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The Internet Time Travel Database

Circa AD 1930 to 1939

Time Periods

The Heat Wave

by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord
Two stories, millennia apart, connected by office worker Paul Feron in a 20th-century New York heatwave and Roman gladiator Ferronius in a heatwave of his own. Time travel? Or a dream?
— Michael Main
A dazzling streak of lightning, a mighty clap of thunder, and Paul Feron, suddenly awakened, sprang to his feet with white face and staring eyes. What had happened? God, what had happened?
“The Heat Wave” by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord, in Munsey’s Magazine, April 1929.

Phantoms of Reality

by Ray Cummings
The blurb for the story sets it in “the fourth dimension,” but alas, this refers to a parallel universe, not time travel for Charlie Wilson and his English friend, Captain Derek Mason.
— Michael Main
I have for years been working on the theory that there is another world, existing here in this same space with us. The Fourth Dimension!
“Phantoms of Reality” by Ray Cummings, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1930.

Creatures of the Light

by Sophie Wenzel Ellis
A Teutonic scientist attempts to create a race of artificially created superman who, among other things, can jump a few seconds through time, but only as invisible witnesses to the future goings-on. The story is disturbingly prescient of Nazi ideas of an Aryan Herrenvolk.
— Michael Main
Before Northwood’s horrified sight, he vanished; vanished as though he had turned suddenly to air and floated away.
“Creatures of the Light” by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930.

The Thief of Time

by Captain S. P. Meek
The brilliant Dr. Bird might well give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money when solving cases that involved modern science as does the case of the money that disappeared from a teller’s cage right before his eyes. Alas, the solution involved no time travel, but it did involve a time-related phenomenon made famous in a story by an author whose notoriety in sf circles exceeds even that of Holmes’s creator.
— Michael Main
“But someone must have taken it,” said the bewildered cashier. “Money doesn’t just walk off of its own accord or vanish into thin air—"
“The Thief of Time” by Captain S. P. Meek, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930.

The Atom-Smasher

by Victor Rousseau
We've got the evil Professor Tode (who modifies an atom-smasher into a time machine that travels to the Palaeolithic and to Atlantis), a fatherly older professor, his beautiful young daughter (menaced by evil Tode), casually written racist pronouncements (by Rousseau), and our hero scientist, the dashing Jim Dent. But my favorite sentence was the brief description of quantum mechanics, which I didn’t expect in a 1930 science fiction tale.
— Michael Main
The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door.
“The Atom-Smasher” by Victor Rousseau, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May 1930.

Silver Dome

by Harl Vincent
In an underground city, Queen Phaestra uses a past-viewing machine of vague nature to show the destruction of Atlantis to two good-hearted men. But Atlantis itself is not visited, and there are no time phenomena apart from the viewing.
— Michael Main
This is accomplished by means of extremely complex vibrations penetrating earth, metals, buildings, space itself, and returning to our viewing and sound reproducing spheres to reveal the desired past or present occurrences at the point at which the rays of vibrations are directed.
“Silver Dome” by Harl Vincent, in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930.

Just Imagine

by B. G. De Sylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, directed by David Butler
Long before there was R2D2, there were RT-42, J-21, and other humans zipping around in their 1980s-era flying cars, racing off to Mars in their personal rockets, and waking a man named Peterson (or, as they say, “Single O”) who was struck down by lightning fifty years earlier. Alas, this is just a long-sleep story, but still worth listing for its historical value.
— Michael Main
Well, her boss, Dr. X-10, is trying to bring a man to life who’s been dead fifty years!
Just Imagine by B. G. De Sylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, directed by David Butler (at movie theaters, USA, 23 November 1930).

2 stories (1931–1931)

Tommy Reames in the Fifth-Dimension

by Murray Leinster
In the first novella (“The Fifth-Dimension Catapult”), physicist Tommy Reames and mechanic Smithers must rebuild the broken machinery that’s catapulted Professor Denham and his beautiful daughter into a parallel dimension of vicious jungle people, strange life forms, and a beautiful golden city. And gadzooks! In the second novella (“The Fifth-Dimension Tube”), the vicious fifth-dimensioners invade Earth! But despite the suggestive titles and citations of both stories in Nahin’s Time Machine, the stories involve only handwaving about time and space dimensions, minor enough that we don’t even count it as a time phenomenon.
— based on Frank J. Bleiler
Because the article on dominant coordinates had appeared in the Journal of Physics and had dealt with a state of things in which the normal coordinates of everyday existence were assumed to have changed their functions; when the coordinates of time, the vertical, the horizontal and the lateral changed places and a man went east to go up and west to go “down” and ran his streat-numbers in a fourth dimension.
Tommy Reames in the Fifth Dimension, 2 stories by Murray Leinster, 2 stories, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1931 and January 1933.

