My dear son, Ed, came with us to see the Time Traveller’s Wife, last night. Afterwards, he had quite a lot to say about the practicalities of time travel and the way it was represented in the film.

Everything he said was right, but then everything he said was wrong. He was only prepared to discuss time travel from the Quantum Mechanics point of view, eventually admitting that Quantum Mechanics is the best explanation of how things work that we have at the moment.

But once, Newtonian Physics was the best explanation and before that Hobgoblins and the Philosopher’s Stone. In their times each theory was the best to hand and therefore, “The Truth.”

Quantum Mechanics only works at quantum levels. In our everyday macro mode, Newtonian Physics still makes the most sense to people who need to keep their feet on the ground. These are models of our Universe, but there are many more. To make the models work, you have to believe in them. At the same time you have to suspend belief in what you can see and feel and touch around you to be able to get a handle on the amazing idea that is Quantum Mechanics.

If we disbelieve the story of Quantum Mechanics, (it does have holes in the plot) then we have to believe something else is at work. That is the wonderful, bonkers nature of humanity – it is just as easy to believe in fairies as it is to believe in gravity being both a wave and a particle at the same time.

One of the possible outcomes of Quantum Theory is the Multiverse, where each and every possible version of history is played out at the same time in an infinite number of “slices”.

Isn’t that how a story works? When a writer sits down to write a story, the plot can go in a million different ways. Different characters and situations exert their own gravity on the plot, pulling it and distorting it every which way. The writer guides us through their best interpretation of the story. The slice that tells the most satisfying version of the story.

They say there are only seven stories. Maybe there are only seven Multiverses and writers merely show us different slices. Each slice a different possibility in time and space for that particular story Multiverse?

When we hear or read a story, we suspend belief and go along with what we are told for the duration of the tale. Sometimes the story makes perfect sense and the story becomes ubiquitous, rewritten and retold over and over again. Sometimes the story doesn’t work – it sits on the shelf where no one reads it – a slice of multiverse that went wrong. It doesn’t mean that another author can’t take the same plot and fashion a more interesting or meaningful version of the same story – show us a different, more satisfying slice of that Multiverse. It happens all the time. Remember – there are only seven stories.

So however much you may argue about the realities of the time travel plot in the Time Traveller’s Wife, The plot works perfectly in this slice of time and space or should I say my slice of time and space? Quantum Physics has a lot to say about the how and by whom events are observed.

Something about the plot is right because it has resonated with the millions who have read the book and seen the film. For those millions, it stands as a unified theory, one they seem to accept and understand for the moment.