One common time travel paradox is the grandfather paradox. If you travel back in time and kill your grandfather before he has children, then you couldn't be born to go back in time in the first place. Another is the bootstrap paradox, like a person going back in time and giving Shakespeare the plays he wrote, but then where did the plays originally come from? And then there's the predestination paradox, where events in the past seem to be fated because of time travel, for example, a time traveler goes back to save someone, but it turns out that their very presence there was what caused the situation that needed saving in the first place.
Some stories use the concept of parallel universes. So when you travel back in time and change something, you create a new branch of the timeline, and the original timeline still exists. For example, in 'Sliders', the characters slide between different parallel universes, so any changes they make don't create a paradox in their original world. Another way is through self - consistency. The events are set up so that any time travel actions don't actually create a paradox. For instance, in '12 Monkeys', the time traveler's actions are all part of the events that already happened.
Many time travel science fiction novels create rules within their own universes to deal with paradoxes. In 'A Wrinkle in Time', the idea of tessering (a form of time/space travel) has its own set of rules that prevent the characters from creating major paradoxes. The characters can't just go back and change everything willy - nilly. Another approach is seen in '11/22/63' where the universe seems to have a kind of elasticity. When the main character tries to change history, the universe tries to push back and correct itself to avoid a paradox.
Some time travel stories in fiction simply ignore paradoxes. They focus more on the adventure aspect of time travel. For example, in 'Back to the Future', Marty goes back in time and there are some potential paradoxes like seeing his younger mother fall in love with him instead of his father, but the story just moves forward and finds ways to resolve the situation without getting too deep into the paradox.
Some sci fi time travel stories simply avoid dealing with paradoxes. They might create a kind of 'soft' time - travel system where changes in the past don't really create big problems. For example, in 'Star Trek', the time travel episodes often seem to have a sort of built - in fix for any potential paradoxes.
There are also novels that embrace the paradoxes. They use them as a central plot device to create a mind - bending and complex story. For example, in some stories, a character might go back in time and cause the very event that sent them back in time in the first place, creating a never - ending loop of causality that the reader has to figure out.
One cause is the manipulation of time. For example, in time - travel stories. If you go back in time and change something, it can create a paradox like the grandfather paradox. If you kill your grandfather before he has children, how can you exist to go back in time in the first place? Another cause could be the different physical laws assumed in science fiction universes that conflict with our known real - world physics, leading to paradoxical situations.
One common paradox is the time travel paradox. For example, the grandfather paradox. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he has children, then how could you exist to go back in time in the first place? Another is the Fermi paradox in science - fiction settings. If there are so many potentially habitable planets in the universe, why haven't we encountered any alien civilizations? Also, the paradox of self - awareness in some android - centered science fiction. If an android becomes self - aware and starts to question its own existence and purpose, it challenges our understanding of what it means to be alive and conscious.
One cause could be the manipulation of time. For example, the grandfather paradox. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he has children, it creates a contradiction. This is because in normal logic, your existence depends on your grandfather having children. Science fiction often plays with such time - travel concepts, and the paradoxes arise from the conflict between the rules of time as we know them and the fictional scenarios created.
One paradox could be that the very act of telling a story might distort the truth. Sometimes, trying to convey the raw reality of war can lead to embellishments or omissions that change the perception.