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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: raidem on October 29, 2017, 02:17:04 PM

Title: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: raidem on October 29, 2017, 02:17:04 PM
This Thread originated from a Reddit Thread I created. I just pasted it from there here with that audience in mind.

I'm a Time Travel nut. I love the theories. Feel free to post yours here. The one, I'll be talking about is Harry using Sue when he rides far back in time. Sue is a TRex with an age of about 67 Million Years. Harry has already used her in Dead Beat in a book about Necromancy. So, I'm wondering, since she has such a great link to the distant past, why can't Harry use Sue as a resource when he time travels, particularly if he needs an extreme amount of juice to do something quite distant in the past. Many of the arguments against Harry accomplishing anything with time travel is the amount of juice it would require, well we know Sue in necro form has it in spades. So, combining Sue in Necro Form with Time travel Form would be one huge formidable force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_(dinosaur)
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: raidem on October 29, 2017, 02:18:35 PM
Hey wardenferry:

4) Murphy tags along with Sue/? in TT event.

I like this because Sue is millions of years old. She has metaphysical mass. If she is used in Time Travel, it could explain how some of the juice needed to go pack into the past gets paid. Also, it can allow some characters of ours, to include Bonnie, to venture very far back into the past and become something.
Bonnie becomes prehistoric origin of the Archive and brings some more modern literature "shakespeare, scarecrow, movies, etc) into the distant past where it becomes the basis for the forms of the faeries, their speech, etc.
Murphy becomes Mab, Mister accompanies her.
Mother Murphy goes further into past to become a Mother Winter.
ETC.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 29, 2017, 07:41:15 PM
Well, we have seen Sue once and it was fun. Why not a second time? Your catchphrase should be " with time travel all things are possible."
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: raidem on October 29, 2017, 07:54:13 PM
Q Are we ever going to see Sue again?
A: Yes. But it might be a while.

Argument from Reddit not with anyone here.
Quote
Sorry. You are mistaken. Harry put some juice into it. It gathered the rest by itself, not by Harry, by defeating it's opponent's as the fight went on. So you might want to get your facts straight first as it wasn't Harry who put all of it there.
You presume that the next time it's resurrected it starts at level 0 again. I don't. Erlking says "Wizard. Called you forth a mighty hunter tonight. One that has not walked this earth since time gone and forgotten." (It's not lvl 0, we will see next time its summoned/resurrected)
Sue can get more juice, energy prior to any time traveling plot by defeating enemies in our time, particularly say on Halloween or any conjunction, etc. At that point, Harry can use her as a battery to assist him in time traveling into the past. Note, the extra juice I'm talking about is the amount that is stored within her, as you so capably argue is immense due to her age.
I also argue a thaumaturgical link can be created between Sue's bones and Sue's living form that can facilitate time travel in some way, either by making it easier to time travel into the past generally, time travel to her time specifically (may only be able to send something tiny like Bonnie to reduce energy needed).
WOJ: QAre we ever going to see Sue again?
A: Yes. But it might be a while.
So Jim has already done a necromancer book with Sue, why not include Sue in a Time Traveling plot since both Sue and Time Travel will both appear later in the books.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 29, 2017, 08:03:17 PM
When I heard that WOJ, I thought Sue would help fight the Kaiju that was going to appear.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: raidem on October 29, 2017, 08:22:57 PM
Ooh, nice.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 29, 2017, 09:07:06 PM
Cthulu meets Jurassic Park.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Ananda on October 29, 2017, 11:42:41 PM
I hope the dinosaur doesn’t return. That whole thing was just so stupid. Maybe it’s a guy thing... I just found it worth skipping on the re-read as it really brought the story down to a “why am I reading this crap” feeling for me. Sorry. :P
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 29, 2017, 11:55:31 PM
Everybody has their own thing they like about the books. There is a broad range of characters and situations in the series. To each their own. Personally. I liked Sue, especially when Bob took control.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Rasins on October 30, 2017, 07:23:02 PM
I have a theory that Harry will travel into the distant past, and be the cause of Sue dying in just the right way so as to be available for him later.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Ulfgeir on November 10, 2017, 06:35:16 PM
When I heard that WOJ, I thought Sue would help fight the Kaiju that was going to appear.

Maybe she will BE the Kaiju?  ;)

/Ulfgeir
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 11, 2017, 12:14:58 AM
Sue is big. But, she is not Godzilla big. Even when you toss in 1950s Godzilla. I think that is when the battleship or aircraft carrier comes in.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Rasins on November 13, 2017, 06:07:50 PM
Yeah, I've stood beside sue, and she's really not that big.  Bigger than an Elephant, but not THAT much bigger.

