{"id":113,"date":"2021-04-08T17:10:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T17:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/?p=113"},"modified":"2021-04-08T17:10:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T17:10:32","slug":"time-travel-the-cilantro-of-sci-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/?p=113","title":{"rendered":"Time Travel, the Cilantro of Sci-Fi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I wrote a time-travel flash-fiction for the good people at Brain Mill Press which you can read <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/bmpvoices.com\/ab-terra-flash-fiction_issue-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like time travel. It never works out, logistically-speaking (at least for my brain) but it opens up emotional possibilities. There&#8217;s something very beautiful and human about wanting to change the past, whether to avert a tragedy or gain some advantage. What are we, especially as we get older, but longing-machines going over our could-have-beens and almost-weres? (Maybe that&#8217;s just me.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some people hate time travel stories. Even a suggestion of TT is so distasteful that it ruins the whole soup. Personally, I just surrender to the confusion. I kind of enjoy the confusion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The story I wrote was a bit too long, so I excised a lot of the stuff that would have made the time-travel stuff &#8216;make sense.&#8217; (It never makes sense!) Anyway, the character is not really time-traveling, just making more of the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I could time-travel, I wouldn&#8217;t change much. I would go back to 1975 to give myself a different haircut, though:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-1024x690.jpg\" alt=\"Cold beach, back in time\" class=\"wp-image-114\" width=\"768\" height=\"518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-1024x690.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-768x518.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-1536x1036.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/IMG_0222-2048x1381.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote a time-travel flash-fiction for the good people at Brain Mill Press which you can read here. I like time travel. It never works out, logistically-speaking (at least for my brain) but it opens up emotional possibilities. There&#8217;s something very beautiful and human about wanting to change the past, whether to avert a tragedy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[66,64,65,63],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thought-thinking","tag-brain-mill","tag-cilantro","tag-sci-fi","tag-time-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgourlay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}