We note the passing of writer Kurt Vonnegut, and pass on {this discussion} of Vonnegut’s take on time-travel:
I was watching “Slaughterhouse-Five”, they told me, made from the novel by Vonnegut. It has a time travel theme, but is not really a time travel story. In it, Vonnegut says that time exists all at once, like a river exists all at once, even though water flows through it. We perceive time as flowing because we are limited in our three dimensions, like someone standing on the bank of the river and sees only the little bit of water flowing past. If we could break free of our limited perceptions, then we would see that something that exists at some point in time always exists, and always has existed, and always will.
{The original links that accompanied this post have long since vanished into the ether; The quote above came from an reflection posted on Phil Plait’s ‘Bad Astronomy‘ blog, but is no longer available there. So here’s a nice article about Kurt Vonnegut in the New Yorker by Salman Rushdie.}