History StableTimeLoop / Literature

* Jason Arnopp's ''Literature/TheLastDaysOfJackSparks'', although initially coming off as a story about a straightforward haunting and demonic possession, ends up having a rather potentially grim one: [[spoiler: Jack's ill-mannered interruption of the exorcism in Italy wasn't the beginning of his troubles, not really. His fate was set in stone since at least childhood, if not the beginning of the universe, and ends with his own possible CessationOfExistence as the direct result of his past self's decision to have a Hong Kong exorcist destroy a ghost that was haunting a house boat. The ghost turns out to have been a future version of him, sent back and forth through time by a demon, although the demon ostensibly only did so because he had interrupted the exorcism. His arrogant personality, which led him to interrupt the exorcism, was a function of encountering a ghost in the closet of his childhood him after being trapped in there by his bullying brother - and, of course, that ghost was actually his own time-displaced self, who had been sent back in time after fleeing ''his own future self'' who had been killed by the demon. What's worse is, there may ''actually' be an incomprehensibly grand afterlife where his roommate/potential girlfriend went, but, if so, it's one he may never get to see because he never had a choice.]]

* Jason Arnopp's ''Literature/TheLastDaysofJackSparks'', although initially coming off as a story about a straightforward haunting and demonic possession, ends up having a rather potentially grim one: [[spoiler: Jack's ill-mannered interruption of the exorcism in Italy wasn't the beginning of his troubles, not really. His fate was set in stone since at least childhood, if not the beginning of the universe, and ends with his own possible CessationOfExistence as the direct result of his past self's decision to have a Hong Kong exorcist destroy a ghost that was haunting a house boat. The ghost turns out to have been a future version of him, sent back and forth through time by a demon, although the demon ostensibly only did so because he had interrupted the exorcism. His arrogant personality, which led him to interrupt the exorcism, was a function of encountering a ghost in the closet of his childhood him after being trapped in there by his bullying brother - and, of course, that ghost was actually his own time-displaced self, who had been sent back in time after fleeing ''his own future self'' who had been killed by the demon. What's worse is, there may ''actually' be an incomprehensibly grand afterlife where his roommate/potential girlfriend went, but, if so, it's one he may never get to see because he never had a choice.]]

** Also implied in "The Last Question" ("Can entropy be reversed?") when the Cosmic AC has finally compiled enough data to come up with an answer (despite the end of the Universe) and says [[spoiler: LET THERE BE LIGHT!]]

** Played with extensively in ''Literature/{{Pyramids}}'', particularly in the construction-crew's "doppelgangs" and [[spoiler: Dios's fate]]. The paradoxes entailed are lampshaded when the engineers discuss the option of paying their loop-duplicated workers with loop-duplicated money.

** In ''Literature/IShallWearMidnight'', [[spoiler: elderly Tiffany]] insists this trope is ''not'' in effect, as each iteration of this time-traveller's encounter with young Tiffany will actually result in a different conversation. The fact of their encounter is stable, but the details aren't set in stone.

** The short story collection ''Short Trips: Time Signature'' follows a single piece of [[BrownNote Vortex-threatening music]] through the Doctor's life. Since the book is in extreme AnachronicOrder, following neither the music nor the Doctor linearly, it takes a bit of working out, but essentially the music was sent to the planet where the Doctor first heard it by someone who'd heard it from the Doctor. ([[spoiler: But then the same person helps the Doctor disrupt a key point in the chain, so none of it happens after all. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.]])
** The events of the novel ''The Stone Rose'' begin because Mickey sees a statue of Rose in the British Museum. By the end of the story [[spoiler: the statue still hasn't been made, so the Doctor carves it himself]]. In the same book, a vial of mysterious liquid turns out to have been created by the Doctor, by running the dregs of the vial through the TARDIS's MatterReplicator, and taking the result back in time.

* In ''Draekora'' by Lynette Noni, the protagonist Alex goes back in time, and is explicitly told that she cannot change the past and that anything she does will simply be part of the history she knows. [[spoiler: She ends up playing a significant role in why [[CreateYourOwnVillain her present-day arch-nemesis, Aven, became evil in the first place]].]]

** ''Literature/TheTechnicolorTimeMachine'' hinges on several Stable Time Loops. The premise is that a movie studio is about to go bankrupt, and so in desperation they try funding a seemingly crackpot physicist who's working on a time machine in exchange for the use of the completed model. It works, of course, so they take a camera crew back in time to film a historical about how the Vikings discovered America -- they don't have to pay for sets or actors this way, and they can get the whole film done in a couple of days so they'll be able to show the bank that they have an asset they can monetize when the next loan payment becomes due. When they find the Viking that history says is the discoverer, however, he seems completely uninterested in attempting the journey... until they nudge him with a little bribery and technical assistance. A few other [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Self-Fulfilling Prophecies]] occur later on, including a note that nobody wrote and [[spoiler: a vicious practical joke one of the characters plays on himself in revenge for that same vicious practical joke he played on himself 'earlier.']]

