Timestream

The timestream or time stream is a metaphorical conception of time as a stream, a flowing body of water. In Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, the term is more narrowly defined as: "the series of all events from past to future, especially when conceived of as one of many such series". Timestream is the normal passage or flow of time and its historical developments, within a given dimension of reality. The concept of the time stream, and the ability to travel within and around it, are the fundamentals of a genre of science fiction.

For other uses, see Time Stream (disambiguation).

This conception has been widely used in mythology and in fiction.

This analogy is useful in several ways:

  • Streams flow only one way. Time moves only forward.
  • Streams flow constantly. Time never stops.
  • People can stand in a stream, but will be pulled along by it. People exist within time, but move with it.
  • Some physicists and science fiction writers have speculated that time is branching—it branches into alternate universes (see many-worlds interpretation). Streams can converge and also diverge.

Science fiction scholar Andrew Sawyer writes, "The paradoxes of time—do we move in time, or does it move by us? Does it exist or is it merely an illusion of our limited perception?—are puzzles that exercise both physicists and philosophers..."

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