Tales of Space and Time "Annotated" Science Fiction Adventure

Book excerpt: The concept of time travel - moving through time the way we move through three-dimensional space - may in fact be hardwired into our perception of time. Linguists have recognized that we are essentially incapable of talking about temporal matters without referencing spatial ones. "In language - any language - no two domains are more intimately linked than space and time," wrote Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher in his 2005 book "The Unfolding of Language." "Even if we are not always aware of it, we invariably speak of time in terms of space, and this reflects the fact that we think of time in terms of space."Deutscher reminds us that when we plan to meet a friend "around" lunchtime, we are using a metaphor, since lunchtime doesn't have any physical sides. He similarly points out that time can not literally be "long" or "short" like a stick, nor "pass" like a train, or even go "forward" or "backward" any more than it goes sideways, diagonal or down.