(https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bb010f307f1d72d65ad06148e9ca37d1-c)
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Talby16 on November 13, 2017, 07:18:44 PM
I always thought that Sue would appear again when Harry needed something big to take on a horde of faceless enemies (fomer?).
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Foxed on November 13, 2017, 10:23:10 PM
I hope the dinosaur doesn’t return. That whole thing was just so stupid. Maybe it’s a guy thing... I just found it worth skipping on the re-read as it really brought the story down to a “why am I reading this crap” feeling for me. Sorry. :P

You... You MONSTER.

(I feel that way about the porn star coven in the book previous. One of the few Files my wife actually read the back copy to, and I have had no satisfactory retort to "This is just Harlequin for boys, isn't it?"

That said, I like the Sue moment. It may have come together a bit pat, but of course Harry would raise the most famous set of bones in Chicago in the necromancy book.)
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Ananda on November 13, 2017, 11:21:26 PM
You... You MONSTER.

(I feel that way about the porn star coven in the book previous. One of the few Files my wife actually read the back copy to, and I have had no satisfactory retort to "This is just Harlequin for boys, isn't it?"
How funny!
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 14, 2017, 01:29:12 AM
Harry does not get lucky enough to consider the series a romance for men.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: jonas on November 14, 2017, 01:42:56 AM
Harry does not get lucky enough to consider the series a romance for men.
Jim would write a series staring Thomas for that.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 14, 2017, 10:54:17 AM
It could be called the Penthouse Papers.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Talby16 on November 14, 2017, 02:56:48 PM
It could be called the Penthouse Papers.

Well said Sir!
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: LordDresden2 on November 29, 2017, 05:04:26 AM
Yeah, I've stood beside sue, and she's really not that big.  Bigger than an Elephant, but not THAT much bigger.

(https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bb010f307f1d72d65ad06148e9ca37d1-c)

Natural land animals, or at least vertebrate tetrapods, can't get much bigger than the dinosaurs got, for various reasons of physics and biology.  Even the prey animals that the carnivorous dinos fed upon rarely got much over 100-140 tons.  That's substantially bigger than Sue, but they wouldn't have made good combatants for Harry, either.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 29, 2017, 10:39:10 AM
Because prey animals lack agression?
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on November 29, 2017, 01:42:53 PM
Natural land animals, or at least vertebrate tetrapods, can't get much bigger than the dinosaurs got, for various reasons of physics and biology.  Even the prey animals that the carnivorous dinos fed upon rarely got much over 100-140 tons.  That's substantially bigger than Sue, but they wouldn't have made good combatants for Harry, either.

Conservation of mass-energy kind of gets in the way. It's one of the plot holes in Jurassic Park; a T-Rex simply couldn't have eaten enough to get that big in the amount of time since Hammond had cloned it.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 29, 2017, 10:49:20 PM
Well, you just gotta suspend that disbelief or be ignorant like me!
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on November 30, 2017, 04:33:23 PM
Well, you just gotta suspend that disbelief or be ignorant like me!

I honestly wish I could. I had to write a shapeshifter novelette to fulfill a publisher obligation a few years back, and simply couldn't ignore the physics problems. I wound up hamfistedly explaining the Square-Cube Law and Conservation of Mass just to point out that I recognized they were problems, but that there was something about shapeshifters that allowed them to ignore it.

Except the Square-Cube Law. I had to limit the shapeshifter to blatantly ignoring Conservation of Mass-Energy and turn into spiders and ants rather than just shrinking down when he needed to. A person the size of an ant would suffocate in minutes, or freeze to death in seconds.

The story would've been paced better if I didn't feel the need to shove the explanations in there, but I refused to let it go.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on November 30, 2017, 10:13:21 PM
My understanding of physics is very limited. I have tried to read Hawkings book several times and just can't wrap my head around it.

Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Rasins on December 04, 2017, 08:08:01 PM
I honestly wish I could. I had to write a shapeshifter novelette to fulfill a publisher obligation a few years back, and simply couldn't ignore the physics problems. I wound up hamfistedly explaining the Square-Cube Law and Conservation of Mass just to point out that I recognized they were problems, but that there was something about shapeshifters that allowed them to ignore it.

Except the Square-Cube Law. I had to limit the shapeshifter to blatantly ignoring Conservation of Mass-Energy and turn into spiders and ants rather than just shrinking down when he needed to. A person the size of an ant would suffocate in minutes, or freeze to death in seconds.

