If you went back in time to before you were born to kill your parents, what would happen?

Why don't you try it and let us know?

SF writers have been playing with this idea for years.  Some of
the better variants are Heinlein's "All You Zombies" and "By His
Bootstraps", and Gerrold's _The Man Who Folded Himself_.  There
are many other time-travel stories, of course, but these concentrate
on the paradoxical aspect.

In fact, the paradox seems to be good reason to think time travel
is not possible.

-- Dale Johannesen <dale@hal.COM>

There was a physics paper (I don't remember the reference) that showed
(in the context of a billiard table with time travel) that there's a
fixpoint in the appropriate space (that is, there's a set of paths for
all the balls that's consistent).

-- Seth Breidbart <sethb@panix.com>