Predestination paradoxes in literature

A predestination paradox is a common literary device employed in many fictional and mythological works, dealing with various circumstances and paradoxes that can logically arise from time travel.

This page describes several examples of predestination paradox in literature. For more popular culture examples see Predestination paradoxes in popular culture, Predestination paradoxes in film, Predestination paradoxes in television, Predestination paradoxes in video games, and Predestination paradoxes in comics, manga, and anime.

Literature

Numerous pieces of science fiction and fantasy literature involving time travel make use of the predestination paradox. The earliest known example of a predestination paradox in literature is Robert A. Heinlein's By His Bootstraps (1941). Ontological paradoxes, which commonly occur in fiction in conjunction with predestination paradoxes, are commonly referred to as 'bootstrap paradoxes' in honor of this literary precedent.

Other notable examples include: The "Dark Tower" series by Stephen King, in which Roland, the main character is trapped in a continuous time loop.

Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox

• In the novel, the main character's mother catches a deadly disease called Spelltropy. Artemis then goes back in time to bring an extinct Silky Sifaka Lemur, the only cure, which he killed himself. When he tries to heal his mother, he finds out that the antagonist, Opal Koboi, had possessed his mother and imitated The Symptoms of Spelltropy. She slipped in the time tunnel when Artemis came back. Then she dropped in a few days earlier thus leading to the presumed infection of Artemis's mother. If Artemis had not traveled to the past, there would have been no reason to go back. And even the events of the whole series had not taken place. As Artemis had brought his younger self to the future and told him everything and the younger Artemis had his mind wiped and was sent back in time by N˚1, but retained an interest in fairies that would set the events of the series in motion, creating a circular timeline, or 'time paradox'.

K.A. Applegate, In the Time of Dinosaurs

• In K.A. Applegate's Animorphs series. The book In the Time of Dinosaurs details the Animorphs on a trip back to the Cretaceous Period caused by a nuclear explosion. They meet an alien race, the Mercora, who are willing to help them get back to their own time, but are engaged in a cold war with another race called the Nesk. Although the Animorphs' actions prompt the Nesk to leave Earth after they steal a nuclear device to duplicate the accident that sent them into the past, the Nesk divert a comet to strike the Mercora settlement. The Mercora ask for the nuclear device to help stop the comet, leaving the team resolved to agree to help the Mercora. However, Ax has rendered it useless because Tobias realizes that this comet is the one that killed the dinosaurs- simultaneously wiping out all trace of the Mercora so that future generations cannot discover them, therefore it must hit or it will alter the timeline.

Isaac Asimov

• Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity.
• In the Robots in Time series (approved by the author's estate), a scientist travels two centuries into the future and is shown a utopian civilization free from illness, war and aging. When he returns and reports this, one of the persons who hears his account is a prototype human-looking robot who realizes that the future "humans" are actually robots and that mankind will succumb to its own decadence. The robot then buries a note for the robots of the future to discover so that they can convince the time traveller that humanity will triumph.

Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships

• In Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, the Time Traveller explains that his researches into time travel began when a mysterious yet vaguely familiar stranger passed him a mineral, the Plattnerite, which he used to construct the machine. Over the course of his subsequent travels which involve the alteration of history, he discovers that the stranger was in fact his future self. Eventually, with the help of humanity's descendants, he restores the timeline and travels into the past to pass the Plattnerite to his younger self.

Heinrich Böll

• Outside the field of Science Fiction, in Heinrich Böll's first novel Der Zug war pünktlich (The Train Was on Time, published in 1949) a World War II German soldier gets a premonition of the time of his death; a Polish prostitute who falls in love with him (and vice versa) tries to save him by using her connections with senior German officers to get him to safety - but precisely this attempt gets him (and herself) killed in an ambush set by anti-[...] partisans (Leśni).

