Google’s a wonderful thing. It is, honest.
Like last week, when my mind was full of Avunculars, this week it was really helpful when I’m planning the conversation between Walter Nicolai, Valentin and Mengele ( eeuk). The focus of my study? Are any rules that people living in the 1940s would know from cinema and literature.
So to begin at the beginning.
The first time travel book was written in 1773 by Samuel Madden: Memoires of the 20th Century; then there’s a gap of about 100 years and (to coin a phrase) it all goes mental. From Dicken’s Christmas Carol 1843 there are the obvious candidates HG Wells: Chronic Argonauts (1888) and Time Machine (1895), Mark Twain: Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889); TS Elliot: Burnt Norton (1936); Alison Uttley: A Traveller in Time (1939) and (stopping in 1946) Moore and Kuttner’s: Vintage Season. Intertwined with these are the intriguing Max Beerbhom’s “Enoch Soames” (1919), Edward Page Mitchell’s “The Clock That Went Backwards” (1881) and the 1887 El Anacronopete by Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau – which was the first novel ever to use a Time Machine (yeah that surprised me too.)
Once the books had been established, I hunted down the rules…
1. There seems to be a ghost or Devil like involvement/or someone makes a pact with the Devil
2. There’s a device of some description – a clock, or a machine of some kind
3. you can travel backwards or forwards
4. History can be corrupted/altered and Paradoxes created.
5. Gender is not a barrier to Time Travel
6. Travellers in time are individuals
Strangely and bizarrely the first time travel film is: “Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court” starring Bing Crosby and that’s not made until 1949.
But what about A Matter of Life and Death? Yes, it’s earlier (1946) but it’s not Time Travel; it’s travel between realities. Sorry guys.
Now let’s come back to the last point… If you’ve been following things carefully, you will know that Lucy and Mark may (and do) get separated but they travel together -even when Mark’s in the ersatz 2013, he was with Lucy in the Underground when it happened.
Now this has given food for thought: Mengele for all his horrific-ness was an educated man. His PHD was real; he was theatrical; so I’m going to take a leap of imagination. I’m going to assume that he has read some (if not all) of these books. I am going to assume that he will be fixated about point 6. In fiction Time travellers are alone. In his reality Lucy and Mark travel together. Therefore Lucy on her own cannot be a Traveller. He might be suspicious, but if the other two who are involved in that conversation consistently reiterate that Lucy and Mark have to be together, the evidence of his eyes has to be correct. Doesn’t it?
If you want to find out more about Lucy and Marks first story, follow the link. If you don’t? No worries
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