Parkinson, the Library in Leeds
Jul. 7th, 2010 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_padmahas a tonne of stuff on time travel.
Haruman took me yesterday as he had a day off from St Mungo's. Anyway, I found the section on time travel and it's got loads of books about why it's a bad idea. They mentioned your great-uncle Darby (or however many times great he was) a lot. There's something called the 1st Parkinsonian Principle of Time Travel. It's all about the limitation on how far back you can go. There's also a 2nd Parkinsonian Principle, about how you can't go back in ways that create paradoxical situations, like how he went back before he was born.
I guess before he made his trip people were still trying to see how far back one could go, and his first tries weren't even the furthest. (Some people in went back decades and got stuck there and had to send messages to their families and put ads in the Prophet to be placed twenty years in their own futures. Like, 'Stuck in 1949, love to the kids, come see me at Sunset Acres' and things like that.) But then he tried to go back a whole century like that, and BOOM. The explosion made the Ministry reconsider time as a restricted subject and put it firmly under the Department of Mysteries. And that's when all the regulations started. They eventually outlawed nearly anything to do with time research.
There's this one case, Ministry v Cooper, where Cooper was accused of selling unauthorised devices to send people back in time. Only he hadn't made them right and people didn't go back as far as they thought. So they were planning to go back, say, three hours and instead they went back two and a half, and appeared in the middle of their own baths or something. So they wanted Cooper held responsible. And there's another, Ministry v Whitby. In that one, Whitby was found guilty of sending people back when they caught him stealing, or whatever. And he had a turner concealed on him somehow, and the guards left him alone and he turned himself to a point when his cell wasn't locked and tried to escape! But they caught him on his way out because someone realised he was supposed to be in a meeting. Isn't that snitch?
Oh, and there's a book called Sands through the Hourglass which first I thought was sort of instructions on making time-travelling devices, but it's not. (I guess the DoM went about collecting all the information on time-travelling devices that it could get, so people can't make them whenever they please.) Anyway, this book it's really an historical novel about the very first time-turner. It's by Evangelista Nettle. I'm in the third chapter now and already I'm pretty certain Clive will get together with Marlena (I mean, it's rather obvious she's in love with him, anyway). There's not too much about the theory, but I'll bring it to the YPL, shall I, and you can read if it you like?
Haruman took me yesterday as he had a day off from St Mungo's. Anyway, I found the section on time travel and it's got loads of books about why it's a bad idea. They mentioned your great-uncle Darby (or however many times great he was) a lot. There's something called the 1st Parkinsonian Principle of Time Travel. It's all about the limitation on how far back you can go. There's also a 2nd Parkinsonian Principle, about how you can't go back in ways that create paradoxical situations, like how he went back before he was born.
I guess before he made his trip people were still trying to see how far back one could go, and his first tries weren't even the furthest. (Some people in went back decades and got stuck there and had to send messages to their families and put ads in the Prophet to be placed twenty years in their own futures. Like, 'Stuck in 1949, love to the kids, come see me at Sunset Acres' and things like that.) But then he tried to go back a whole century like that, and BOOM. The explosion made the Ministry reconsider time as a restricted subject and put it firmly under the Department of Mysteries. And that's when all the regulations started. They eventually outlawed nearly anything to do with time research.
There's this one case, Ministry v Cooper, where Cooper was accused of selling unauthorised devices to send people back in time. Only he hadn't made them right and people didn't go back as far as they thought. So they were planning to go back, say, three hours and instead they went back two and a half, and appeared in the middle of their own baths or something. So they wanted Cooper held responsible. And there's another, Ministry v Whitby. In that one, Whitby was found guilty of sending people back when they caught him stealing, or whatever. And he had a turner concealed on him somehow, and the guards left him alone and he turned himself to a point when his cell wasn't locked and tried to escape! But they caught him on his way out because someone realised he was supposed to be in a meeting. Isn't that snitch?
Oh, and there's a book called Sands through the Hourglass which first I thought was sort of instructions on making time-travelling devices, but it's not. (I guess the DoM went about collecting all the information on time-travelling devices that it could get, so people can't make them whenever they please.) Anyway, this book it's really an historical novel about the very first time-turner. It's by Evangelista Nettle. I'm in the third chapter now and already I'm pretty certain Clive will get together with Marlena (I mean, it's rather obvious she's in love with him, anyway). There's not too much about the theory, but I'll bring it to the YPL, shall I, and you can read if it you like?
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Date: 2010-07-09 01:22 am (UTC)I do think it is sort of nift that there's a Parkinson Principle (or two!), even if it was because he blew himself up. It's a bit of a shame that there's so many restrictions though, I mean, I know there's all sorts of ways things could go wrong -- I should let you read some of the stuff I've found, it's really horrific -- but still.
Let's do a book exchange at the YPL. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you've tracked down!
And Haruman was brilliant for taking you like that.