The story would've been paced better if I didn't feel the need to shove the explanations in there, but I refused to let it go.

I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: jonas on December 04, 2017, 11:40:32 PM
I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.
That... sounds kinda stupid imo, just cause for real, basil? I rather liked the Animorphs explaination, the extra mass was shunted off into zero point space(z-space, which they're currently trying to wrap their heads around to create warp drive) and could in theory be hit by a ship if it were to pass through the same space. it never happened but one time
(click to show/hide)
overall I liked the mesh with physics.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on December 04, 2017, 11:47:53 PM
Look on TV Tropes for Alien Catnip. They mention something about basil.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on December 05, 2017, 03:59:41 PM
I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.

Interesting take on it. The writer didn't try to handwave it by dramatically increasing density or anything? He was just a dude-sized spider?

My explanation was also partially to explain why he couldn't turn into a a Kaiju and just wreck everything; he could if he had an adequate understanding of biology and physics and could actually design a creature that wouldn't immediately suffocate, collapse under its own weight, and had a circulatory system that functioned properly. I presume the limitations on Goodman Grey are similar in some regard, though I don't know if he could shift into something smaller than him, if he's importing matter from the Nevernever. Does he export it, too? And if he does, how does he get it back?
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: groinkick on December 05, 2017, 07:14:54 PM
Conservation of mass-energy kind of gets in the way. It's one of the plot holes in Jurassic Park; a T-Rex simply couldn't have eaten enough to get that big in the amount of time since Hammond had cloned it.

How long did it have to grow?  T-Rex reaches full size at around 18 to 20 years of age according to scientists.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: groinkick on December 05, 2017, 07:23:41 PM
Sue is big. But, she is not Godzilla big. Even when you toss in 1950s Godzilla. I think that is when the battleship or aircraft carrier comes in.

Kaiju doesn't always mean Godzilla.  Nothing in Earth's history was that big.  The foot print on the beach sounded like something big, but not Godzilla big.  If Sue was used against something say 50 feet tall, she could still be used to deliver a big bite to the monsters hamstring, or ankle resulting in it either falling down, or simply drawing the attention away from Dresden so he can finish a big spell, or something. 

"The models suggest that an adult T. rex was capable of a maximum bite force of 35,000 to 57,000 newtons at its back teeth. That's more than four times higher than past estimates and ten times as forceful as the bite of a modern alligator."

I don't care how big you are, something with that kind of bite force will damage you, even if it's just your ankle.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on December 05, 2017, 08:21:00 PM
How long did it have to grow?  T-Rex reaches full size at around 18 to 20 years of age according to scientists.

No more than five years in the book. InGen clones their first prehistoric animal in 1984 (doesn't say what animal), and the Jurassic Park incident happens in 1989. A little girl is attacked in the prologue (which they used for the opening of Lost World) some time before Grant is brought in to tour the park.

To really mess with the physics, imagine a herbivorous brachiosaurus getting to be that size on only plant matter. You're talking about adding, what, a forty, fifty pounds a day to their mass for a decade or two? They're something like thirty-forty metric tons, if memory serves. You also have to deal with thermodynamics, as there's no way to prevent loss of energy during digestion.

For them to be the size they are in Jurassic Park, they'd have had to eat nonstop for years, at nearly 100% efficiency, with little room for muscular and skeletal development.

It's one of the reasons there's a big theory that none of the dinosaurs were cloned, and that Hammond was pulling a giant dog and pony show to bilk his investors. He brought on a paleontologist to see if he could be fooled. He even mentions (in the movie, can't remember if it's in the book) that his first attraction was a flea circus, and that the park was just a big budget version. (Also, how was he able to clone extinct plants? Mosquitoes wouldn't have ingested their DNA, at least not enough to replicate them, and DNA only has a half-life that's measured in centuries, not Epochs, so how is any of this possible anyway).

Too Long, Didn't Read: Michael Crichton made a rare mistake in his meticulous research, or else it was a clue to an alternate character interpretation.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: wardenferry419 on December 05, 2017, 09:01:01 PM
I was most interested in the chaos theory parts than the genetics.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on December 06, 2017, 02:05:34 PM
I was most interested in the chaos theory parts than the genetics.