** In ''Literature/TheDoorIntoSummer'', [[spoiler: the protagonist travels into the future and sees machines he's almost sure he invented. So on that hunch, he finds a time-machine that can send him back. He makes some arrangements, returns to the future by [[HumanPopsicle cold sleep]] and lives happily ever after knowing the people who tried to ruin his life got their just desserts.]]

* A millennia-long time loop is central to the plot of Aleksandr Zarevin's ''Lonely Gods of the Universe'', although it's not revealed until the second half of the book. Of course, the characters realize that the time loop is far from stable and will inevitably collapse after 5 or 6 cycles (what that means is anybody's guess), destroying everyone and everything in it. They spend the rest of the novel trying to break out of the time loop, namely by [[spoiler: preventing their births]], while making sure that their present selves stay alive. Let's just say the temporal mechanics get very confusing by the end.

** A debate runs throughout the book about who ''really'' wrote Creator/WilliamShakespeare's plays. At the end of the book, Thursday's dad, a {{time travel}}er, reveals that [[spoiler: no-one ever wrote the plays; when he went back in time to the corresponding period, the plays weren't around. So, he gave them to Creator/WilliamShakespeare to produce. Thursday's dad tells her not to worry about where the plays actually came from, as these things happen often.]]

* ''Literature/WarriorCats'' also features one. In ''Starlight'', the cats find a perfect (and uninhabited by other cats) spot to live. If there had been other cats, they wouldn't have been able to stay there. Later, in ''Long Shadows'', [[spoiler: Jayfeather travels into the past and convinces the cats living there to leave for the mountains, which he could not have done had he not lived there. Then, Rock appears and tells Jayfeather that he remembers that Jay's Wing (the cat everyone mistook Jayfeather for) disappeared after the cats left for the mountains. Because of this, he takes Jayfeather back to his own time, causing his memories of Jay's Wing's disappearance.]] Also, in ''Outcast'', Jayfeather met the Tribe Of Rushing Water, and learned their customs. Then, in ''Sign Of The Moon'', [[spoiler: he travels back to the Ancient Cats and teaches them the Tribe's customs, allowing them to become the Tribe.]]

** The ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'' novels delve into this a few times, with Agent Lucsly specifically noting that they ''hate'' this kind of time travel. Most notably, a long-standing mystery is how Kirk managed to time travel in ''Film/StarTrekTheVoyageHome'' in an old Klingon ship, as the method he used should only be possible with the Enterprise's original engines. In the climax of the second book, [[spoiler:Lucsly assists Kirk during a TimeCrash, which is only solved when Kirk repurposes Lucsly's Technobabble to create a method for any ship engines to time travel]]. Lucsly himself is rather unhappy with this turn of events.

* Creator/TanyaHuff's ''Literature/TheEnchantmentEmporium'' lists a particular story as how the Gale Family got started -- a "horned God" with a woman that would become the first Gale woman. Then, in ''Falling Skies'', it turns out that one of the main characters, in trying to use TimeTravel to bring back one of her cousin's sons to solve the main problem of the book, actually needs to take him back (along with another relative) to become the first Gales. (And a different character is brought back to 'the current day' to actually solve the problem; it turns out the older version had already shown up several times in the story, but they didn't recognize him -- he's a shapeshifter and the older version only used his alt-form.)

* In ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers, George & Harold along with the two Tippys, Sulu, and Crackers battle in various different time eras as they attempt to battle each other. The two Tippys use a nuclear bomb that kills the dinosaurs, George & Harold train some cavemen to paint on walls which invents comics, Tippy uses his freeze ray which causes the Ice Age, and at the climax of the story, the boys' pets destroy the Tippys by blowing up an atomic bomb in a time even before the Universe existed, which in turn causes the Big Bang and forms the Universe.

* ''Literature/{{Dinoverse}}'': Bones from a large dinosaur closely related to 'Tyrannosaurus rex'' were found at a site called the Standing Stones, a series of, well, standing stones. Bertram puts a shard of one of those bones in his science fair project, which accidentally turns out to be a time machine that sends his mind, and those of some people around him, into the past and into the bodies of dinosaurs and [[PteroSoarer a large pterosaur]]. They get a message from the distant future, sixty years after the time machine came on, telling them that their bodies had been in comas for sixty years but someone had found a way to fix things. If they could just get to the site of the Standing Stones, they could go back. On the way there is discussion as to [[WrongTimeTravelSavvy whether they'd already failed]], and when they got to the place there were no stones, plus they got attacked by a large Tyrannosaur and barely managed to kill it. Turns out it was the same dinosaur, and they had to set up the stones themselves before they could go back.