Meg Cabot, The Mediator

• In the final book of the series, Susannah Simon goes to the past to keep fellow mediator Paul Slater from preventing the death of Jesse de Silva, a ghost she meets and falls in love with in the current time. She has a change of heart and tells the living Jesse about his impending [...], and with her warning he is able to defeat his [...]. However, during the fight in a barn, a fire breaks out, and he saves her, only to "die" when she inadvertently brings his body with her to the future, leaving his soul behind to become a ghost.

Michael Crichton, Timeline

• In Michael Crichton's novel Timeline, a group of graduate students who are excavating several medieval castles and towns from 14th century France are given the opportunity to travel back in time to the very place and time period they are studying. On a mission to rescue their Professor, who had left his time machine and gotten lost, the students end up causing some of the historical events they had studied.

Barry Dainton, Time and Space

• Many years from now, a transgalactic civilization has discovered time travel. A deep-thinking temporal engineer wonders what would happen if a time machine were sent back to the singularity from which the big bang emerged. His calculations yield an interesting result: the singularity would be destabilized, producing an explosion resembling the big bang. Needless to say, a time machine was quickly sent on its way.''

Philip K. [...], The Skull

• In Philip K. [...]'s short story The Skull, an oppressive 22ed Century regime wants to get rid of a Church with a Pacifist creed which threatens its rule. They send an assassin back to 1960 with orders to kill the Church's Founder, before he had a chance to speak out his subversive message. But the assassin finds that he is himself the Founder and carries out the very act which those who sent him wanted to prevent.

Gerrold, David, The Man Who Folded Himself

• The Man Who Folded Himself is a 1973 science fiction novel by David Gerrold that deals with time travel and the predestination paradox, much like Heinlein's. The protagonist, Daniel Eakins, inherits a time belt from his "uncle" that allows him to travel in time. This results in a series of time paradoxes, which are only resolved by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories. Eakins, who repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, finds himself in progressively more bizarre situations. The character spends much of his own contorted lifetime at an extended party with dozens of versions of himself at different ages, before understanding the true nature of the gathering, and his true identity. Much of the book deals with the psychological, physical, and personal challenges that manifest when time travel is possible for a single individual at the touch of a button. Eakins repeatedly meets himself; has [...] with himself; and ultimately cohabitates with an opposite-[...] version of himself. Eventually, that relationship ends up with a male child who he finally realizes is him, and he is now his own "uncle".

Rob Grant, Colony

• In the Rob Grant novel Colony, Eddie O'Hare finds himself, through an improbable series of events, ten generations in the future, reanimated as a cyborg. He is on a spaceship searching for a new home for humanity, which has since become extinct on Earth. Though at first he detests his existence, he realizes that he is the only hope of saving those on board and preserving the future of humanity. Cooperating with the partially biological ship which has evolved sentience, he travels into the past to initiate the series of events that lead him to be reanimated in the future.

Harry Harrison, The Technicolor Time Machine

• Harry Harrison's novel The Technicolor Time Machine is about a film director who wants to make a movie about Vikings settling Vinland but does not have enough money for sets and costumes. He employs a scientist who has created a time machine in order to go back to 11th Century and film "on location". They capture a Viking named Ottar and teach him English. Ottar ends up becoming the film's star. They get Ottar a ship and have him sail for Newfoundland, while jumping around space-time in their time machine. At the end of the novel, the characters wonder about the real Viking who settle Vinland named Thorfinn Karlsefni, only for Ottar to reveal that it's his real name. Apparently, the Vikings only settled Vinland because a modern-day film director wanted to shoot a movie about it. Additionally, history books also mention another important figure named Bjarni Herjólfsson, which prompts the film director (named Barney Hendrickson) to realize it's him. Several smaller paradoxes are mentioned, such as a note that no one appears to have written but has been passed down from Barney to his past self (via the time machine) or how Barney manages to finish the post-production of the film and still make the deadline (his future self arrives via the time machine with the movie all done and tells his past self to take his time). The novel ends with Barney trying to talk his boss out of using the time machine to make a movie about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Robert A. Heinlein

