Gruenwald's Rules of Time Travel
Derik Smith
MAGAZINE issue #117 in July 1992, the 'Mark's Remarks' commentary section. It
is re-presented without permission.
At least a year ago, during a conversation on MU time-travel, i promised to
transcribe this article if I could ever find it. I looked, couldn't find it
(couldn't remember what issue it was in.) I've looked again at various points,
but never found it. Tonight, while looking for something else (naturally) it
turned up. As such, I post it here.
I don't have a site for comics content. Anyone wants to nab this text for
their site, feel free.
MARKS REMARKS
Time to write another timely installment of MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE's most
time-consuming column. My subject this month: (what else?) time. The subject
of how the internal passage of time in the page of Marvel Comics relates to its
readers' external experience of time is a subject I've already covered, some
time ago (if you'll pardon the expression). This time 'round I want to talk
about time travel.
One of the more interesting aspect of my job as Senior Executive Editor is
that I was the one who got to research, work out, and write up the rules
pertaining time travel in the Marvel Universe for out in-house editors; policy
handbook. Before I came on the scene, Marvel- a company which prides itself on
its internal consistency- was a wee bit relaxed when it came to how time travel
worked. Writers were free to have it work every which way (including loose)
with no regard to what had already been established. Once I was designated
consistency cop, it was up to me to develop the rules of M.U. time travel using
the consensus of information. It was a job I admit I relished since, ever
since my self-published fanzine days, I was interested in the way fictional
realities worked. So, printed here for a general audience for the first time
are Marvel's official rules for time travel...
"Time travel should be used very sparingly in order to keep the phenomenon as
special as possible. To ensure that the future usages of the phenomenon are
kept consistent with the majority of past usages, observe the following
principals:
"1. The Marvel Universe is part of a multiverse (a system of related
universes) which diverge from one another at critical junctures. (This has
been demonstrated in numerous issues of WHAT IF...? as well as other titles.)
"2. The act of time travel always produces a critical juncture diverging a new
alternate timeline or world at the moment one enters the reality of another
time period, past or future of the time one sets out from. It creates one
timeline where an extemporal person or element materialized via time travel,
and one 'virgin' timeline where that person or element did not.
"3. because it is impossible to travel to the 'virgin' timeline (the timeline
one did not travel to), and because divergent timelines are dimensionally
displaced from one's root timeline, all time travel actually involves
dimensional travel. A time travel does not truly travel straight backwards or
forwards in time, but backwards or forwards and a bit off to the side to a
divergent timeline now running parallel to one's timeline of origin. Since
this timeline will have been identical to the 'virgin' timeline until the
moment of divergence, there will be virtually no differences between the two
timelines until the time traveler's actions produce some. Consequently, most
time travelers have no reason to be aware that they are not in the 'virgin'
timeline.
"4. If one travels a second time to an era one has already been to, one will
not materialize in the 'virgin' timeline, nor the timeline diverged from one or
the other. A time traveler can never travel back to the exact same timeline
more than once. Again, since the second and third divergent timelines are
identical until the time traveler's arrival, they will be indistinguishable at
first.
"5. Then one travels a second time to any era in which one already exists
(either indigenously or through time travel), it will be possible to meet a
temporal counterpart of one's self already there. A new counterpart diverges
into being every single time a time traveler travels to a timeline one already
exists in. Subsequently, multiple temporal counterparts could co-exist through
multiple time trips to the same time period.
"6. The co-existence of multiple counterparts f the same being on one timeline
does not cause time paradoxes. Time paradoxes (a paradox being a set of
contradictory conditions) are only possible in singular timeline universes.
"7. Altering an incident in the past will indeed affect the future reality of
the timeline diverged by the time traveler's presence. One can create any
number of different divergences by one's significant actions, the act of time
travel being but the first. Whether one will be able to return to the present
of the timeline where one did no reality-tampering divergences or one which
diverged as a consequence of one's past actions is a function of the means of
time travel.
"8. Returning to one's present also created a divergent reality (a timeline
where one returned, another where one did not). If one has been gone any
length of time, one may find differences have accumulated in accordance with
the length of time one was away. (This is no different than if one returned to
one's home after a simple trip to another city rather than another time
period).
"9. Selective alterations in the present as a consequence of the time
traveler's actions in the past do not occur. (For instance, the fading of
Marty McFly's image from a family portrait in BACK TO THE FUTURE would not
happen in the Marvel Universe). An alteration in the past will create an
entirely new timeline with events proceeding smoothly from the point of
divergence. To the denizens of that time line's 'present,' the past is a
continuous series of events that always happened as they happened. Were one to
see selective dematerializations, they would either be called by something
other than the act of time travel unto itself or would be hallucination.
"10. There are three possible methods of time travel in the Marvel Universe:
a. Time travel machines (like Dr. Doom's or Kang's).
b. Magic (like that used by Dr. Strange or the hammer of Thor before that
enchantment was removed).
c. Personally-generated energy (the power cosmic enabled the Silver Surfer to
breach the timestream on more than one occasion). All methods involve
generating "Chronal displacement inertia" freeing one from one's chronological
position in the timestream (just as escape velocity frees one from Earth's
gravitation), skimming through the extra-dimensional realm outside the
timestream (sometimes called Limbo), and re-entering the timestream at another
chronological position. Because no one exists outside the timestream, the
perceived duration of the passage through Limbo may be anything from
non-existent to an eternity.
"11. If any of the above is confusing to you or you writers, you may ask your
Senior Executive Editor for clarification. If it is still confusing, you
should not be doing a time travel story. the above principals only apply to
the Marvel Universe; other fictional realities may have other rules of time
travel."
That's it, the full text of the Time Travel section in the Marvel editors'
handbook. Despite the occasional technical term or two, this is as clear and
most straightforward I can be on this admittedly difficult subject. Like any
set of rules, they can be perceived as shifting, depending on the writer's
mindset. Some writers are in love with the idea of a paradox and keep thinking
they've discovered a new paradox so cool it deserves to be put in a Marvel mag.
Personally, I find the rules reassuring, but I'm a wee bit prejudiced. I've
done a few stories involving time travel, including one or two of this summer's
annuals (no plugs allowed), and I find the guidelines both easy and fun to work
within.
Okay folks, time to get out of here. Til next time, watch those divergences.
-Mark Greunwald
transcribed by Derik Smith
"I swear, you meet the most interesting people in this job..."-Ray Palmer
"I was pondering how one becomes Lord of the Dance. Think it requires
unseating the previous lord in unarmed combat or something?" -Chris Funaro
All your base are over.