I watched far too much Dr Who when I was young and it left a lasting impression on me. It wasn't meant to be that way, of course. The BBC just used it as a device for getting the Doctor into an interesting adventure each week. I'm sure they weren't expecting kids like me to start thinking about it.

But I thought. The very idea of time travel raises questions. If it's possible, why aren't we overrun with time travelling tourists? What is to stop you going back in time, meeting your mum and becoming your own father, so now there are two of you? That's a paradox. (If it's an aquatic fowl that goes back in time and becomes its own father, that's a pair'o'ducks.) Or you could go back in time and shoot your grandfather before he met your grandmother and hence you would never be born to go back in time and …

Not that any of this necessarily means it can't be done, or that you can't write a story about it. You just have to build the explanations into the story itself. Time's Chariot, at least implicitly, supplies suggested answers to both of these, and more.







An ingenious time-travelling adventure
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