• Robert A. Heinlein's short story —All You Zombies— tells of a young man who is taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent a [...] change), and who turns out to be the offspring of that very union, with the paradoxical result that he is both his own mother and father. In fact, as it turns out, all the major characters in the story (including the man who tricked him) are the same person, at different stages of her/his life. This also creates an ontological paradox.
• A similar theme is used in Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," in which a man is visited by himself (although he doesn't recognise him at first), stepping out of a time portal. After a few timetravels, and after meeting and talking (and even arguing) to himself repeatedly (in earlier or later loops), he discovers himself to be "Diktor," the older man from the future who started it all. Noteworthy is also a notebook, containing a vocabulary for Diktor's future, which was never written but rather copied from itself from another time loop.

Richard A. Knaak, Warcraft: War of the Ancients Trilogy

• The War of the Ancients trilogy contains several examples of simple predestination paradoxes, or causality loops. In the story, characters Rhonin (a human), Krasus (a Dragon), and Broxigar (an orc) are thrown 10,000 years in the past from their time.
  • While in the past Krasus and Rhonin encounter a dragon they know as "Deathwing" and refer to him as such, when he still wears his original name "Neltharion." Thus, when Neltharion betrays his fellow dragons, it's quite possible that it was Krasus and Rhonin who gave him the name Deathwing, which they then learn about thousands of years later.
  • Similarly, Krasus and Rhonin encounter an artifact they know as the Demon Soul. However, at this point in time, it is still referred to by its original name, the Dragon Soul. So, again, it could be Krasus and Rhonin themselves who suggest a name change they learn later in time.
  • A more complex example involves the orc, Broxigar. The orcs were first corrupted by a demon called Kil'Jaeden, and then later freed from this corruption. Years later, Broxigar is sent back to a time before the orcs were unleashed upon the world, where he encounters the demon. It can therefore be postulated that it was Broxigar who gave the demon the idea to corrupt the orcs and unleash them on the world, which subsequently leads to Broxigar being sent back in time.

Eric Norden, The Primal Solution

• An especially vicious example is Eric Norden's novella "The Primal Solution". An elderly Jewish scientist - Holocaust survivor, who had lost his entire family - discovers a way of "mental time travel", which enables him to project his mind into the past and take over the body of the young Adolf [...] in the Vienna of the early 1910s. Resolved to force [...] into [...], the vengeful professor can't resist humiliating him first before making him jump into the Danube - but in the moment before drowning, [...] regains control of his body and returns home shaken. The scientist - trapped inside [...]'s mind - subsequently learns that until this moment the young [...] had not at all been an Antisemite and was in fact on good terms with some Jews, but by his actions had driven [...] to conclude that only by [...] all Jews would he be free of the scientist's haunting presence.

Chuck Palahniuk, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

• In Rant, various characters participate in an activity called "Party Crashing", which involves decorating one's car with symbols to show they are in the game and then crashing their vehicles into one another for sport. The main character, Buster Casey (nicknamed Rant), eventually appears to die while Party Crashing. However, when the car is pried open, his body is inexplicably missing. From this point, characters speculate that Buster has achieved a special state of mind while Party Crashing, which has allowed him to go back in time to stop a previous time-travelling incarnation of himself from raping his mother. They speculate that he obviously failed, and further speculation occurs as to whether Buster's stepfather, Chester Casey, is in fact Buster himself.

Christopher Pike, The Starlight Crystal

• In Christopher Pike's The Starlight Crystal, the main female character, Paige, is actually most of the characters who appear in the novel due to a causal loop, including living through the end and recreation of the universe, creating a race of aliens from her own genetic material who later invade Earth and stumbling across a corpse who turns out to be her older self.

Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel The Last Continent, the Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully explains the paradox neatly to Ponder Stibbons, who fears that any small change (such as stepping on an ant) in the past could destroy the future. Ridcully claims that clearly any changes he makes in the past were ones he is meant to make, demonstrating that 'the inherent paradoxes in time travel can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego'.