* One book continuity of ''Series/RedDwarf'' or [[BrokenBase the other]] puts Lister as the creator of the universe, having gone back to that point in time to see what happened.

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* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban''. Harry is saved from dementors by a Patronus Charm cast by a mysterious figure who he thinks is his father. After he travels back, he eventually finds himself in the same place and waits for his father to show up... [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast and then realizes HE was the mysterious figure]], and saves himself. In fact, the reason he could cast a true Patronus in that situation was because he realized that he had already done it in the last time loop.[[note]]Lupin later points out that Harry had cast a true Patronus earlier that year during a Quidditch match, and just didn't realize it, so he was already capable.[[/note]] Also, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione first head out to adventure, they hear noises that turn out to be Harry and Hermione as they complete adventure!part I.
** This seems to indicate it is impossible to change history in the Potterverse, as any changes would have already happened, but it does contradict what Hermione tells Harry about having to be careful to avoid killing their past and future selves.
*** Probably it was a mistake made by Creator/JKRowling, who did not consider that killing your past self would prevent the required stable time loop. In-universe, it could be explained by Hermione being nervous or not entirely knowledge about the specifics of the time turner (they are ~13 years old at the time and Hermione is certainly the type to be overly concerned about things like that).

* In Creator/AndreyLivadny's ''Ark'', [[spoiler:all the worlds encountered by the main character turn out to be biospheres built into the titular ''Ark'' for the various alien species on-board, an enormous GenerationShip literally built out of the Moon by humans thousands of years before in order to basically follow the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' mantra. Most of the logs are lost, and the ship's AI has no idea where they are or even what year it is. Without the crew to aid in maintenance, the ''Ark'' is in a dire state of disrepair. They manage to find a yellow dwarf star nearby with a habitable planet. Since the spherical craft was never meant to land (imagine the tidal forces from a Moon-sized object), they are forced to drop it in water in hopes of cushioning the impact. They do as much as they can to brake before hitting the atmosphere. The main character, who is now an electronic consciousness in the ship's computer, separates the command module from the rest of the ship and lets it fly away from the planet with himself and the ship's AI still in it. The ''Ark'' somehow manages not to break apart on impact, although it creates massive tsunamis and empties out the sea they hit. Most of those on-board survive (probably due to some sort of InertialDampening). One of the first people to get out is an old shepherd who introduces himself as Noah. The novel ends with the protagonist returning to the planet after several thousand years and teaching the inhabitants several important values, including "[[Film/TheTenCommandments Thou shalt not kill]]."]]

* Used quite effectively in Creator/SimonRGreen's ''Literature/{{Deathstalker}}'' series. Owen Deathstalker and his companions [[spoiler:receive superpowers by passing through the Madness Maze, an alien artifact built to combat a terrible menace that the aliens knew about. After the protagonist dies his true love, Hazel D'Ark, is driven insane by grief and resolves to go back in time and become so powerful that she can prevent it from happening. It turns out that ''she'' is the horrible unknowable menace the Madness Maze was originally designed to fight.]]
* Comes up in ''Literature/{{Dinoverse}}''. Bones from a large dinosaur closely related to TyrannosaurusRex were found at a site called the Standing Stones, a series of, well, standing stones. Bertram puts a shard of one of those bones in his science fair project, which accidentally turns out to be a time machine that sends his mind, and those of some people around him, into the past and into the bodies of dinosaurs and [[PteroSoarer a large pterosaur]]. They get a message from the distant future, sixty years after the time machine came on, telling them that their bodies had been in comas for sixty years but someone had found a way to fix things. If they could just get to the site of the Standing Stones, they could go back. On the way there is discussion as to [[WrongTimeTravelSavvy whether they'd already failed]], and when they got to the place there were no stones, plus they got attacked by a large Tyrannosaur and barely managed to kill it. Turns out it was the same dinosaur, and they had to set up the stones themselves before they could go back.

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/TheLastContinent'' is essentially a single, but quite complex, one, in which the problem Rincewind has to solve is caused by the wizards accidentally going back in time while looking for him. It also includes Ridcully dismissing Ponder Stibbons' worries about the ButterflyOfDoom (or Ant Of Doom in Ponder's example) by concluding that history ''depends'' on you treading on the ants you've already trodden on.

*** In ''Interesting Times'', Hex answers a problem before it is asked. The wizard in charge eventually enters the problem to appease causality, but not before hiding in the privy for an hour and a half.

