Circa AD 1600 to 1699

Tag Area: Era
Short Story

The Left-Handed Sword

  • by E. Nesbit
  • in These Little Ones (George Allen and Sons, 1909)

After many previous attempts at prying a stone out of the overgrown castle arch, young Sir Hugh de Vere Coningsby Drelincourt finally succeeds and discovers a portal to the past where he becomes young 17th century Sir Hugh. —Michael Main
Through into a little room whose narrow window showed the blue day-lit sky—a room with not much in it but a bed, a carved stool, and a boy of his own age, dressed in the kind of dress you see in the pictures of the little sons of Charles the First.
A row of three jestors dance across the top while two fairies fly away
                with a possible necklace below.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

The Search


When salesman Ralph Carson Drake tries to recover his missing memory of the past two weeks, he discovers he had interactions with three people: a woman named Selanie Johns who sold remarkable futuristic devices for one dollar, her father, and an old gray-eyed man who is feared by Selanie and her father.

Van Vogt combined this with two other stories and a little fix-up material for his 1970 publication of Quest for the Future. —Michael Main
The Palace of Immortality was built in an eddy of time, the only known Reverse, or Immortality, Drift in the Earth Time Stream
Pen-and-ink drawing of a man descending a staircase into fog.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Vintage Season


More and more strange people are appearing each day in and around Oliver Wilson’s home; the explanation from the euphoric redhead leads him to believe they are time travelers gathering for an important event. —Michael Main
Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a broad metal bowl containing steaming liquid.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #2

The Pact


Frances Conrad learns the dark truth about an unholy pact made by his ancestor from the horse’s mouth itself. —Michael Main
The year is 1693, the month is June, and the day is the fifteenth. Come and watch with me.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novelette

Travel Diary


Travel diary of blasé tourists around the Solar System, to other stars, back in time to the Great Fire of London and to another galaxy. —Dave Hook
A spaceship with six rockets lifts from a stark landscape with a red and green
                planet in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Future Science Fiction, February 1960

Through Other Eyes


Although the story is not about time travel, the characters do spend the first couple of pages reminiscing about their disappointing experiences with a time machine. —Fred Galvin
“And watching the great Pythagorous at work.”
“And the three days that he spent on that little surveying problem. How one longed to hand him a slide-rule through the barrier and explain its working.”
Pen-and-ink drawing of the head of a man staring forward while others parade
                beside him in futuristic dress.
  • Science Fiction
  • Cameo Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Czarna komnata profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga's black room
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) the year before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]

Professor Tarantoga saves human civilization! After using his chronopad to investigate the leading scientists and artists in history, Tarantoga concludes that without exception they are lazy drunkards. So naturally, he sends smart young people into various eras to invent differential calculus, to paint the Mona Lisa, etc.—all while a pair of police inspectors have their eye on him. —based on Wikipedia
A pencil sketch of an odd bird standing on the head of a dog-like robot
                with a full moon in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #47

The Unwelcome Guest


After a car accident, Steve Teller stumbles into a house that takes him from one time to another. —Michael Main
Open up! I’ve had enough of this! Whatever crazy explanation there is, I want it now!
Standing in front of a medieval knight, a startled man exclaims "I . . . I must
                be dreaming."
  • Horror
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s03e23)

All Our Yesterdays


The three principal Trekkers find themselves on a planet where everyone is being evacuated to the past to escape an impending supernova. —Michael Main
Spock! You’re reverting into your ancestors, five thousand years before you were born!
In an icy cave, Leonard Nimoy (as Spock) places his hands on Mariette Harley
                (as Zarabeth) for a Vulcan mind meld.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Time Machine


For me, the update to the 1970s took this made-for-TV movie too far away from the original novel. For example, the Traveller (now a rocket scientist called Neil Perry) explains the workings of the machine with gibberish, whereas the original Traveller expressed himself with up-to-date mathematical terminology. The travel to the Salem witch trials and the California gold rush were also off the mark, as was the dreamy Weena who immediately speaks English. —Michael Main
Well, in principle, it utilizes a electromagnetic force field to molecularly reconstruct the space-time continuum.
John Beck (as the traveler) and Priscilla Barnes (as Weena) appear behind a
                triangular, metal time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Warlock I

