Incomplete Time Series
Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016
Incompleteness in fictional time series is considered. A fiction might leave it indefinite how long a certain event lasts, or which other fictional events it is simultaneous with (as in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, where it is not established which events within Narnia are simultaneous with which events outside Narnia). The surface similarities between indefiniteness over temporal order and duration, and order and duration as represented in the special theory of relativity, are noted. In exploring the comparison, it is shown that the two are very different, which further helps to illuminate the notion of indefiniteness and the incompleteness of the time series represented. The discussion is extended to include fictions where many metrics are involved, using Inception (2010, dir. C. Nolan) as an illustration. The chapter ends by showing what it is in general for a fiction to describe a world with an incomplete time series.