
medieval witchcraft;
the old religion in the forests and high places and beside the great stones;
Faerie leaving as science rises - a parallel with Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children;
Doctor Fate;
Zatara, who first appeared in Action Comics no 1, the same issue as Superman, and died at a seance led by Constantine in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing no 50;
Sargon the Sorcerer, who died at the same seance.

Listing the contents shows me that there is more in this one Book than I had realized.