Stories about sending signals to the past

December 9, 2007 12:21 PM

Is there any time travel fiction based on the idea of only sending signals/information into the past?

I'm interested in the idea presented in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness film. Several of the characters receive a subconscious signal from the future to warn them of the end of the world. What else has been done with this idea of time travel?

posted by clockworkjoe to Media & Arts (41 answers total)

There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode like this. The Enterprise was caught in a time loop, and Data figured out some way to send himself a very simple signal. I think it was the number 3, which ended up having something to do with the number of pips on Riker's collar.

I imagine this has been treated more rigorously in written SF.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:25 PM on December 9, 2007

If you want to get all corporate and Hollywood, I think "The Lake House" and "Frequency" both involve people communicating across time, but not physically traveling there.
posted by Doctor Suarez at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2007

Response by poster: As far as time travel goes, how feasible is it when compared to other forms of time travel?
posted by clockworkjoe at 12:27 PM on December 9, 2007

Best answer: If I remember correctly, Time by Stephen Baxter involves a message sent from the future, with a fair amount of discussion about how this might work.
posted by lucidium at 12:35 PM on December 9, 2007

That Star Trek: TNG episode mentioned above is the first thing that came to mind. It's Cause and Effect, if you want to read more.
posted by cocoagirl at 12:36 PM on December 9, 2007

Best answer: Timescape is based around sending a signal to the past, with "past" and "present" perspectives.
posted by shownomercy at 12:45 PM on December 9, 2007

AHHH! I just can't remember the title.... There is a scifi novel that involves humans detecting signs of intelligent life ( specifically energy emissions from ships traveling near the speed of light ) but its some 10000+ light years away so they send a ship there.

The novel runs a few different stories at the same time ( what happens at earth, the spread of humanity ) and the eventual meeting of the other race who stops traveling due to a misunderstanding of knowledge gained from another race that lives in/at the edge of a black hole. ( Has to do with zeropoint energy being good/bad for the stability of the universe )

The other race uses the black hole to speed up the process of learning to communicate with the humans by sending messages back to themselves about future progress in communications.

At the end of the novel, humans use that tech so they can continue to communicate with people that travel in these near light ships in pseudo realtime.

I wish I could tell you the name of the novel, but hopefully this will jog the memory of someone else ;)
posted by petethered at 12:47 PM on December 9, 2007

petethered is thinking of Starfarers by Poul Anderson. For what it's worth, I don't remember sending messages backwards through time as being very important - the book was more concerned with "time travel" forwards from the time dilation.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 12:54 PM on December 9, 2007

Asimov (I think) wrote a story about this called "The Red Queen's Race", or something along those lines.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 1:01 PM on December 9, 2007

Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card deals with the idea of sending people back in time to prevent the conquest of North America by European interests. Most interestingly, the characters fully realize that changing the past nullifies all history from that point forward. In other words, their advanced society will have never existed.
posted by bigt83 at 1:01 PM on December 9, 2007

There is an English science fiction author, Alastair Reynolds, that has used this idea. He writes about human future and the information through time idea plays minor but very important part of his series of books (Revelation Space series).
If you enjoy science fiction, especially rather real physics based* science fiction, his books are absolutely amazing.

According to current laws of physics, it is literally impossible to travel backwards through time, like going faster than c (in fact, that is exactly how you could pull it off). This is only my opinion, but I think it would be a lot easier to boost a light signal (and your information with it) faster than light, than a spaceship, should it be possible.

* or at vastly more so that anything else than I've ever read. I think he has a PhD in physics.
posted by Ctrl_Alt_ep at 1:03 PM on December 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

It Happened Tomorrow and Early Edition, both present the idea of receiving tomorrow's news a day early.
posted by the biscuit man at 1:05 PM on December 9, 2007

12 Monkeys is about traveling to the past to learn about the present, while inadvertently sending a warning.
posted by migurski at 1:12 PM on December 9, 2007

Maurice A. Hugi's 1941 short story, Mechanical Mice, is about an inventor whose only real creation is a device that allows him to see into the future. He gets rich and famous building machines he sees in the future. Turns out to be a Bad Idea.
posted by thinman at 1:15 PM on December 9, 2007

you know who else's picture got rebroadcast back to earth from another dimension in carl sagan's contact?
posted by bruce at 1:19 PM on December 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

The trouble with the idea is that the distinction between information, light, matter and people becomes increasingly fuzzier, the more intensely the story dwells on the 'science' involved. The author must either ignore, or run up against, the wave/particle dichotomy. One way to get around it is, as in Mechanical Mice, to allow observation by some method rather than direct sending of information: a "pull", rather than "push", approach; no communication with the future per se, although a conversation could still be carried out through a series of registered letters with strictly timed deliveries (hmm, I might have to write that).

More broadly speaking, "observation" and its consequences apply to any story that involves prophecy as a framing element, whatever the genre.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 1:33 PM on December 9, 2007

Carpenter's Prince of Darkness movie combines the tachyon pulse signal idea from Benford's Timescape with some green-vomit+zombies horrorism.

