Thrice Upon a Time
When Murdoch was summoned to his grandfather's isolated Scottish castle, he had no idea of the old man's latest discovery -- nor where it would lead him. Sir Charles, a genius in far-out physics, had found a flew in the law of conservation of energy; in any process, an incredibly tiny increment of energy escaped -- back through time! Using this "tau" radiation, he could send messages into the past. But Murdoch discovered records of messages he knew he had never sent. Were many futures possible? Could a message from Future X alter the past -- and thus wipe out Future X? But who would be foolish enough to send a message that could eliminate his own existence? Then disaster struck. An advanced fusion reactor threatened to destroy all Earth. Grimly, Murdoch sat down to send back the words that would destroy everything he had learned to love. (description from Goodreads)
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- Any love for James P. Hogan?
* The Two Faces of Tomorrow: https://www.baen.com/the-two-faces-of-tomorrow.html
* Thrice Upon a Time is one of the best time-travel novels I've read.
- A fun read where the "could you still detect" portion turns out to be a very important plot point: Thrice Upon a Time by James P Hogan (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/849488.Thrice_Upon_a_Tim...)
- I will throw one in: James P. Hogan's Thrice Upon a Time, from 1980.
Micro black holes, terrorizing the minds of sci-fi writers for decades!
- > This has probably been considered before in fiction
"Thrice Upon a Time" by James P. Hogon, 1980. [1] It plays with interesting implications. In the book, sending a message to the past changed that version of the past.
My under standing is temporal communication in our universe is likely to be different. You couldn't change your past, so somehow things would line up no matter what you did.
But perhaps you could impact events you had not yet measured, since that impact, and your after-sending sampling of them, would leave a lot room for impact without contradicting any information you had at the time you sent.
For instance, you send a message back to your collegue to buy a stock yesterday, and you haven't seen him since last Tuesday. So nothing weird would have to happen to achieve consistency. Presumably your friend bought the stock, knew not to tell you until tomorrow to give you time to have sent that back to him. If the colleague tried to tell you earlier, something would stop him - because obviously he wasn't able to before you sent the message.
A good way for the colleague to risk their life since a serious accident would be the best way for time to prevent a determined colleague from changing the universe!
That means things in the time loop (from received time to sent time) could get very weird to achieve consistency.
- James Hogan, Thrice Upon A Time.
It's only a communications device, not a transportation device but it does consider the movement. The signal is sent to the same point in space where the machine currently is, the range limit is how far away from that point you can be and receive it.
