John Titor

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by jaguar
You seem to have read it all hot, what do you think? Inconclusive? What did you find most compelling? Name aside, what most far fetched?

I haven't read it all yet, but quite a bit. Mostly I have read his original postings, not much yet by way of others' analyses... though I'll probably start reading the rest of that stuff soon.

His story suffers the same problem as many a science fiction novel... the theory is good, but the motivation is flawed. That's where it's far-fetched. He tries to use the shroud of mystery to preserve the possiblity in the reader's mind that maybe there is something special about the IBM 5100 from 1975 that is worth coming back to get one. It supposedly possesses a feature unknown to the public, undocumented, and so difficult to reproduce with modern hardware that it's worth the expense and risk (loss of time machine, loss of agent, etc) to get one. So, two questions arise:

1) If the feature was never made public knowledge, undocumented, never previously exploited... and there are NO working IBM 5100s from his time period, AND the War supposedly destroyed a large amount of data... how could they possibly know about the feature? Possible, but highly unlikely. We don't know about it today, and we have some still working, as well as some engineers who developed it still breathing.

2) What can this IBM machine, which is clunky and primitive even by today's standards, possibly do for the folks in 2036 which they cannot reproduce at lesser risk and expense? Keep in mind these are the same people who created a computer which can manipluate a pair of singularities, and use a local gravity field to measure in pretty exacting detail what their location in time is.

The idea that a computer from the 1970's could possess some unknown and unreproducable ability is technically ridiculous, but appeals very much to the writer's target audience (Internet users/computer geeks/conspiracy theorists), so they are more apt to buy into it. He keeps saying he has nothing to gain by lying, but he does.... it's just intangible gain. Imagine if you pulled off a ruse so elegantly... this is a singularly interesting and unique piece of artwork of which the artist should be proud, even if he did use a pen name.

The most compelling aspect is his descriptions of the relationship between time and space, and "worldlines," but of course everything he says about those things is based on current scientific theory, science fiction, and recent discoveries. Equally compelling is his ability to see and communicate from a fictional time traveller's perspective, and lead the reader through interesting reasoning paths.

He uses "God's Excuse" (TM) a lot... basically, "I am unable to prove to you who or what I am, so you may believe me or accept the consequences which you equally doubt... And I will bury any evidence of mistruth by claiming that you simply lack information, understanding, and/or faith." It's a catch-all. If you can't prove something, nor disprove it, it MUST be possible.

The faults in his story are few and necessary... it's still a fascinating tale. And if I'm wrong, then that's awesome, but so far I have no reason to believe that I am.