Wilson's Chronoliths has an interesting approach to the subjective perception of temporal paradoxes. In this case, the "message" is engraved in huge stone obelisks that are quite destructive. Like many sensawunda SF books, the ending is flat but some of the psychology is good.

Asimov also wrote some good ancient SF that played with retro-temporal signalling using thiotimoline.

Kind of the reverse of retro-temporality, Irish SF writer Bob Shaw used a magical substance called "slow glass" to send signals from the present into the future at dramatically altered rates. He teasted out the implications of trans-temporal signalling into some quite evocative speculations, including a vision of a thoroughly mediated, panopticonised society.
posted by meehawl at 1:51 PM on December 9, 2007

Also, I can't quite remember the name of the story, or who did it (may be another Asimov?) but there's an older short about a contemporary (1960s?) SF writer who can't get published because every time he writes a story and sends it off, he gets a rejection notice that the story has been done before, back in the 1920s/1930s in a thinly disguised Amazing. Naturally, he is accused of plagiarism. As he perseveres, he comes to realise that as he writes the stories, some mechanism is sending the information back in time to that era where another person is simply copying them, publishing them, and thus becoming the "original" author. His pursuit of redress forms an important part of the temporal paradox plot.
posted by meehawl at 2:09 PM on December 9, 2007

I wish I could remember the author/title of this one, but I remember a short story where a communications link is opened with the future, but when the future folks refuse to share any information (for fear of erasing their own existence) the people in the present start burying nuclear weapons with timers on them in unlikely and undocumented places. Eventually the people in the future capitulate and start sending real info...
posted by tkolar at 2:13 PM on December 9, 2007

As mentioned above, Frequency does exactly this. A man learns how to communicate with his father, who had died 30 years previously.

The film takes place in New York City during October of 1999. John Sullivan (Caviezel) — a 36 year old homicide officer — is still traumatized over the death of his fireman father, Frank Sullivan (Quaid), thirty years ago. Living in the same house as he grew up, he discovers his father's ham radio after his girlfriend leaves him and begins transmitting.

Due to unusual aurora borealis activity, he ends up communicating with Frank 30 years in the past, shortly before the date of the warehouse fire that would kill Frank (and also prior to the 1969 World Series, which features prominently in the plot). John is able to warn his father of the fire that would have otherwise taken his life (although he does die of lung cancer due to smoking).

However, by saving his father, a new timeline is created. Previously, John's mother, Julia 'Jules' Sullivan (Elizabeth Mitchell), left her job as a nurse at a hospital to attend to Frank's funeral arrangements. In the new timeline, she remains at work and saves the life of a man who is later revealed to be the "Nightingale killer". The "Nightingale killer", in the old timeline, had killed three nurses before his death; one of whose body is not discovered until 1999. Now saved, he goes on to kill a total of ten, the sixth being John's mother.

Thus, using information from 1999 police files on the killings that did not previously happen, John and Frank must work together across the gap of time to find the murderer and save Julia.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:15 PM on December 9, 2007

Heh. You know what we're forgetting?

The Terminator.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:19 PM on December 9, 2007

I read Thrice Upon a Time as a kid, which has this as its gimmick.

Here's the wikipedia page for the movie Frequency as well.
posted by gerryblog at 2:23 PM on December 9, 2007

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "2010" the characters send a note back in time through the Stargate, to give a warning to their previous selves.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:31 PM on December 9, 2007

Heh. You know what we're forgetting? The Terminator.

The Terminator isn't so much about sending information into the past as it is about sending a badass robotic assassin.

Just sayin'.
posted by thinman at 2:51 PM on December 9, 2007

Also, I can't quite remember the name of the story, or who did it (may be another Asimov?) but there's an older short about a contemporary (1960s?) SF writer who can't get published because every time he writes a story and sends it off, he gets a rejection notice that the story has been done before, back in the 1920s/1930s in a thinly disguised Amazing. Naturally, he is accused of plagiarism. As he perseveres, he comes to realise that as he writes the stories, some mechanism is sending the information back in time to that era where another person is simply copying them, publishing them, and thus becoming the "original" author. His pursuit of redress forms an important part of the temporal paradox plot.

I don't remember the author, but it's not Asimov - it appeared in an anthology he edited of 50 sci-fi shorts. It's called "Who's Cribbing?"
posted by spaceman_spiff at 2:51 PM on December 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

James Blish's short story Beep (1954) revolves around an instantaneous communication device, the Dirac communicator, which has the unexpected property that any message sent through it is picked up by all receivers, past, present and future. He later expanded it into the novel The Quincunx of Time.
posted by teraflop at 3:09 PM on December 9, 2007

The Terminator isn't so much about sending information into the past as it is about sending a badass robotic assassin.

Look again.


SARAH
You talk about things I haven't done yet in the past tense. It's making me crazy. I can't think.
(pause)
Are you sure you've got the right person?

Reese appraises her coldly.

REESE
I'm sure.

