ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

[Gord Green]

Bud....I don't think you understand the concept here.

The time machine undoubtedly works through an electro-magnetic principle. Steam doesn't create that directly. That's not the reason for it.

First of all...What power sources were available to power this thing in the late 19th century?

Batteries...chiefly Leyden jars, some lead and acid wet cells. Very low output, basicly 1.5 volts and low wattage. Enough to power the machine would be massive and still with little storage. Not feasible.

Gas or oil? Not in use for engines for the most part.

The electricity required would HAVE to come from a Faraday magnetic induction generator. These existed at the time. To run the generator a physical , mechanical source has to spin the core to produce electricity. Sometimes this has been done with water power...hence hydroelectric like at Niagara Falls. In most of the country this is done by using turbines run by coal. Just how is this done? The coal is burned beneath huge boilers creating steam to run the blades of the turbine, turning the generator to create electricity.

Nuclear power plants use the atomic process to create HEAT! This heat is applied to boilers that create...You guessed it!...STEAM that runs the blades of the turbines which turn the blades of the generator to make electricity! The nuclear reactions only create the heat to create the steam!

Yes Bud...Your TV, stereo, lights etc. are all essentialy run by STEAM! Steam creates the electricity that you use every day!

So it's NOT at all ridiculous that the electrical systems on the time machine come from a steam powered generator!

Actually, at the time of the story... it's the ONLY credible answer!

Here's an actual picture of a 10000 Watt steam powered electric generator. Look familiar?



Don't think of the steam powering the time cuircuts ...think of it powering the electrical generator that does!!!

Steam may have powered those spinning vanes at the bow and stern of the machine...That requires physical power only.

Besides...There is that scene in the movie where steam is released during the fight with Morlock prime!

Seen clearly here on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7HVJ8AMQts

Case closed!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

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Holy Mackerel!

It took me 36 years to realize the obvious, but I finally figured out what Robert Zemeckis clever covered up at the end of Back to the Future so that we got that uplifting (but illogical) conclusion!

What's always bothered me is the fact that after Marty returns to 1985 and wakes up to find his happy well-adjusted family, he acts like it's all a big surprise!





Well, of course it IS a big surprise . . . to THIS Marty McFly.

But it would be no surprise to the Marty McFly who was born to the new-improved George during his life in the "new future" he received, thanks to Marty's efforts in the past to keep from "changing the time line".

He failed in that respect, of course. He did change the time line by making George a better person and making Biff . . . well, whatever he was in that final scene.

So, the Marty who left 1955 in the Delorean and went back to 1985 is a person who's entire life has been changed — including his "new birth" to George and Lorraine McFly! A SECOND Marty grew up with his improved parents, brother, and sister — not the losers we see near the beginning of the movie.

So, what should have happened at the end of Back to the Future? Well, guys, logic dictates that it would be one of these three fates for Marty.

Possibility #1 - He enters the living room, gazes with amazement at how his family has changed, and then . . . the actually Marty of this time line comes out of the bathroom drying his hair on a towel and exclaims, "Who the hell is this guy that looks like me!"

Where this would go from there, I don't know.

Possibility #2 - Marty enters the living room, gazes with amazement at how his family has changed, and then . . . they all exclaim, "Who the hell are you!" George and Larraine never had a third child in this time line, so there is no Marty McFly. He never existed.

Possibility #3 The Delorean appears in 1985 amidst a flash of light, rolls to a stop in the Hill Valley town square, and sits there while the startled drunk lying on the park bench stumbles over, opens the door, and finds . . . no one inside!

The Marty McFly from the original time line has simple faded away, just like his brother and sister almost did in the photograph. When he left 1955 in the Delorean he was "erased from existence" (to quote Doc Brown), because he altered his parents' future and changed the events that lead to his own specific birth.

It's an ironic and cruel twist on The Grandfather Paradox. Instead of killing his granddaddy and preventing his own birth, he changed the time line and gave his parents an entirely new past history prior to 1985 — one that may-or-may-not cause Marty McFly to be conceived!

I don't know why it took me decades to think of this stuff, guys! Maybe I'm not getting dumber as I get old . . . I'm getting smarter!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

A fourth possibility is that there is only one Marty, but the changes he caused just hadn't caught up with him.

In "Millennium", where they were abducting people who were to die in fatal accidents, if they made a change in the timeline, it took a while for the changes to move up the timeline. In a few episodes of the new Outer Limits, there was a person that was going crazy because she changed the timeline and so had two sets of memories. The original memories and the new memories from the changed timeline.

