Time Travel on a Moonbeam
Why such an Intriguing possibility?

"Clearly", the Time Traveller proceeded, "any real body must have extension in FOUR directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives."

H.G. Wells
The Time Machine

Who cares whether you can travel back in time? What's the big deal? You're still within a time period just like you are now and human nature will always be the same. So what?
There's a big difference in time epochs. The automobile, the harnessing of electricity, the phone, the TV and the PC have shaken our everyday routine. Look at the metamorphosis with the Internet during the last decade or how kids activities are so organized today. When I wuz a boy ...
Our collective lifestyles adjusted as time evolved and the possibility of altering time makes time travel alluring. The further back we go in time the more culture changes. Other time periods contrast with the present.

If we arrive from the future we must adapt to the morays and idiosyncrasies of the time period. It's easier traveling back in time because you know what's happened and you can identify with the progression of change. Trying to figure out things in the future is harder. I like the plot tension and intrigue of characters or characters out of their time period.

		I wanna glide down over Mulholland I wanna write her name in the sky I wanna free fall out into nothin' Gonna leave this world for awhile
	Tom Petty Free Falling Full Moon Fever

Stepping out of the present presents a shroud of mystery. What will happen in another time and place? Time is fragile. The people we touch and the events we shape back in time will affect the future. Okay, but how much? Will subtle changes merely trickle away like rivulets heading toward the larger stream?

Here's what Carl Sagan thought in Cosmos:

History consists for the most part of a complex bundle of deeply interwoven threads, social, cultural and economic forces that are not easily unraveled. The countless small, unpredictable and random events that flow on continuously often have no long term consequences. But some, those occurring at critical junctures or branch points, may change the pattern of history. There may be cases where profound changes can be made by relatively trivial adjustments. The farther in the past such an event is, the more powerful may be its influence-because the longer the lever of time becomes.

Powerful influences may not apply just to important events and critical people way back in time. Sagan thought the big picture would be about the same, but what about the trivial, mundane items of everyday life? Think back in your own life. How did one stupid, unimportant occurrence lead down the timeline to things that are a vital part of your present day life situation? In my own life I can trace things back to actions that seemed at the time of no value, but when seen in perspective, a chain reaction was started. Here's where it gets risky. The reaction could peter out, but we're still walking on eggs back in time.

The chain reaction theory applies to the great events of society and people that make up the composite of history. Suppose the guard, Parker, who was supposed to protect Lincoln at the Ford's Theater presidential box had a bout of indigestion and decided not to down a few pops at the bar. Having Lincoln live out his life has profound implications in American History. Take any lucky or unlucky historical event and go back with the players in the drama and you at once see how fragile time becomes. Especially, when you go back to the thousands of possibilities at conception that might have changed with headaches, power outages, chance encounters ... the list goes on and the whole alternate emerging grouping of people produce a whole new range of possibilities.

What if this genetic version of Caesar had never been born? Shakespeare would need new material.

We all view the arrow of time, but what is time? Robert Heinlein has great insight in Assignment in Eternity:

Jenkins said, "But that is impossible, Professor. You aren't built to observe two time dimensions."
"Easy , there ... answered Frost. I am built to perceive them one at a time - and so are you. I'll tell you about it, but before I do so, I must explain the theory of time I was forced to evolve in order to account for my experience. Most people think of time as a track that they run on from birth to death as inexorably as a train follows its rails - they feel instinctively that time follows a straight line, the past lying behind, the future lying in front. Now I have reason to believe - to know - that time is analogous to a surface rather than a line, and a rolling hilly surface at that. Think of this track we follow over the surface of time as a winding road cut through hill. Every little way the road branches and the branches follow side canyons. At these branches the crucial decisions of your life take place. You can turn right or loft into entirely different futures. Occasionally there is a switchback where one can scramble up or down a bank and skip over a few thousand or million years - if you don't have your eyes so fixed on the road that you miss the short-cut ..."

As for me, I see moonbeams dancing on the ocean , the luminescent lunar sphere hovering above the horizon, and when I swish my hand through the cool water, I am cognizant of the moonbeam's tenuous splashdown upon the diamond cut ripples.

Fitton Time Travel Books:

Red Shift

Second Chance

Alternatives

Dreamscape

1927

1939

Sojourn Trilogy