And it all depends on how time works. In SF, you have stories like Kornbluth's 'Dominoes' and Asimov's 'The Red Queen's Race', where the incident of time travel itself is folded into the continuum; since the time travel occurred, it is part of the history that happened. Then there are stories like Moore's 'Bring the Jubilee' or Card's 'Pastwatch' where altering the past negates the future entirely, producing a new continuum from the incident forward.

Then there's always Bester's 'The Men Who Murdered Mohammed', where once you move out of your continuum you can never really get back into it again.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

That could work, especially if you specifically mention the (would-be) hijackers as the 'bombers'. You'd have to do it in a way that would assure that the FBI would investigate the Al-Qaeda members, otherwise they'd just act at another time.

Then again, if 9/11 had been averted, would there have been an invasion of Afghanistan, removing the country as a base of operations for Al Qaeda? If not, then perhaps their next attack would have been worse than 9/11.

I Feel a Science Fiction Story, Coming on ...

What if Originally, The War had Turned in Germany's Favour, wiith The Entire World Conquered and ONLY 1,000 Jews Left Alive ...

What If a Group of them Got Together and Attempted to Change The Past, But our Version WWII was The Best they Could Do, wiithout Leaving The Russians in Too Good a Position?

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

Its been done. Damned if I can remember the title, but I do have it somewhere at home.

Westwood's Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1997?) explored a similar theme. (Sort of.) The premise is that Albert Einstein invents a time machine. He uses it to pop back into the early 30s and pull a certain starving artist out of time.

The rest of the game (arguably the series) deals with the consequences: Iosef Stalin's nearly successful attempt to take over the world. (It goes sci-fi after that. The world is still at war in by 2010ish when civilization is nearly ended by the Tiberian meteor and the whole series goes post-apocolyptic.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

There's a book, I want to call it The Proteus Experiment that covered it.

My favorite is Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," a brilliant novella about a guy who keeps going back, meeting himself, to accomplish some task. Each time the earlier him either doesn't recognize the older him, or only notices some familiarity.

The reason it's brilliant is because at first the guy attempts to change the past, but as he keeps moving through time, he realizes that's impossible and simply does what's next required to ensure that his earlier selves continue meeting his later selves.

The irony is that the entire novel itself totally defies the rigid cause-effect structure to which it adheres, as there's nothing in an earlier time to cause the later self to go back in the first place, except the later self going back.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Honestly, assuming the continuum would let me make the change that would save JFK, I don't think I would. When he died, it made it possible for LBJ to pass his civil rights legislation, which probably wouldn't have had LBJ not been able to say, "We must pass this for our fallen leader!"

There's also no real evidence that JFK would have actually stopped the war in Vietnam. I've not thought so much about what effect saving Bobby might've had.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Other than possibly eliminating Nixon from the Presidency in the ensuing election...

Hmmm, I'll Hafta Read That Book ...

As Far as Changing The Outcome of WWII, Personally I thiink you Have to Go Back Further, to Before The Beginning of WWI ...

In Fact, it Wouldn't Be Enough to Siimply Keep The Arch-Duke Aliive, you'd Actually Have to Keep The Alliance Systems of The Late 19^th Century from Destroying The Whole Concert of Europe in The FIRST Place!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

What If's are danged hard to sort out. It's the whole "alternate history" scenario. Just how well do we understand all the cause and effect relationships, and how can we plan alternate effects to be what we want?

Apollo 1 fire would have been stopable - get some velcro, a small pressure chamber with a viewport, and light a match. That would have got attention. The problem is the follow-on ramifications. Because of the investigation into the fire, a lot of safety and program changes were implemented. How does one make all of those changes while saving Grissom, White, and Chaffee? That is what needs a plan.

9/11 could have been stopped by a hijacking call to the airlines, airports, and maybe the FBI. But do I remember enough details to drop credible hints? Things that would get FBI attention? I don't think I can recall names - I'm bad with them anyway, especially under pressure. "Who's the first President of the United States?" Well, I knew that until you asked me.

And then what is the fallout? No Dept of Homeland Security, no invasion of Iraq, no Abu Graib, Guantanamo, etc. Flipside, can the capture of a major plot break open lots of the weaknesses uncovered and lead to some of the security improvements, like better interdepartmental communications, and critical review processes? On the whole I think it comes out better, but I'd want to find ways to encourage the Government to scrutinize it's Intelligence agencies and policies and personnel.

JFK - how, tell the cops you saw a man with a rifle enter the book depository. Would I? I don't know.

The premise of Alternate History scenarios is that the large scale events are contingent upon very small happenstances, a minor change could have dramatic effects. The problem is that usually the overall large scale events are never the result of one thing, but contingent upon a lot of factors. So you kill Hitler as a child, but some other leader emerges and the exact thing happens, because the social situation in Germany was ripe. You save JFK, but then what happens with Civil Rights? The Viet Nam war? If JFK lives, then anything after that is up in the air. Nixon as president? No Watergate? Apollo keeps flying? No Gerald Ford presidency. Things diverge and it's difficult to project where things could have gone. Would they be better?

Spider Robinson wrote a short story where someone found a time machine and decided to use it to eliminate NASA. Because a lot of engineers and scientists counted Robert Heinlein as a strong influence in their career choice, he set out to eliminate Heinlein from becoming an author. He delivered a dose of penicillin to Heinlein while on his Navy tour just after contracting tuberculosis. The idea was that Heinlein would stay in the Navy, become an engineer, never become an author, and thus the moon race would never occur. He goes back to the present to find a flourishing military space program under the direction of Robert Heinlein. The joys of unintended consequences.

You know what I find interesting about this conversation?

The typical conceit of science-fiction time travel stories is that changing the smallest detail would have large-scale effects on history, but the general consesus on this thread seems to be that those large-scale effects are effectively immune from small-detail changes!

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Found it, called "The Proteus Operation", by James Hogan

The irony is that those small detail changes would likely have absolutely cataclysmic effects... on individuals in the long run. Absolutely none of us would be here if you change something far enough back. But it would have virtually no effect on society itself.

The Arch-Bishop Elton's unfortunate sneeze would have been taken as the exuse to start WWI. Post WWII, we'd have villified the last name Jenson out of existance rather than Hitler. We'd Anderson heated threads rather than Godwin them. Some Canubian named Gilbert and a Califannithion called Billy-Joe-Bob-Steve (aka the Awful Cosmophysicist) would be running a merged astronomy board called GORP or something equally catchy.

And some wiseguy* going by the handle "Elk" would be waxing philisophical about causality. (* That part wouldn't change.)

The puddle doesn't care about which individual molecules of water happens to be filling it. It'll fill just the same with other molecules of water. Any molecules of water will do.

But in terms of societal change's interaction with crises, G'kar of Narn may have said it best: "The avalanche has begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Rare moment of neuron functionality, that was Kosh, dude.

Are you thinking of Niven's The Return of William Proxmire? Here's plot information (obvious SPOILER WARNING!):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ret...lliam_Proxmire

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Was it? Eh. Friday night. I'm not supposed to be cogent on a Friday night. Clever, maybe. But not cogent.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I've had similar thoughts. The only way I'd be willing to take out Hitler is if I could go back and reset things to the starting conditions if things went wrong. We came so close to an all out nuclear war in the 20th century, and for all the world's faults today, it could be so much worse.

Also, even if I went back a few years, I'd be very concerned about letting anybody know I was a time traveller, except perhaps those I trusted completely. Even general knowledge of the future could be both incredibly valuable and incredibly dangerous. Things could go very badly for you if government officials actually believed you.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and doe