Marty was the cause of the changes, so he had to exist. If Marty did not exist in the new timeline, then there would be no new timeline, because Marty was not there to change it. Other people, except Doc Brown, might not exist in the new timeline, But Marty HAS TO, because he is the cause of the new timeline

Marty changes not only his family, but also Doc Brown and others. The new timeline might be very different from his old one, as the changes spread out through the years.

One of the endings they considered for BTTF was where Doc Brown asks Marty about the future, and Marty jokingly spins a tale of a 1950s view of the future with flying cars, rocketships and such, all powered by Coke-A-Cola. When Marty gets back to his own time, he finds that Doc Brown took him seriously, and invented everything he told him about. That ending was considered too expensive.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Great comment!

I hadn't thought of those possibilities, and they make good sense. Once your comments started me think more about this, I came up with quite a lot of new thoughts — which is why this post is so long.

I think you'll find it stimulating as well. So, here we go.
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Frequency (a GREAT movie) deals with changes in the timeline as well as any time travel films has, and it also includes the idea that the main character acquires a new and separate set of memories each time his own personal history is rewritten by a timeline change.

David, I'm not sure about this next statement.

[Bud Brewster]

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I hope I'm not stealing anybody's thunder by posting this idea before they got around to it after reading my previous post. If I am, I apologize.

I was hoping somebody would point out that my comment above actually turned Back to the Future into Back to the Parallel Universe !

What I mean is this: if Marty McFly returns to 1985 and discovers that he's unintentionally replaced a "new Marty" who grew up with his drastically altered family, this trilogy basically becomes Sliders!

If that seems like a ridiculous idea, consider this. When Marty wakes up and walks into his family's "new, well-decorated home", they know HIM . . . but he doesn't know THEM!

This is caused by the fact that all four of his family members now have drastically different personalities.

Furthermore, Biff Tannin has been transformed from a cruel, macho individual — into a harmless, eliminate pansy!

And perhaps the biggest change of all is the fact that Marty's beloved girlfriend, Jennifer, is now . . . a completely different person!

Jennifer in Back to the Future I



Jennifer in Back to the Future II




Okay, guys — yes. I know! That was actually the result of a change in the cast. But we're using our imaginations here! Please don't get all realistic on me and shoot down this great concept.

So, let's recap the changes which Marty made in the timeline, and which therefore created a parallel universe.
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~ He empowered his wimpy father and inspired him to pursue his ambitions to become a published author.

~ He emboldened the cowardly George McFly to stand up to a bully, Biff Tannen — which gave George a tremendous boost in confidence.

~ He caused Biff Tannen to be so humiliated when George McFly slugged him that Biff eventually acknowledge that he was gay.

~ He changed the basic nature of his father and mother so much that both his brother and sister were greatly benefited.

~ He showed Dr. Emmett Brown that his time machine actually worked, and thus inspired him to investigate time travel.

~ He inadvertently caused Dr. Brown to travel back to 1885, where Doc eventually married Clara Clayton and had two sons.
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My point here is this. The only way to explain how Marty could not remember his new life in the changed version of 1985 (without having two separates sets of memories), is to have him now exist in a parallel universe, not the one he left.

Feel free to disagree, guys. Discussions are what All Sci-Fi is for.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Well Bud....We've seen that BOTH Martys can co-exist at the same time....Two versions of Biff too! (In BTTF#2). So their incarnation are definitely separate entities. However at the conclusion of the first movie we see Marty #1 meeting his now successful family for the first time. What happened to that worlds Marty?

I would suggest that just like the people in the photos the "old" incarnations either faded away....or...merged with the new version of the time traveler thereby maintaining the memories of the former.

Or...Maybe it's just a timey-whimey thing!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Gord Green]

A new interview with Claudia Wells (The original Jennifer) was quite interesting.

‘Back to the Future’ star Claudia Wells reveals her favorite theory about Jennifer Parker: ‘It’s wild'

Fox News: What’s a fun fact about the making of "Back to the Future" that would surprise fans today?

Wells: I’ll give you one. I had a business lunch with someone who’s helping me with a documentary about my dear friend, a dancer… We were talking about "Back to the Future" and how Elisabeth Shue later became Jennifer.

He said, "You want to know why I really think you were Jennifer in the first movie and Elisabeth in the sequels?"
I thought he was going to say because my mom was so sick at the time.

He said, "Forgive me, maybe I’m too into this film, but when Marty went to the past, Doc Brown kept warning him, ‘Be very careful about what you do because you’re going to change the future. If you do anything by mistake, it will affect someone’s life.'"

He said, "I think Marty must have done something that changed Jennifer Parker’s parents. One of the parents changed. So instead of your parents meeting, it was Elisabeth Shue’s parents who met, where one parent was different.