The Meteor Girl

by Jack Williamson
When a meteor lands on the beachfront airfield of our narrator and his partner Charlie King, Charlie realizes that it provides a space-time portal through which they view the death-at-sea of Charlie’s ex-fiancée.
— Michael Main
A terrestrial astronomer may reckon that the outburst on Nova Persei occurred a century before the great fire of London, but an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with equal accuracy that the great fire occurred a century before the outburst on the Nova.
“The Meteor Girl” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, March 1931.

A Connecticut Yankee

by William M. Conselman, Owen Davis, and Jack Moffitt, directed by David Butler
This version of Twain’s story borrows some sf tropes from Shelley’s Frankenstein (a mad scientist) and Kipling’s “Wireless” (recovering sound from the past), although all that is small potatoes next to Will Rogers’ folksy wit. His character—Hank “Martin—is tossed back to Camelot when a bolt of lightning and a suit of armor knock him over at the mad scientist’s lab, and at the end, he returns via a similar timeslip. In between, we get one-liners, tommy guns, tanks, cars, characters that are eerily familiar from Martin’s present-day life—and a lot of time to debate whether this version has a real timeslip or is just a dream.
— Michael Main
Think! Think of hearing Lincoln’s own voice delivering the Gettysburg address!
A Connecticut Yankee by William M. Conselman, Owen Davis, and Jack Moffitt, directed by David Butler (at movie theaters, USA, 6 April 1931).

The End of Time

by Wallace West
It would seem that the only people on Earth whose perception of time hasn’t ground to a stop are the three—Dr. Manthis, his golden-haired daughter June, and radio engineer Jack Baron—who took Manthis’s hashish injection. But how are they to bring the rest of humanity back to speed?
— Michael Main
Think a minute. If the watch seems running double speed that would indicate that your perception of its movements had slowed down fifty per cent.
“The End of Time” by Wallace West, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1933.

Wanderer of Infinity

by Harl Vincent
When Joan Carmody sends a plea to her ex-boyfriend Bert Redmond, he barrels from Indiana to upstate New York in a trice, only to see Joan and her borderline-mad brother Tom kidnapped by metal monsters from another dimension. Fortunately, a mourning, immortal wanderer through time and space also sees the abduction and fills in Bert with all the salient details and some unsalient ones, too.
— Michael Main
“We are here only as onlookers,” the Wanderer explained sadly, “and can have no material existence here. We can not enter this plane, for there is no gateway. Would that there were.”
“Wanderer of Infinity” by Harl Vincent, in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1933.

Berkeley Square

by Sonya Levien and John L. Balderston, directed by Frank Lloyd
Leslie Howard reprises his dual role of two Peter Standishes from the 1929 Broadway stage performance of Balderston’s Berkeley Square, which in turn was loosely based on Henry James’s unfinished novel The Sense of the Past. The timeslips result in 18th-century Peter exchanging places with his 20th-century version, and they occur via thunderstorms and an overpowering belief by present-day Peter that the house and a diary he found there are somehow calling him to the past.
— Michael Main
I believe that when I go back to my house at Berkeley Square at half past five tonight, I shall walk straight into the 18th century and meet the people living there.
Berkeley Square by Sonya Levien and John L. Balderston, directed by Frank Lloyd (premiered at an unknown movie theater, New York City, 13 September 1933).

Ancestral Voices

by Nat Schachner
Time traveler Emmet Pennypacker kills one ancient Hun without realizing who will disappear from the racist world of 1935.
— Michael Main
The year of grace 1935! A dull year, a comfortable year! Nothing much happened. The depression was over; people worked steadily at their jobs and forgot that they had every starved; Roosevelt was still President of the United States; Hitler was firmly ensconced in Germany; France talked of security; Japan continued to defend itself against China by swallowing a few more provinces; Russia was about to commence on the third Five Year Plan, to be completed in two years; and, oh, yes—Cuba was still in revolution.
“Ancestral Voices” by Nat Schachner, Astounding, December 1933.

