Wiktionary
n. (context science fiction mythology English) A metaphorical conception of time as a stream, or flowing body of water.
Wikipedia
The timestream or time stream is a metaphorical conception of time as a stream, a flowing body of water. In Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, the term is more narrowly defined as: "the series of all events from past to future, especially when conceived of as one of many such series". Timestream is the normal passage or flow of time and its historical developments, within a given dimension of reality. The concept of the time stream, and the ability to travel within and around it, are the fundamentals of a genre of science fiction.
This conception has been widely used in mythology and in fiction.
This analogy is useful in several ways:
- Streams flow only one way. Time moves only forward.
- Streams flow constantly. Time never stops.
- People can stand in a stream, but will be pulled along by it. People exist within time, but move with it.
- Some physicists and science fiction writers have speculated that time is branching—it branches into alternate universes (see many-worlds interpretation). Streams can converge and also diverge.
Science fiction scholar Andrew Sawyer writes, "The paradoxes of time — do we move in time, or does it move by us? Does it exist or is it merely an illusion of our limited perception? — are puzzles that exercise both physicists and philosophers..."
Usage examples of "timestream".
But if it is permitted, we wish to observe the completion of the blocking sphere to assure our leaders that no further disruptions will occur in the timestream.
Hazels that might have been from other timestreams, all of them grinning nastily at the prospect of battle.
Basic theory, however, suggests that a level of radiation this high and this steady is more likely the result of an earlier disruption so great that the timestream was rendered incapable of stabilizing itself and therefore continues to generate high levels of chronometric radiation.
Although no one knew what they were, several theories had been advanced to explain the sightings, the most popular being that they themselves were chrononauts, yet from farther up the timestream.
Curtains, cushion covers and lampshades are all good litmus indicators for a slight diversion in the timestream – the way canaries are used down the mines or goldfishes to predict earthquakes.