The Use of Time Travel in 'The Langoliers'

Time travel annoys me.  Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great fiction out there that involves time travel.  But try as the writers might, it will inevitably result in the reader or viewer getting a headache.  Even movies like 12 Monkeys or Back to the Future, which actually do a good job of putting thought into their use of it and the resulting impact end up with paradoxes. 

So far, the only work I have come across that portrays a non-headache inducing use of time travel is King's short story The Langoliers.  In it, a plane full of passengers inadvertently fly through a rip in the space time continuum.  The rip is never explained, but it's a moot point.

In the past, there are no people, food is flavorless and things don't work, whether they be appliances, lighters, or batteries.  You can't affect anything.  Rather than having an endless string of "yesterday's worlds", these past items are consumed by strange creatures that the characters dub "Langoliers".

Look at those buggers, they don't screw around.  They consume everything again and again leaving an empty void for the present to fill.  Actually, that's their sole purpose.  They're pretty much just giant mouths with razor sharp teeth to eat anything and everything.

There are no alternate timelines or inevitable paradoxes to be created by the presence of present characters in the past.  You can't go back and kill your grandfather nor can you leave technology for scientists to study and replicate.

Even the tear is restricted.  Anyone who is awake while flying through the tear disappears forever.  You have to be asleep in order to travel through..  This becomes an important plot point near the end of the story.

One interesting aspect is the "present" being contained in the plane.  Taking items on the plane restores the life they once had.  This is really the only way to have a lasting impact through time travel and even that doesn't cause any headaches.

Time travel is tricky..  Even the best of writers have trouble containing the paradoxes and questions that would arise from a story that involves altering the timeline.  King managed to make it work simply by eliminating the possibility of making any lasting changes to the timeline.

The only thing I don't get is the ending.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it.  But if the characters really ended up where they did, I'm fairly certain it wouldn't work like that.  It would've been interesting had he left them in the current state before it was negated in order to make for the happy ending.  It's true Army of Darkness did it for their alternate ending, but that's no reason why King couldn't put his own spin on it.

Time travel rarely works in such a way that readers don't get headaches.  Short of using parallel dimensions, paradoxes will be an inevitable result no matter how hard you try to avoid it.