Friday, April 26, 2013

More Photo Evidence Discovered

After posting the photos of the mysterious green VW campervan at various historical events, a friend in the time travel group on Goodreads sent me two additional photos that appear to be the same campervan.  The photos come from Rysa Walker, author of the twisty time travel novel "Time's Twisted Arrow," which is the first book in the series known as "The Chronos Files."  She included the following note:

I've been working on Book Two of CHRONOS, "Pendulum Past," this week and Kate [the main character of the CHRONOS series] spotted a green VW Bus during her recent jump back to Dallas, 1963. It was in this big dirt parking lot right behind the pergola atop a grassy knoll, about a block away from the Texas Schoolbook Depository. She didn't think anything of it at the time, since she was looking for a powder-blue Ford Fairlane. Maybe she should have peeked in the windows as she passed by... 

The VW campervan is circled in green while the Ford Fairlane is circled in blue. She noted that a conspiracy theorist who lacked the advantage of time-travel marked all over this picture.  Anyway, here is the photo she provided:


The second photo is also from Rysa Walker and shows the same mysterious green campervan at what appears to be an outdoor VW campervan convention.  Perhaps it is a gathering a time travelers.  The vehicle in question is circled in green and is located in the third row from the bottom near the center.


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Time Hunters Exposed in Historical Photos

I was looking at some historical photographs online the other day when I noticed that a familiar green VW Campervan kept showing up in the background.  Could this be the time travel machine used by Uncle Percy and his time traveling companions as documented in the "Time Hunters" series by Carl Ashmore?  I have decided to include a few of the photos here so you can decide for yourself.








Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Must-See Sites for the Serious Time Traveler

While surfing the nether regions of the internet, I came across two very interesting websites for those like myself who are obsessed with time travel. The first site I cannot take credit for discovering. It was first brought to my attention several months ago through the time travel group on Goodreads, and I only recently came upon it again. Known as the Online Time Travel Mart (http://826la.org/store/), this site offers up a variety of knick knacks and well as necessities for the wayward time traveler.

Need a centurion helmet for your trip to Rome in the first century BCE? They have one for the low, low price of $129.99 plus shipping. While you’re at it, grab a special calendar for just $14.99 that will find the day of the week for any date up to 50 years from now—a must for any serious time traveler. Other items include a "Time Travel Mart" tag for your luggage ($3.99), a solar energy kit to power your electronic devices in the past ($17.99), and a can of Mammoth Chunks in a tasty tomato base ($14.99).

But as we all know, time travel has not been invented… yet. No problem. At The Time Travel Fund (http://www.timetravelfund.com/) you can pay now for a trip to the future once time travel has become affordable enough for the average Joe Blow. Here’s how it works:

Your small fee of just $10 in "The Time Travel Fund" will be invested for 500 years.  You should know that a portion of your fee goes to cover overhead for maintaining the website, while the rest is invested with everyone else’s fees. So how much of your money is actually invested? Well even if it's just one dollar, your money will grow exponentially. Assuming a conservative return of five percent after taxes, your investment will grow to a little more than $39 billion in five centuries giving you enough money left over to live comfortably in the future for many years to come (according to the website).

But how do you get to the future? Well, in 500 years someone will travel back in time and retrieve all of the investors to bring them forward into a future when time travel is actually possible. To make it official, each investor receives a signed certificate on acid-free paper that is "suitable for framing." Just make sure you specify in your will that the trustees at "The Time Travel Fund" are notified about the date of your death so that the future trustees will know how far back they need to travel to find you still alive.

Don’t believe me? Check out this picture of those who have already invested, proudly displaying their official certificates. As crazy as this whole idea sounds, I'm actually thinking about sending in my $10. I mean, why not? Ten dollars is just pocket change which can buy me a chance (however slim) of jumping ahead to a future where time travel is possible. Who is with me?

Monday, April 22, 2013

Funny Time Travel Moments on TV - #3

The Holy Grail of Time Travel Theories

Last week I was browsing the message boards for the time travel group on Goodreads, and someone made a reference to something called the "bootstrap paradox." Now I’m very familiar with the "grandfather paradox" which questions whether someone can travel back in time and kill his or her ancestor if in doing so the time traveler wipes out his or her own existence and could therefore never have traveled back in time to begin with. So how is it that I had never heard about this other perplexing paradox of time travel? After all, I’ve been a time travel fanatic since I was in junior high school so many decades ago.

I decided to do a quick internet search, and it turns out the "bootstrap paradox" is not as foreign to me as I first thought. I just never knew that it had a name. In a nutshell, this paradox poses the question of whether an object can exist without having ever been created. For example, a time traveler goes to the past and leaves an object or information that is carried forward to the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first place.