Yeah, plus dinosaurs rampaging across a closed system is pretty boss.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: groinkick on December 06, 2017, 06:34:32 PM
To really mess with the physics, imagine a herbivorous brachiosaurus getting to be that size on only plant matter. You're talking about adding, what, a forty, fifty pounds a day to their mass for a decade or two? They're something like thirty-forty metric tons, if memory serves. You also have to deal with thermodynamics, as there's no way to prevent loss of energy during digestion.

Alright first off we are obviously discussing a fictional book/movie.  We can all agree on that.  Second the dinosaurs being cloned could not grow to that size because the oxygen today is much thinner than it was at that time, which allowed for their massive growth.  That being said you trying to use physics, and thermodynamics doesn't calculate.  We are talking about biology.  A blue whale adds sometimes over 200 pounds a day as it grows, and reaches full size in most cases around the 20 year mark.  That's 4 times the weight being added that you cited as going against physics.  Now the diet is different, it's not plant based.  Still that doesn't matter.  Animals can grow very quickly from plant based food.  A bull will go from 50 pounds to over 2000 pounds in a few years while a human by comparison isn't even remotely close to that kind of growth.  A bull isn't capable of reaching 100 tons, but another plant eating animal that has evolved to reach that size would absolutely put on the amount of weight you cited, in the distant past.  Today?  No because of the oxygen, and different climate.

I will also add that although it is absolutely impossible with current technology to bring back dinosaurs, in this fictional world there was major genetic manipulation.  Combining frog dna for example.  If other alterations were done to increase the dinosaurs growth rate by sacrificing it's life span, and if they were exposed to growth hormones then it is conceivable albeit not very likely that there may be a chance an animal like this could reach incredible sizes in 15 years.
Title: Re: Harry, Time Travel and Sue
Post by: Kindler on December 11, 2017, 07:06:04 PM
Alright first off we are obviously discussing a fictional book/movie.  We can all agree on that.  Second the dinosaurs being cloned could not grow to that size because the oxygen today is much thinner than it was at that time, which allowed for their massive growth.  That being said you trying to use physics, and thermodynamics doesn't calculate.  We are talking about biology.  A blue whale adds sometimes over 200 pounds a day as it grows, and reaches full size in most cases around the 20 year mark.  That's 4 times the weight being added that you cited as going against physics.  Now the diet is different, it's not plant based.  Still that doesn't matter.  Animals can grow very quickly from plant based food.  A bull will go from 50 pounds to over 2000 pounds in a few years while a human by comparison isn't even remotely close to that kind of growth.  A bull isn't capable of reaching 100 tons, but another plant eating animal that has evolved to reach that size would absolutely put on the amount of weight you cited, in the distant past.  Today?  No because of the oxygen, and different climate.

I will also add that although it is absolutely impossible with current technology to bring back dinosaurs, in this fictional world there was major genetic manipulation.  Combining frog dna for example.  If other alterations were done to increase the dinosaurs growth rate by sacrificing it's life span, and if they were exposed to growth hormones then it is conceivable albeit not very likely that there may be a chance an animal like this could reach incredible sizes in 15 years.

First, biology doesn't get to ignore physics. It still matters. Thermodynamics absolutely plays a part in digestion. It's conservation of mass and energy—and none of it is lossless. Blue whales eat between 2,000 and 8,000 pounds of krill daily to gain that 200 pounds, for instance.

I also think you're missing my point. It's not that these creatures couldn't have existed, it's that they couldn't have been hatched within the past five years, the time period stated in-universe. That's the problem with the conservation of mass.

My point about plant matter was that the loss of energy and mass from consumption plays a big part, as the plant matter they're eating offers less than animal matter (lots of fats and proteins, for instance). A bull takes fifteen-twenty months to grow to full size, and eats about 25 pounds of hay per day to reach its full average weight of 2,000 pounds. Round that down to 2,000 pounds in a year as a best case scenario, and you still have fifty years of growth to reach the size of a brachiosaurus. Even at double or triple the rate of growth, which seems unlikely, you still have well over a decade necessary to grow to full size.

And yeah, I'm well aware about the oxygen content of the atmosphere's importance; it's another reason why I like the theory that Hammond wasn't making actual dinosaurs, but things that were different altogether. The whole amber-ed mosquitoes thing was just a fiction he sold his investors, and he made these things out of whole cloth.

It's ignored mostly by the movie canon, which acknowledges the differences with the dinosaurs in Jurassic World (which I appreciated). But the books never dealt with this sort of thing.

Personally, I think you and I are in violent agreement. Mostly, I just want to live in a world with megafauna so I can ride a ground sloth to the grocery store, and I'm grumpy that it isn't possible.