SARAH
Come on, me? The mother of the future? Am I tough? Organized? I can't even balance my checkbook. I cry when I see a cat that's been run over...and I don't even like cats.

She pulls the bandage tight with a knot.

REESE
Ow! No, it's okay. It's better tight.

SARAH
And anyway, what do I know about guerrilla warfare?

REESE
You'll learn.

SARAH
(angry)
Look, Reese, I didn't ask for this honor and I don't want it. Any of it.

REESE
John gave me a message for you. Made me memorize it. 'Sarah"...this is the message... 'Sarah, thank you. For your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to tell you that the future is not set ... there is no such thing as Fate, but what we make for ourselves by our own will. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.' That's all.

posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:12 PM on December 9, 2007

There may appear to be a more-than-quibbling distinction between sending a message and sending a soldier or robotic assassin with a message, but in terms of physics, that distinction may not matter much.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:02 PM on December 9, 2007

In terms of physics, there may not be much distinction between sending a message or a robotic assassin, but in practical terms it may very well be much easier to send "a message" than something we call "a thing." For example, imagine there was a wormhole that sent things back in time, but the opening is only big enough to send photons through. If this existed we could use it right now to send a message, but not a person.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:24 PM on December 9, 2007

in practical terms it may very well be much easier to send "a message" than something we call "a thing."

If the communication form is at all analogous to what we use now, it is almost certainly going to be easier. Consider the ease of sending a message to anywhere on the globe versus getting a physical object there. They're not even in the same ballpark as far as logistics and total energy spent.
posted by tkolar at 5:36 PM on December 9, 2007

I wasn't taking the physics aspect into question when answering the question, because this is fiction, and broad fiction at that. The original question asked for examples of fiction where signals/information is sent into the past. Arguably, the plot the Terminator revolves (in part) around information, although not necessarily signals, and that information is "a bad thing will happen in your future and you need to prepare for it." So, in that light, every time travel story is about information, in one way or another. That information is foreknowledge and predestination and fate, and those concepts go back about as far as you can go, when it comes to fiction and cultural touchstones.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:01 PM on December 9, 2007

The question was about "time travel fiction based on the idea of only sending signals/information into the past."

That "only" suggests that the asker isn't interested in stories of time travel that include sending robots, people and sperm along with the signals/information. As I read the question, what the asker wanted were examples in which "time travel" took the form of sending knowledge or communications into the past, and nothing else. The Terminator isn't that kind of story.
posted by thinman at 6:29 PM on December 9, 2007

Kage Baker's The Company series figures out that they can only travel to the past and then back to their own time...so they set up time local people to live through the time FOR them and rescue the atwork and species that are going to become extinct.

I know its not *just* a signal/message, but its also not the "normal" kind of time travel story either :)

reg
posted by legotech at 6:35 PM on December 9, 2007

John Varley's Millennium also has a small subplot where messages are sent from the future to the past. It's been years since I read it, but I seem to recall it centers on messages being inscribed on bricks that are located by some means, and brought to a central repository in the future's main city. Each message is a letter or note from a person to themselves in the past with a specified read date, and on that read date the Big Computer (which helps run the society, such as it is in that future) summons the person in question to read their message from the future.
posted by barc0001 at 11:32 PM on December 9, 2007

per bigt83, Pastwatch is about sending people back in time to change the timeline, but first they tried to only send a message--by giving Christopher Columbus what he would see as a vision from God. The vision changed the timeline, but didn't necessarily improve it, so they decided they needed to send messengers instead of just a message.
posted by happyturtle at 5:31 AM on December 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

At happyturtle: Ah, of course! Thanks for remembering a much more salient plot point. In that case, Pastwatch deals with both sending messages and people back in time.
posted by bigt83 at 7:50 AM on December 10, 2007

my favorite reference to this is in the Vonnegut book "Sirens of Titan' where things like the great pyramids were actually messages sent from trafalmadore to reassure a stranded traveller that repairs were underway. might not be what you're looking for, though.
posted by lester at 1:14 PM on December 10, 2007

Series One of the new Dr. Who has a subtle, season-long subplot about just this. Minimal spoiler: the word/phrase Wolf or Bad Wolf keeps getting repeated.
posted by daveqat at 5:07 PM on December 10, 2007

Barc0001, that was my favorite part in the book. The person who discovers the time machine also discovers a pile of message capsules - and the one on top has his name written on it in his own handwriting, with that day's date and time on it.

Inside is a message that explains what he found and how it works. After he's done with the message, he has to immediately record the message and deposit it away so later the message will be sent back in time.

Paycheck is about a man who works on a secret project to create a machine that can look forward in time and the problems it creates. The problem is when he agreed to do the project, his memories of what he worked on are erased from his mind so he has to work out what happened from the clues he sends himself, knowing that other people would be looking at the same clues. Not quite what you're looking for.
posted by Kioki-Silver at 8:00 PM on December 10, 2007

There's tons of this in the latest Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score
posted by Scoo at 9:48 PM on December 10, 2007

Time Traveler's Wife
posted by marsha56 at 3:05 PM on August 31, 2008