Paradox A Prediction IT is impossible,” stated Preston.
“Two hundred years ago any ordinary man would have said that television was impossible, and could have given several excellent arguments to prove it,” returned Sherman easily. “Just because we can’t do it now is no reason to say that men will never learn to travel in time as freely as in space. H.G. Wells, in his ‘Time Machine’ . . .”
Preston interrupted impatiently. “I’ve read the book. It should be obvious that Wells used the idea of traveling into the future merely as a background upon which to superimpose his ideas of the ultimate destiny of civilization. Since Wells there have been dozens of time stories, wherein the hero invents a machine, or discovers a ray, or something, which takes him immediately to the year 4443, or the day after to-morrow, or prehistoric times, or some other time, wherein he meets the beauteous heroine, et cetera. The writers of such stories follow a definite formula, gentlemen. They’re a bunch of imaginations. The idea of time-traveling is a scientific absurdity, for dozens of reasons.
“Did you ever consider the fact, Sherman, that if you were to travel to the year 2000, for instance, through time or the fourth dimension, you would have to travel quite a few million miles through space also? For by the year 2000 this earth, and the solar system, and probably our whole universe as well, will have moved a long way through space from the place they occupy at this second. And that’s only one of the many objections.”
“I don’t consider even that beyond the realm of possibility,” replied Sherman. “When you consider the accomplishments of science in the past, it is rash to say that anything is imposs . . .”
. . .
