Robert Franklin Young was a science fiction writer who applied himself diligently to writing and spent most of his life working in obscurity. There is scarcely any related information of him, who have been consigned to oblivion both in life and after death. But among a considerable number of his works,The Dandelion Girl, which had been nominated as the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, was an outstanding story that had influenced other writers and impressed thousands of readers with itself. It is a science fiction about time travel and love beyond time and space, which indicates that love is solid and unchanging. Try to seize your love when he or she appears, love is invincible, even time and space could not defeat.
The Dandelion Girl relates the love story between Mark, a forty-four years old man and Julie, a twenty-one year sold girl who actually comes from this city two hundred and forty years from now. At that time Mark has married Anne, who he met twenty years ago but cannot accompany him to travel for she has to serve on a jury. Julie takes time machine back to the past, where she happens to light on Mark. Every day they meet at the same place, having a lively conversation about each other, or about transcendental aesthetic, relativity or everything else resonated with them.
Day by day a sudden surge of love outburst spontaneously. But the tranquil atmosphere is broken by Julie's father’s death. She could not come back as usual because the time machine run down and no one can fix it except her father. From then on, the depressing Mark has never seen her, nor as found out a scrap of evidence to support her existence. Several days past, before Anne comes back Mark discovers suitcase by chance, and he finds the exact dress that Julie has had. Suddenly he figures out that Julie and Anne is exactly the same person who had met him both in his twenties and forties. Her true name may probably be Julianne. He goes out to meet her, they understand each other at first sight without a word.Anne’s fear goes out forever, they walk hand home in hand in the rain.
Julie is Anne as Anne is Julie. Julie had promised Mark that she would be back, and she did. Instead of going back to the next day after they separated apart, she goes to the day when Mark was still at his twenties and his career was merely began. Obviates the reason of defects in the time machine that caused her inability to choose destination, it is highly probable that she chose to do so. As a substitute for being a third party, she wants to change the future after she knows that Mark has a wife, Anne, at the September hill she come across with him so her final time travel’s landing place is the time when Mark is in his twenties, of course at that time she don’t know Anne is herself in a different time.
It is a very courageous decision for her to do so. Not knowing anything about the time she is heading to as well as deserting everything she has had in her time, only to fulfill her promise, or, to pursue her love. That can explain why Anne’s eyes always has fear and not willing to take a photo after she married Mark. It’s not only because she may afraid of time police, but because she’s apprehensive that something might go wrong as a consequence of replacing Anne with herself.
Her father has impart his own concept to her which against to what the time polices believe, though.That is, “The book of time has already been written.”(Young, 74) What is going to happen has already happened, who participates in a past event would become a part of that event. The time polices considered that if one from the future has participate in anything that took place in the past,he may altered the future accidentally as causing time paradox.
Although nonidentical, the time polices’ consideration is similar to the Grandfather Paradox, which indicates that if a person went back to the past and killed his grandfather that would lead to his disappearance from the history and a series of aftermath, could not happen. Besides, her father's own concept is similar to what called Novikov self-consistency principle nowadays, in which the world we inhabit is the end result of the adaption by some forces including time travelers was mentioned.
Meanwhile David Lewis in his discourse The Paradox of Time Travel mentions that it is like there are numerous branches in a tree,enormous branches in separated exist in the time and space line. After one's killing of his grandfather, that grandfather lives in one branch and dies in other while the current time we live contains both branches as the tree. He kills his grandfather and he goes to the branch without his grandfather and could not go back through the original way, while the branch which he and his father still exists.
Therefore in this situation, it seems that it was the person’s murder of his grandfather that the history was rewrote as everything about him is erased from the world. But from a microscopically perspective, he is destined to vanish without a trace in a precise page in the book of time. Or in another branches views, he trapped in the time after he killed his grandfather. It is not his action that makes the history different but his calling that he do so to finish the endless time circle. It is an inevitability for all creatures that their fates were sealed from the beginning of time. If Julie deeply believes in her father’s concept,she may not feel troubled by that.
Another thing that makes Julie distinctly uneasy is the uncertainty of the future, as we humans are sometimes worrying about what our futures would look like. Parts of Mark's future is her past, but she only knows what she has gone through. She cannot foresee her own future. After her final time trip, she become an ordinary girl as everyone in that time. She didn’t know whether Mark would love her in his twenties, still she ventures all she has on this bet. Fortunately everything goes well, but she may still worry about the day at the September hill when she encountered Mark at the first time. Whether the young Julie will appeared on time, or whether Mark will fall in love with her, doubts like that devoured her, until the end of the story she read from Mark’s eyes that things go exactly the same way as she has gone through. Now everything is set as they should be,and she knows that the love between themselves is beyond space and time. No matter how many twists and turns or ups and downs it has and has to undergo,love is there and never changes.
There is also a sentence in this short story that appears six times, “Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.”(Young, Robert Franklin, 75) Randomly Julie meta rabbit and a deer, then Mark hove into sight. Rabbit and deer are animals with soft and fluffy fur making people feel warm and comfortable. It means that in Julie’s eyes Mark is a person who she didn’t detest. Julie’s dream job is to be a secretary, while Mark describe his wife Anne as a very best secretary,which foreshadows that Julie and Anne is the same person. Their meeting and love was destined by the universe. On account of the invincible love, the destiny guides them who are separated by two hundred and forty years to encounter then fall in love with each other, the book of fate had written, and their love continues beyond time and space. At the end of the story everything is as wonderful as expected.
In Young’s another work The Girl Who Made Time Stop, he also depicts a glamorous and attractive story about love and time travel. The heroine Alayne travels from a remote planet. This story is equipped with more science fiction elements such as wodget which is used to detect whether someone is a suitable mate, witch who capture men from earth to their planet and so on. Alayne wants to save Roger form Becky but Roger has totally mentally controlled by Becky. She finally use faster-than-light service to back to the day before Roger met Becky. Everything begins again. (Young) In this case time is not a straight line but a curve one. Alayne altered the past and they are going into a branch which Becky didn’t show up before them. Alayne is clear that if she do so she will cause the disruption of the space-time continuum, she still proceed without hesitation for the impulse to seize her love.
The same subject material of time travel and unchanging love is applied by many films, TV series and animations and literature works. Henry in The Time Traveler’s Wife keep shifting between different points in time, however he is unable to change anything of the past or future. He warlike exiled by time, but he still win Clare’s heart, and her long lasting waiting. Love is something cannot explain by reason, but their waiting, and the courage to risk themselves is because of love.
Time is nothing. Love is invincible and far beyond time and space. Even death could not do them apart for their life is a loop curve. Chances are, they will meet each other in sometimes and places in the past or the future.
Now we are living in the present, time travel to us is still a fantastic dream. But the important thing is that we are certainly exist in the present world, and enjoy the present is another way traveling to the future. The future is coming, we cannot run faster than the light as to literally go ahead of the time, but what we can do is to seize, to chase the one we love in order not to regret.