People’s obsession with time travel isn’t an obsession with the speed that the universe moves at. It’s an obsession with cheating time. It’s an obsession with seeing the future and holding that knowledge in the present, with being able to put hindsight to use. According to Caltech professor Kip Thorne, the time travel of science fiction is possible, at least theoretically. It’s far off, technology-wise. At the point where one could use it to get a few more hours of sleep, commuting time would be a thing of the past. Speed-of-light travel would be an everyday occurrence. It would require, according to NASA astronaut Stan Love, an infinitely long cylinder or something with a lower density than a vacuum. So for now, time travel at a speed other…show more content… The story is about a man, Hwang, who tests out his friend’s time machine. His friend, Grishkov, is certain it will work, and Hwang wants so badly to go back in time “to fix [his] life and the lives of [his] loved ones” (Kim 74) that he believes Grishkov. Hwang isn’t dissimilar from other literary time travelers in his desire for a second chance. Hwang and his wife are divorced and his son has left him to move in with his mother, leaving Hwang with only his daughters. Hwang is certain that he could fix things if he could just go back, so he agrees to test out the machine. In doing so, Hwang uses science to cheat fate, or he would have if the machine had worked. Something goes wrong during the startup sequence and the machine breaks, catching Grishkov’s lab on fire and leaving Hwang cursed with time travel in the wrong…show more content… While he is recording history, he debates with his teammates the value of what they are doing. While Miriam, the expedition leader, sees this as a good thing, the protagonist, a part of Miriam’s team, feels that “destroy[ing] all myth and legend…for the sake of facts” (Kilworth 360) is a harmful trade. Miriam is willing to trade the legends for “the truth” (Kilworth 361), but the protagonist argues that they have no right to. He argues that “discoveries exact a high price from the finders, who have to pay for them with pieces of their souls” (Kilworth 362). His main [sticking point] is his inability to give up the myths and legends. In finding out what really happened in the legendary Peloponnesian war, the records of which are inextricably intertwined with the religion of Ancient Greece, the protagonist believes them to be tarnishing the glimmering appeal of the unexplainable. To him, losing the magic of distant history is akin to learning one’s parents are Santa; it’s something that one cannot get back. For him, whatever they might find will not replace the magic that “the truth” takes