And therefore, they gave birth to Elisabeth Shue’s version of Jennifer, not yours. And when he went into the present, everyone thought it was just normal because no one realized all the changes Marty made."

I thought that theory was so cool. Remember, Doc Brown kept warning Marty, "Don’t do any weird moves because you’re going to alter the future." And I think that’s why you see me in the first film, but not in the sequels *laughs*. It’s wild.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/back-future-star-claudia-wells-090033746.html

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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Wow! Thanks, Gord!_

Strictly speaking, that's not an example of Marty jumping between parallel universes, it's the original Butterfly Effect concept of "a change in the past will affect the future".

To prove this, we should note that Marty immediately realized his family had changed drastically, but when he saw Jennifer (the Elizabeth Shue version) he didn't notice the difference the way we in the audience did.

But I still like the theory.

However, it shows us how most people have trouble understanding all the ramifications of time travel. (Now, if that interviewer had been somebody from CNN News, they would have realized the flaw in their theory! )

"Just kidding, Stephanie Nolasco! I'm sure you're one of the smarter ones at Fox News."

By the way, I watched my DVD of Back to Future today (part of a box set packed with bonus features), and I realized that I hadn't yet pondered the ramifications of the fact that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2015 when Marty was there . . . but the Cubs actually DID win it in 2016!





Why is there a difference? Consider this! Maybe they won it 2015, when Marty was there, but after Biff took the sports almanac back to 1955 and used its information to cause multiple changes in the timeline over the next 60 years, HE caused the Cubs to win the series one year later than they previously did!





Or then again . . . maybe the Cubs won the series in 2015 in the parallel universe Marty went to, but they won it in 2016 in our universe!

Folks, this movie is the coolest time travel / parallel universe movie EVER!

And finally there this.

The cover shown below — the one the farm boy shows his family while Marty was in the bar — bares the brand name of EC comics, but it isn't an issue which exists in our own history of graphic novels!


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And yet it's a perfect example of the comics which existed in 1955 — in OUR parallel universe! The cover shows alien beings using mind control rays to force sexy Earth women to become the sex slaves of men on their frigid, love-starve planet!

Guys, this proves my theory!

Marty McFly MUST have been transported to a parallel universe in which comic books like this one were common!

Gentlemen . . . the evidence is irrefutable!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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GREAT MOVIES FROM THE 1980s!

The 1980s turned out to be a sort of 2nd Golden Age of Science Fiction. This movie is an example. Here's why.
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In 1985, Hollywood struggled a bit to release the number of sci-fi movies they had in the previous few years — 13 in 1983, and 16 in 1984 — just going by All Sci-Fi's Chronological Index (which only lists 10 movies).

As in previous years, the more "family friendly" films aimed at adults. The links links below name a few of the light-hearted movies —

Back to the Future

Cocoon

My Science Project

Real Genius

— while the two below represent major motion pictures that had a darker tone.

Lifeforce

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
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What movies do you remember from 1985, and which ones were your favorites?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Let's Create a Sequel!
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~ A Question for the Members? Robert Zemykius and Bob Gayle have allegedly made it impossible for anyone to make a fourth sequel or a remake of Back to the Future. But what if someone created a story in which the Brown brothers — Jules and Verne, at the age of about 25 — desperately needed a time machine to go back in time and prevent the deaths of their father and mother!

~ Here's what I came up with.: First of all, Doc Brown somehow managed to build a second time machine into an amazing “steam punk” flying locomotive. So, the boys definitely have access to their father’s technology — along with technology Doc Brown may have gotten from the “future” of 2015, such as the flying car propulsion system.

But what if the disaster that took the lives of their parents occurred while they were traveling in the Temporal Locomotive — thus preventing the brothers from have it to go back and prevent their deaths?

On the other hand, perhaps a better story would be to have their parents fate be completely unknown to the brothers! Mom and Dad went off in the Temporal Locomotive and failed to return.
‘
If that was the case, the brothers would not even have the time machine to go back and warn their parents that something tragic was going to occur on the trip from which they didn’t return.

Emmett and Clara are stuck fifty years in the past due to a faulty flux capacitor. But they leave a message for their sons inside a large old oak tree in front of their house, knowing that the hole they cut into the oak will grow around the whisky bottle they placed into the hole.

They hoped that the boys would notice the large scar that appeared in the bark of the trunk — a scar that spells out “DOC”.

The boys cut the tree open, retrieve the bottle, and find a note inside which tells them where and when their parents are located. The note also instructs them to use a device Doc has invented which can send messages and objects through time. He wants the boys to send him the improved flux capacitor he’d already built to replace the older one in the Temporal Locomotive.

That’s as far I’ve gotten. It’s less than half a story, and it certainly hasn’t gotten to the exciting parts yet.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)