Jacqueline Rayner, The Stone Rose

• In the Doctor Who New Series Adventures novel The Stone Rose, an ancient Roman statue that looks exactly like Rose Tyler leads to the Doctor and Rose travelling back to Ancient Rome. When their adventure concludes without the statue that inspired it being made, the Doctor sculpts it himself. The book also includes a vial of curative liquid which the Doctor acquires in mysterious circumstances. After it is used up, it is recreated based on the remains, and subsequently taken to the place and time the Doctor first found it.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter

• In the Harry Potter Universe by J. K. Rowling a prophecy by Sybill Trelawney is overheard by Severus Snape about the birth of a wizard "with the power to vanquish" Voldemort, during July 1980. This prophecy was only partially overheard by Severus Snape, who relayed what he heard to Voldemort. To stop the prophecy from coming true, Voldemort attempted to kill Harry while he was an infant, but his curse backfired on him, separating his soul from his body for 13 years, and transferring some of his powers, as well as a part of his severed soul, to Harry. Dumbledore tells Harry several times that the prophecy is only true because the Dark Lord believes it. Harry is free to turn his back on it, but the fact that Voldemort will never turn his back on it, and therefore never rest until he has killed Harry, makes it inevitable that Harry will have to kill Voldemort, or vice versa. Moreover Harry wished to finish Voldemort only because Voldemort killed his parents, ensuring its inevitability.

• In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry and Hermione travel back in time three hours to save Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and Hagrid's hippogriff, Buckbeak, from being executed. Earlier Harry had seen someone he believed to be his father casting a powerful Patronus spell, saving him from the Dementors. Although hoping to see his father during this time journey, he finds no one there. He is therefore forced to cast the Patronus and save his past self, realizing in the process that it had been himself all along. When later asked how he was able to conjure such a powerful Patronus, Harry explains that he knew he could do it because he had already seen himself doing it. The film version of the book adds more examples, revealing that some shells that were mysteriously thrown into Hagrid's hut earlier were actually hurled by Hermione's future-self to warn them that Cornelius Fudge and company were arriving. The film also shows someone howling to distract the werewolf form of Lupin. Later, it is shown to be future Hermione.

Angie Sage, Septimus Heap

• In the third book, Physik, Septimus is kidnapped by Marcellus Pye, an ancient immortal alchemist. Marcellus remembers five-hundred years previous Septimus arrived through doors of time and served him as apprentice. He sends the boy back in time to make sure it happens once again, in hopes that this time together they will be able to make a potion of eternal youth so that his present self will be altered from a decaying old man. Marcellus’s mother, Queen Etheldredda, steals the potion for herself before it is finished. Shortly afterwards she drowns, but the potion has made her spirit somewhat substantial. Eventually in Septimus’s time she has made an appearance, and was revealed to have caused some of the events leading up to his time-travel. Before he leaves, Septimus promises to make a youth potion in his own time for Marcellus, so while Marcellus does get his youth back he stills becomes the withered old man who kidnapped Septimus. Jenna follows Septimus back in time, hoping to rescue him. But there she is mistaken for the Princess Esmeralda, Etheldredda's daughter. She explains her situation to the ghost who guards not only Esmeralda’s room, but hers in present-time too. When she finally gets back to the present, the ghost admits he was always worried over Jenna, remembering her and knowing one day she might disappear into the past again.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Shakespeare's Macbeth is a classic example of prophecy resulting in predestination paradox. The three Witches give Macbeth a prophecy that he will eventually become king, but the offspring of his best friend will rule after him. Macbeth kills his king and his friend Banquo. In addition to these prophecies, other prophecies foretelling his downfall are given, such as that he will not be attacked until a forest moves to his castle, and that no man ever born of a woman can kill him. In the end, fate is what drives the House of Macbeth mad and ultimately kills them, as Macbeth is killed by a man who was never 'born' as the man was torn from his mother's womb by caesarean section.