** This is often used as a justification for being unable to change history in the Potterverse, but it seems to contradict what Hermione tells Harry in ''Prisoner of Azkaban'' about wizards and witches having to be careful to avoid killing their past and future selves. One can explain this in various ways, but the end result is that canon is not entirely clear.
*** Probably it was a mistake made by Creator/JKRowling, who did not realise that killing your past self would have caused a paradox. In-universe, it could be explained by Hermione being nervous about what they are doing that she makes that mistake -- or else [[FridgeHorror someone made that mistake, but was able to send notice of what he had done]].
*** Or, they could have lied to her.
*** [[TakeAThirdOption Or]] the time-traveler gets killed when traveling back in time, resulting in their past self dying as well when they reach that point in time...[[TimeTravelTenseTrouble Damn, I hope that sounded right...]]

* In ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers, George & Harold along with the two Tippys, Sulu, and Crackers battle in various different time eras as they attempt to battle each other. The two Tippys use a nuclear bomb that kills the dinosaurs, George & Harold train some cavemen to paint on walls which invents comics, Tippy uses his freeze ray which cuases the ice age, and at the climax of the story, the boys' pets destroy the Tippys by blowing up an atomic bomb in a time even before the Universe existed, which in turn causes the Big Bang and forms the Universe.

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/TheLastContinent'' is essentially a single, but quite complex, one, in which the problem Rincewind has to solve is caused by the wizards accidentally going back in time while looking for him. It also includes Ridcully dismissing Ponder Stibbons' worries about the ButterflyOfDoom (or Ant Of Doom in Ponder's example) by concluding that history ''depends'' on you treading on the ants you've already trodden on.

** ''Discworld/NightWatch'' subverts a Stable Time Loop: there was a real Sergeant Keel the first time around, but Vimes' and Carcer's arrival from the future gets him killed ahead of schedule. Vimes must [[TrickedOutTime assume Keel's role]] to ''force'' stability on the Loop, and while the general outcome is the same, several of the specific events are different.

** In ''Discworld/{{Eric}}'', Rincewind travels back in time to before life existed on the Discworld, and drops a partially eaten sandwich in a tidepool. The microorganisms in the tidepool become the ancestors of all life on the Discworld, including Rincewind (but not including the sandwich ingredients, because the sandwich didn't originate from Discworld; it was given to Rincewind by the creator of the universe).
** Played with extensively in ''Discworld/{{Pyramids}}'', particularly in the construction-crew's "doppelgangs" and [[spoiler: Dios's fate]]. The paradoxes entailed are lampshaded when the engineers discuss the option of paying their loop-duplicated workers with loop-duplicated money.
** In ''Discworld/SoulMusic'', Susan travels to the past and sees her father fight Death at the conclusion of ''Discworld/{{Mort}}''. Death spots her watching and recognizes her as the child of Mort and Ysabell, which convinces TheGrimReaper to stabilize the loop and spare his apprentice so the girl he's just spotted can be born.

** In ''Discworld/IShallWearMidnight'', [[spoiler: elderly Tiffany]] insists this trope is ''not'' in effect, as each iteration of this time-traveller's encounter with young Tiffany will actually result in a different conversation. The fact of their encounter is stable, but the details aren't set in stone.

* Due to the ease of time travel in the setting, Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'' trilogy predictably features a few standard loops, but because of the nature of spacetime (time is fundamentally no different from the dimensions of space, and spacetime is a WrapAround, probably in the shape of a four-dimensional torus or sphere), the ''entire universe'' actually exists as a massive [[StableTimeLoop Stable Spacetime Loop]]. One of the more interesting implications of this is that not only does the universe periodically have a [[EternalRecurrance Big Crunch followed by a Big Bang]], but every time it happens, it's actually literally the ''same event''.

** The short story collection ''Decalog 2: Consequences'' has the gimmick that the Doctor's actions in one story trigger the events of the next story. And, of course, the events of the last story trigger the events of the first.

* The exploits of Thot Tran in the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse. His attempted recovery of a crashed Alternate Universe starship from Tirana III in ''Literature/StarTrekColdEquations'' is a failure, costing the Breen vast amounts of money and resources, as well as embarrassing them politically. This failure leads to his fellow Breen Thot Trom penetrating the alternate universe in ''Literature/StarTrekSection31Disavowed'' - where he ends up hijacking a starship and being sent several years into the past, crashing the ship on Tirana III. Realizing in his last moments that he is responsible for the entire wasteful affair in every way, Trom spends those moments [[LaughingMad laughing crazily]]. As for Tran, he defects to an allied nation.