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Paradox, v. 1, issue 1, Summer 1942

Page 5

Some Thoughts on Time Travel BY RAYMOND WASHINGTON, JR.
[Head of a male comic character with a ?] 
Undoubtedly, time travel is one of the most confounding subjects a fan has ever been forced to swal-low. The mind rebels at the thought. It simply isn't logical. So it seems. I have been thinking of one favorite theory recently--that the only things [underlined] that separate our body of today from our body of yesterday is time and space. That is a little hard to concieve. Think of going back to yesterday--not hundreds of years ago, but just yesterday after-noon--and greeting yourself. Seems rather silly, doesn't it? Then a-gain ... recently I was confronted with this bazarre situation: What would happen if I wrote a letter on Monday, and mailed it that day, and a friend recieved the letter on Wednesday. Let us say that he goes [underlined] back [underline] through [underline] time [underline] from Wednesday to Monday, and somehow prevents me from writ-ing the letter. I then never wrote. I never mailed it, and yet, he has it in his hand. Well? Possibly there could be some explanations.  Mayhap that when I was prevented from writing the letter, the letter immediately vanished, and he (my friend) had no remembrance of receiving it. There would simply be no trace of the letter in the un-iverse. Then [underlined], we would never know the results of such an experiment, for our memory-patterns would be completely clean. Another possibility is that the world would simply branch off onto a totally new probability branch. Several of these interest-ing theories were explained rather nearly in the Unk [underline] novel, "Lest Dark-ness Fall." "The Wheel of If," also in Unkown [underline], expressed the theory of various worlds of probability, co-existing in limitless [underline] numbers [underline]. The paradoxes of time travel are indeed strains upon the imagination. A few years ago, there was published a science fiction novel about two daring young heroes who travelled into the future to try to secure a weapon to save America, or some such age-worn plot. Before they left, however, they saw the weapon given to the U.S. Government, and reasoned that therefore, they had already been to the future and come back with the weapon. I believe that it was the secret of Atomic Power. The DYH's (Daring Young Heroes) travelled further and further into the future, ever hunting, ever searching, but to their astonishment, hun-dreds of years in the future, Man had still not been able to control this power. One particularly interesting place in the story concerned the time they stopped off in the future and were greeted by a beautiful girl. An attendent stowed their machine away as if it were the usual thing, and she and her father asked them no questions. They learned that it was the custom to drop in on total strangers the world over, and spend as much time as you liked with them. (Everything was free, too.) (Well, ALMOST everything.)  The DYH's were reluctant to leave this time but one of them accidentally pressed a button on the time machine and onward they went. Presto! The girl had been dust a thousand years. This went on indefinitely, until at last, when the sun-power was beginning to fail man, they discovered atomic power and--took it back with them.

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Some Thoughts on Time Travel BY RAYMOND WASHINGTON, JR. [Head of a male comic character with a ?] Undoubtedly, time travel is one of the most confounding subjects a fan has ever been forced to swal-low. The mind rebels at the thought. It simply isn't logical. So it seems. I have been thinking of one favorite theory recently--that the only things [underlined] that separate our body of today from our body of yesterday is time and space. That is a little hard to concieve. Think of going back to yesterday--not hundreds of years ago, but just yesterday after-noon--and greeting yourself. Seems rather silly, doesn't it? Then a-gain ... recently I was confronted with this bazarre situation: What would happen if I wrote a letter on Monday, and mailed it that day, and a friend recieved the letter on Wednesday. Let us say that he goes [underlined] back [underline] through [underline] time [underline] from Wednesday to Monday, and somehow prevents me from writ-ing the letter. I then never wrote. I never mailed it, and yet, he has it in his hand. Well? Possibly there could be some explanations. Mayhap that when I was prevented from writing the letter, the letter immediately vanished, and he (my friend) had no remembrance of receiving it. There would simply be no trace of the letter in the un-iverse. Then [underlined], we would never know the results of such an experiment, for our memory-patterns would be completely clean. Another possibility is that the world would simply branch off onto a totally new probability branch. Several of these interest-ing theories were explained rather nearly in the Unk [underline] novel, "Lest Dark-ness Fall." "The Wheel of If," also in Unkown [underline], expressed the theory of various worlds of probability, co-existing in limitless [underline] numbers [underline]. The paradoxes of time travel are indeed strains upon the imagination. A few years ago, there was published a science fiction novel about two daring young heroes who travelled into the future to try to secure a weapon to save America, or some such age-worn plot. Before they left, however, they saw the weapon given to the U.S. Government, and reasoned that therefore, they had already been to the future and come back with the weapon. I believe that it was the secret of Atomic Power. The DYH's (Daring Young Heroes) travelled further and further into the future, ever hunting, ever searching, but to their astonishment, hun-dreds of years in the future, Man had still not been able to control this power. One particularly interesting place in the story concerned the time they stopped off in the future and were greeted by a beautiful girl. An attendent stowed their machine away as if it were the usual thing, and she and her father asked them no questions. They learned that it was the custom to drop in on total strangers the world over, and spend as much time as you liked with them. (Everything was free, too.) (Well, ALMOST everything.) The DYH's were reluctant to leave this time but one of them accidentally pressed a button on the time machine and onward they went. Presto! The girl had been dust a thousand years. This went on indefinitely, until at last, when the sun-power was beginning to fail man, they discovered atomic power and--took it back with them.