Talk:Time viewer

Confusing
This article is very vague and confusing. It needs clean up, and elaboration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.3.126.148 (talk) 01:47, 16 August 2007‎ (UTC)

"Plot killer"
"The device is almost a 'plot killer', because of the profound effects it has. It becomes impossible to use it as a 'normal' feature of a society which we can understand." I don't understand this sentence. Obviously, a setting where science-fictional devices are normal and ubiquitous would by definition not just be a copy of a real-world setting. And obviously there's more effort involved in inventing such a setting than in setting a story in a more mundane world. But the sentence makes it sound like the idea of a time viewer is unique in this regard, or that you can't write a story with a time viewer without making them ubiquitous. --DocumentN 16:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * A link to a version of the page described above: | January 2008 version PuppyMonkey (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Fictional device?
I realize this comment may make me sound a bit stupid but the article simply says that time viewers "work along the lines of a television but depict events from a different period in time", therefore, couldn't documentaries such as Walking with Dinosaurs be considered time viewers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.148.242 (talk) 00:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Source
http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/09/hoaxes-from-space-time-travel-hoaxes.html Use the pics, they are sensational :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.211.115.30 (talk) 22:40, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Assassin's Creed
The Animus in Assassin's Creed is not a time viewer as it merely allows access to genetically stored memories. The memories could be false or altered and are not real representations of pure history. So I don't think it should be included here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.52.233.112 (talk) 22:25, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Time paradoxes
The claim made by sources which seem to not have expertise in the physics of time that a view of different times avoids paradoxes is a problematic generalization at best. Any time viewer that communicates information faster than the speed of light will cause paradoxes whether it is just something that allows you to "see" a different time or whether it allows you to actually travel there. jps (talk) 13:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * While this is technically correct (and the cited source does actually go on to discuss how faster-than-light communication leads to temporal paradoxes, see pages 136–139, especially 137–138), this is not something that needs to be taken into account for the vast majority of stories about time viewers since the speed-of-light delay on Earth is pretty much negligible (even a 0.1 second delay eliminates the problem entirely). Anyway, I adjusted the phrasing from "lack of" potential for time paradoxes to "reduced" ditto. TompaDompa (talk) 20:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Horace Gold story
Source I used to cite chronovisor on another page:. Seems to be a disagreement about the story publishing date. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Your source is by Paul J. Nahin and from 2014, giving the date as 1949. The source I used is by Stephen Baxter and from 2000, giving the date as 1951. A different source by Nahin, from 2017, gives the date as 1951 and specifies the September issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the "time viewer" entry (last updated this month) by David Langford agrees that it was the September 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. Looking at that issue over at the Internet Archive confirms that it appeared in that issue (under the pseudonym "Dudley Dell"), though of course that doesn't prove that it was first published there. In the introduction to the 2010 edition of the collection of Gold's works called Perfect Murders, his son E. J. Gold says that "The Biography Project" was written specifically to fill a hole in an issue of Galaxy. In the 1980 short story collection Microcosmic Tales, the copyright for "The Biography Project" is given the date 1951. It seems to me that the most likely explanation for the discrepancy here is that 1949 is a simple error. TompaDompa (talk) 22:16, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it sounds like an error. I ended up using a slightly funky source for the main claim, but left Nahin in as a backup, minus the story's publication date: Time travel claims and urban legends. - LuckyLouie (talk) 18:56, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Altering the Past
"The Brooklyn Project", "The Greatest Television Show on Earth", "The Technicolor Time Machine", and "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" are time travel rather than time viewer stories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salmanazar (talk • contribs) 14:19, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The sources consider them time viewer stories, though it may be noted that The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says of Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus that it moves from purely observational use of the "Tempoview" device to realization that it can be deliberately employed to change the past – at which point the viewer merges into the wider sense of Time Machines. TompaDompa (talk) 19:19, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I can't speak for the Baxter source, but neither Gleick's book (which I have) nor the William Tenn web page cited describe "The Brooklyn Project" as a time viewer story. Salmanazar (talk) 17:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The Baxter source includes it as an example of when things go wrong because the time viewer turns out to change the past after all. Nahin, while not cited for this work, also includes it in the discussion of time viewers. TompaDompa (talk) 19:14, 18 April 2023 (UTC)