Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Paper Topic...
I think I've finally decided that my paper will revolve around time travel in 2 of the short stories we read, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "Story of Your Life", both by Ted Chiang. I loved both of the stories, and it will be interesting to compare their portrayals of time travel to those of other authors. I'm not sure which books I'll be comparing them to yet, but I have a few in mind that might work nicely. Time travel has been addressed by so many authors, and most of them have different approaches to how it might be possible, so it'll be fun to pick out their fundamental similarities and differences.
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Are you familiar with the "Fringe" series by JJ Abrams? They touch on time travel a lot and you might get some useful things from it. Also, is might be cool to compare and contrast positive and negative time travel experiences. There are cases where someone travels back in time to change something that changes the present as well, like the butterfly effect. And there are cases where travelers don't necessarily want to change anything, but more to go on a personal journey.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this has already been brought up or not, but in terms of time travel, you could always bring up the free will argument! If you have room or need more material, of course.
ReplyDeleteI love Fringe and actually have the first 3 seasons in my dorm, but I think I'm going to focus more on how individuals choose to use time travel/the knowledge gained from their experience rather than the mechanics of it. And I think I'm definitely going to end up talking about free will too, especially when talking about Chiang's stories, because really, the two topics are tied so tightly together I don't think I can talk about one without the other! Thanks guys :)
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