Warlock


A captured warlock in 1691 Massachusetts is thrown forward 300 years to Los Angeles with warlock-hunter Giles Redferne in hot pursuit. Twentieth century chase ensues with pretty nurse Kassandra aiding the hunter. —Michael Main
A grand grimore? Here? Now?
A neatly dressed, barefooted Julian Sands (as the Warlock) casts a demonic
                shadow.
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

The Magic Tree House 25

Stage Fright on a Summer Night


The two young tree house time travelers go to the Globe Theatre in Shakespearian times where they play the parts of two fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and discover their first kind of magic without wands. —Michael Main
“’Tis,” said Wil “The queen pretends to be young and beautiful. Just as you pretended to be a boy, and the bear pretended to be an actor. You see, all the world’s a stage.”
Dressed in colorful green garb, young Jack and Annie take bows on a
                Shakespearian stage.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

The Magic Tree House 27

Thanksgiving on Thursday


Jack and Annie visit the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they learn little things about the pilgrims’ way of life and big things about the magic of community and being kind. —Michael Main
Be kind to those who feel different and afraid.
Dressed as pilgrims, young Jack and Annie carry a large pumpkin and a basket of
                gourds and corn down a dirt road in front of colorful autumn trees.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Magic Tree House: Merlin Mission 9*

Dragon of the Red Dawn


When Merlin is weighed down by sorrows, Jack and Annie travel back to feudal Japan to learn one of the four secrets of happiness. —based on fandom.com
Standing on the edge of a cliff in the clouds, frightened Annie and Jack face a
                golden dragon breathing blue fire.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novelette

Magic Tree House: Merlin Mission 17*

A Crazy Day with Cobras


The magic tree house whisks Jack and Annie back to India during the Mogul Empire in the 1600s to search for an emerald needed to break a magic spell. —based on fandom.com
Appearing as tiny fairies in colorful garb, young Annie and Jack face down two
                menacing cobras.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Last Musketeer 1

The Last Musketeer

  • by Stuart Gibbs
  • (HarperCollins, September 2011) [print · e-book]

While chasing the cad who stole his family’s prized black crystal, young Greg Rich ends up back in AD 1615 where he and three future Musketeers must save Greg’s parents from Dominic Richelieu (the cardinal’s evil brother) and the deadly prison known as La Mort. —Michael Main
When joined as a whole, the Devil’s Stone was rumored to perform many miracles: strike people dead in an instant, turn lead into gold, even open portals in time.
A boy dressed in a long sleeve shirt with a short sleeve shirt on top leads the
                way down a dark alley with two Musketeers behind.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

冰封俠: 重生之門

  • Bing feng: Chong sheng zhi men
  • Iceman: The gate of rebirth
  • Iceman
  • by 林逢 and 胡耀輝, directed by 羅永昌
  • (at movie theaters, Hong Kong, 17 April 2014)

In the 1989 original, 急冻奇侠::The Iceman Cometh, the villian and his persuer to the 0th century, but in this remake, the four travelers come to the present via a 300-year frozen sleep. No actual time travel occurs. —Michael Main
Donnie Yen (as Ho Ying) stands at the head of a group of five ancient warriors
                with modern guns and ancient swords as helicopters circle overhead.
  • Comedy
  • Martial Arts
  • Time Phenomena
Novel

Witchcraft Mysteries 6

A Vision in Velvet

  • by Juliet Blackwell
  • (Obsidian Mystery, July 2014) [print · e-book] [Publisher—Goodreads lists the e-book edition with ISBN 9781101627983 as being published by Signet/Penguin, but a preview on Amazon shows the publication under the Kindle edition with that exact ISBN as bering published as An Obsidian Mystery, which is an imprint of the Penguin Group. The preview also notes that the first printing was by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a dividsion of Penguin Group. For now, we'll go with the preview info and list both the print and the e-book as being Obsidian Mysteries, both published in July 2014.]