SPOILER ALERT!!! One of my favorite examples of this is found in the book “The Anubis Gates” by Tim Powers in which the time traveler (who has extensively studied the writings of a poet by the name of William Ashbless) hopes to meet the poet that he has so long admired only to become Ashbless himself. Once he settles into his new identity, he goes on to write his famous poems from memory. To which the frustrated reader asks, "Who wrote the bloody poems to begin with?"

Personally, I’m not a big fan of either of the aforementioned time travel paradoxes even though I have read several books or watched movies/television shows in which these paradoxes were incorporated in a way that was not only plausible but also mind-blowingly entertaining. In the course of my recent studies I came across yet another theory that perfectly encapsulates my own ideas of time travel. It’s as if I have discovered the Holy Grail of time travel ideologies. It is called the "Novikov self-consistency principle," and it goes like this:

"The only possible time lines are those that are entirely self-consistent. Therefore, anything that a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, and the time traveler can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from happening, since this would represent an inconsistency." [Wikipedia]

Eureka! I don’t know who this Novikov is, but he is a genius. I finally feel strangely validated, knowing that there are others out there that think the same way I do. Does this make me a Novikovian, or just an extreme geek? It doesn’t matter because now I have a decades-old theory from a Russian physicist to aid me as I seek to eradicate the faulty paradoxes that plague time travel literature. Let the battle begin!

Funny Time Travel Moments on TV - #2

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Funny Time Travel Moments on TV - #1

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Review of "The Time Hunters" by Carl Ashmore

For my first official blog entry, I have decided to promote what I consider to be one of the best young adult book series in existence.  Yes, even better than "The Hunger Games."  At the time of this writing, three of the five books that are planned for this series have been released.  What follows are my reviews of each book to date:

The Time Hunters - Book One
Having read several time travel stories, I'm always skeptical when I read one that attempts to rewrite history or show that the past is not quite what we imagined. However, I think Carl Ashmore does a fabulous job of creating an alternative history (myth?) that is not only believable but engaging.

I'm definitely adding this book to my top ten list of favorite time travel books. "The Time Hunters" has some great characters (Edgar is my favorite) and plenty of action. I actually found this book to be a real page turner, which was a pleasant surprise considering it is young adult fiction.


The Time Hunters and the Box of Eternity
This series is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Carl Ashmore has once again done a fantastic job of creating a time travel adventure that is both interesting and fun.

In this story, Becky and her brother Joe get pulled into more time-traveling adventures while visiting their Uncle Percy. However, this time the danger is even greater as their nemisis, Emerson Drake, recruits none other than Jack the Ripper in his quest to be the first to find the Box of Eternity.

This book is a fun, easy read. Even though it's considered young adult fiction, this 40-something adult is really enjoying the series. I highly recommend "The Time Hunters" to readers of all ages. The only bad thing I can say about this series is that having to wait for each new book is torture.

The Time Hunters and the Spear of Fate

Carl Ashmore has done it again. In this third book of the Time Hunters series, Carl has created another fantastic adventure filled with action, intrigue, and a coterie of captivating characters. "Time Hunters and the Spear of Fate" introduces us to several of Uncle Percy's fellow time travelers as well as a new and very nasty villain. We also see the return of some old favorites, including one of my favorite characters from Book One (Edgar the Minotaur) who returns to play a pivotal role in this adventure.

In this third installment, Uncle Percy learns that his nemesis is after another of the five Eden Relics. As with the first two relics, our heroes attempt to find it first and prevent Emerson Drake and his evil entourage from getting their hands on it. Their search leads them to the lost city of Atlantis as well as Ancient Egypt. Joining their Uncle Percy once again are Becky and Joe Mellor. Although still teenagers, the Mellor children are growing up fast and they become much more involved in the action (and danger) that their latest quest brings.

Perhaps the thing I love best about the Time Hunter series is the way the author incorporates historical characters, locations and events within the story. I find myself googling these facts to see which ones are based in reality and which are fictional. More often than not, they are fact. For example, I had never heard of Aribert Heim. So naturally I went to the internet to see if this person (also known as Dr. Death) actually existed... and he did. Yet the author incorporates him into the book in such a way that you actually believe this could have been part of his untold life story.

Anyway, if you haven't read any of the Time Hunters books... WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?!? These books are so entertaining, and such an easy read. If you love young adult fiction, page-turning adventure and/or time travel, you will love this series.

For more information about "The Time Hunters," visit http://carlashmoreauthor.blogspot.com/.