Ian Stewart, Flatterland

• In Flatterland, Vikki Line and the Space Hopper fall into a black hole, are rescued by future versions of themselves, and then go back in time to rescue themselves.

Nagaru Tanigawa, Haruhi Suzumiya series

• In Nagaru Tanigawa's Haruhi Suzumiyas light novels, there are many other examples of time paradoxes and peculiarities, including predestination paradoxes, grandfather paradoxes, and a time loop. The character Asahina is in the center of these cases, since she's a time traveler sent back in time to investigate Haruhi Suzumiya. The author tries takes into account how time paradoxes might arise, and in some cases, tries to prevent them from arising.
• There is an extremely convoluted example that is described in both the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody chapter of the 3rd volume (The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya) and the whole 4th volume (The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya), that involves several predestination paradoxes (amongst others) at once:
  • Kyon travels 3 years back in time give the young Haruhi the idea of meeting him in the present (although she doesn't realize that the 2 Kyon's were the same person), which would eventually lead to Kyon to do the aforementioned time travel.
  • Asahina (so-called "small Asahina") was commanded by a future Asahina (so-called "big Asahina") to send Kyon back in time (although small Asahina doesn't know that her superior is her future self). It's implied that in the future, Asahina is predestined to give that command to her younger self.
  • Nagato hands a message to Kyon. Although Kyon initially doesn't know what to do with it, he is predestined to realize that he needs to give this message to the younger Nagato when Asahina loses her time travel device. This younger Nagato then sends both Asahina and Kyon back to the future (without causing any more paradoxes).
  • Once Kyon and small Asahina arrive in the past, big Asahina also arrives in the past. She steals her younger version's time travel device without small Asahina realizing it (big Asahina makes sure small Asahina never knows about her presence). This leads to Kyon needing to realize what to do with Nagato's message.
  • Later on, another Kyon (from volume 4), several months older than the above Kyon (from volume 3), also arrives in this past (through a complicated series of steps involving a non-supernatural Haruhi). The aforementioned non-supernatural Haruhi told him that after Kyon had helped her and left, another Kyon told her something. Thus, this Kyon was predetermined to do just that.
  • During the time when both the Kyon from volume 4 and the Kyon from volume 3 were in the same place and time, the latter Kyon never saw the former Kyon, and so the latter Kyon is predestined to never be seen by the former Kyon. Likewise for small Asahina vs. big Asahina.
  • There are several more paradoxes, including some grandfather paradoxes, in this set of scenes, but there are too many to enumerate here.

Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, Dragonlance

• In Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Legends Trilogy of the Dragonlance novels, the wizard Raistlin Majere travels back in time to gain the knowledge needed to cross the threshold between god and man. He encounters the evil wizard Fistandantilus (with whose spirit Raistlin had made a pact in his original timeline) and kills him, but Raistlin merely takes Fistandantilus' place in the timeline. A prominent example of the predestination paradox in the story comes when, in the past timeline, Raistlin enters the Tower of High Sorcery which he inhabited in the future timeline. When entering his private study, he notes that, though the room should have been untouched during the centuries between the timelines, it is more orderly in the past timeline than when he first entered it in the future timeline. When he cannot locate what he sought within the room, he grows extremely angry, and in his fury, he disturbs the items in the room to the degree that he found them in the future timeline.

Bu Bu Jing Xin

• In the Chinese novel Bu Bu Jing Xin, centering the rivalry of Kangxi Emperor's sons for the throne during the 18th century Qing Dynasty, which will results the monarch's fourth son Yinzhen as Yongzheng Emperor. Its main character, Ma'ertai Ruoxi (Zhang Xiao), a time traveler from the 21st century, aware the princes' feud would leads to a tragic outcome. However, she is romantically entangled with the three of them, unawares that her relationship with them would inadvertently leading history to be unfold as written in the future instead of changing it.