To save her pet pig/gargoyle/familiar, shopkeeper and fabric whisperer Lily Ivory must solve a mystery using clues picked up via a traveling cloak that spirits her off to the Salem witch trials. —Inmate Jan
The cape was in the trunk. When I put it on . . . It’s hard to explain, but it was as though I had been transported to another time and place.
A colorful drawing of a young woman with long, unruly hair wearing a cape near
                a purple tree with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

How to Stop Time


As a 400-something-year-old member of the Albatross Society, Tom Hazard ages less than a month for each year of life. But now, after falling in the 21st-century and butting heads with the Society, he seems to be on a mental trip that covers his entire life (but not an actual time traveling trip). —Michael Main
But as time goes by, at birthdays or other annual markers, people begin to notice you aren’t getting any older.
A silhouette dog and man sit on a sandy beach inside an hourglass, withg a
                giant rose growing up through the hourglass like a beanstalk.
  • Fantasy
  • No Time Phenomena
Novel

Found Things #1

The Little Shop of Found Things


Xanthe Westlake and her mother are looking for a fresh start as owners of an antique shop in the village of Marlborough when a 17th century silver chanelaine calls to Xanthe’s psychic powers and eventually takes her on a quest to save a young servant girl in 1605 (and maybe, in the process, meet a handsome young architect with oddly modern views on women). —Michael Main
Had she somehow crucially alterted her own present by changing Alice’s future? The thought that she might have started some terrible chain of events that she could not possibly have foreseen, nor known about, worried her more and more. It was only in the small hours of Wednesday night that an answer came to her that seemed to make sense. The present that she knew, the way things were in her time, could only have come about if she had traveled back to the past. Her finding the chatelaine, her answering Alice’s call for help, those things were necessary to shape the past and bring about the future as it was. She had to believe this. It did work. She was a part of how things had turned out, not an alternative version, but the one she was meant to live in. If she hadn’t gone back, hadn’t taken the decision to help Alice, well, that wouldhave resulted in a different future from the one she knew.
The door and bowed window of an antiques store, both made of small window
                panels, face a sidewalk of stone pavers.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 4

Phantoms and Phonographs

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, March 2019) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone for several weeks. There is a party at the Keystone Inn, in honor of the mayorial candidates. It has a 1920s murder-mystery game for the theme (don’t ask me why). Of course, soon Ella discovers Charles, one of the mayorial candidates, in the basement—murdered. —Tandy Ringoringo
Flo’s tower of hair bobbled as she moved to a different cabinet. After not-so-gracefully shoving folders aside, she came out with a medium-sized binder with the year 1961 printed on the front. It threw Ella for a moment before she realized 1961 was the year she currently resided in, although Keystone had been cut off from the outside world for ten years, thereby making it a time capsule of the early 1950s.

She shook away the impending headache that hit anytime she tried to keep straight the time travel aspect of the town.
An old-time phonograph and a gun on a street of small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Ottoman Secret


Secret police agent Kamal teams with his sister-in-law Nisreen, fleeing through time from pursuing gunmen who killed Nisreen’s family because toprotect the secret that their world was created by a violent temporal disruptor who altered history in favor of an autocratic Islam theocracy. —Michael Main
Nisreen: I want to know how it is different and why he wanted to change it. Don’t you see? That’s how the world was supposed to be.

Ramazan: Assuming no one else had gone back and changed things before he did.
A man and a woman flee under a red Turkish flag that hangs from the Eiffel
                tower.
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

Arthur Travels Back in Time


Arthur the fearless dog travels to different times in a large blue cannister. The story is written in verse that ignores meter and uses rhymes that don’t quite work. —Ruthie Mariner
With sights on events his eyes have never seen, Arthur is ready for his new time machine.
A dog wearing clothes and a red cape leaps onto a cannister-shaped time
                machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Best. Scientist. EVER.


You head out on a quick, rollicking ride back through time, with an unknown pursuer and an ambiguous conclusion. —Tandy Ringoringo
You come to the conclusion that you can correct everything if you stop yourself before you steal the time machine.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

WandaVision


I don't understand this power, but I will.
No image currently available.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel