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I'm kind of a fan of time travel stories, so I got a little disappointed with
_Steins;Gate_.

According to
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#Time_travel_in_fiction),

> Time travel themes in science fiction and the media can generally be grouped
> into three categories: immutable timeline; mutable timeline; and alternate
> histories, as in the interacting-many-worlds interpretation.

When they explained timelines in the show, I got the idea of the timelines
being alternate, but then we got all of this "Alpha/Beta timeline", and that
goes more with the immutable timelines, with some alternate-difficult-to-reach
timelines.

And at the end, Okabe couldn't change the beta timeline, except if he cheated
himself (which would make the timeline mutable)...

So, did the scriptwriters just cherry-picked things as they felt it could add
more drama? (For example, I was telling myself all the time: if Kurisu dies in
timeline beta, and Mayuri dies in timeline alpha... wouldn't the solution be
going to timeline Gamma?!)

Am I missing something?


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question
steins-gate
What time travel category applies on Steins;Gate?


_Steins;Gate_ mainly works with mutable timelines with an infinite amount of
world lines and borrows many time travel concepts, primarily the black hole
theory, to mix into the story.

In _Steins;Gate_ , the time travel theory consists of mutable timelines and
alternate timelines. However, Okarin is the only one that is aware of the
changes in the mutable timeline. For everyone else, their memories are only
from the timeline that they're in. Also, there are some events that cannot be
changed in the mutable timeline and are limited to the current timeline,

> such as Mayuri's death.

However, there are alternate timelines, revealed as attractor fields. The main
timeline changes to another alternate timeline when there is a major event,
and yet Okarin is the only one that is aware when this happens.

So there are limits to changing the past in the current timeline and can only
be changed with a major shift to one of the other alternate timelines.

To clear things up, the current timeline follows the rules of a mutable
timeline. The past can be changed to some degree and people's memories change
accordingly. If there are enough of major changes in the current timeline, it
converges into an alternate timeline which has different limits to changing
the past.


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