Terror Out of Time

by Jack Williamson
Until I started reading 1930s pulps, I didn’t realize how ubiquitous were the scientist with a beautiful daughter and her adventurous fiancé. This story has Dr. Audrin, his machine (to project the brain of a present-day man forty million years into the future and possibly bring another mind back), his beautiful daughter Eve, and her manly fiancé, Terry Webb. Manly Webb agrees to be the test subject for the machine, much to the dismay of beautiful Eve.
— Michael Main
I must have a subject. And there is a certain—risk. Not great, now, I’m sure. My apparatus is improved. But, in my first trial, my subject was—injured. I’ve been wondering, Mr. Webb, if you—
“Terror Out of Time” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, December 1933.

The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator

by Murray Leinster
Pete Davidson has inherited all the properties of an uncle who had been an authority on the fourth dimension, including the Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator that can pull copies of matches, coins, dollar bills, fiancées, and kangaroos out of the past.
— Michael Main
“These,” said Pete calmly, “are my fiancée.”
“The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator” by Murray Leinster, Astounding, December 1935.

When Knights Were Bold

by Douglas Furber and Austin Parker, directed by Jack Raymond
In this first talkie adaptation of the 1906 play, Sir Guy sings a song about his love Lady Rowena and immediately falls asleep, only to appear in the Age of Chivalry, where he tap dances (still attired in his 20th century tuxedo) and is now beguiled by Rowena of days gone by.
— Michael Main
♫ Then let me dream and never awake until I make you mine ♫ . . . Ah, Rowena [falls asleep]
When Knights Were Bold by Douglas Furber and Austin Parker, directed by Jack Raymond (at movie theaters, London, 19 February 1936).

The Land Where Time Stood Still

by Arthur Leo Zagat
Twentieth-century American Ronald Stratton and Arthurian damsel Elaise find themselves in a land with people from all ages as well as predators from the 400th century.

This may be the earliest use of something akin to a “wheel of time.”

Time’s all mixed up. It’s as if the universe were the rim of a great wheel, whirling through Time. As if, somehow, we have left that rim, shot inward along different spokes whose outer ends are different years, far apart, and reached the wheel’s axis where all the year-spokes join. The center point of the hub, that doesn’t move at all through Time, because it is the center. Where there is no Time. Where the past and the present and the future are all one. A land, in some weird other dimension, where Time stands still.
“The Land Where Time Stood Still” by Arthur Leo Zagat, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1936.

Sands of Time 1

The Sands of Time

by P. Schuyler Miller
Terry Donovan realizes that it’s possible to travel through time in 60,000,000-year increments, so naturally he travels back to the Cretaceous where he meets dinosaurs and aliens.

This story was under Tremaine’s Astounding editorship, but the sequel, “Coils of Time,” (May 1939) appeared after Campbell became editor.

— Michael Main
Incidentally, I have forgotten the most important thing of all. Remember that Donovan’s dominating idea was to prove to me, and to the world, that he had been in the Cretaceous and hobnobbed with its flora and fauna. He was a physicist by inclination, and had the physicist’s flair for ingenious proofs. Before leaving, he loaded a lead cube with three quartz quills of pure radium chloride that he had been using in a previous experiment, and locked the whole thing up in a steel box.
“Sands of Time” by P. Schuyler Miller, in Astounding Stories, April 1937.

Portrait of Jennie

by Robert Nathan
In 1938, painter Eben Adams struggles to find his muse and put food on the table until a young girl named Jennie appears to him from some two decades earlier, beseeching him to wait for her. Over the next few months of visitations in Eben’s time, Jennie grows into her twenties, and Eben falls in love with his muse.
— Michael Main
Never before had it occurred to me to ask myself why the sun should rise each morning on a new day instead of upon the old day over again; or to wonder how much of what I did was really my own to do. It may be that here on this earth we are not grateful enough for our ignorance, and our innocence. We think that there is only one road, one direction—forward; and we accept it, and press on. We think of God, we think of the mystery of the universe, but we do not think about it very much, and we do not really believe that it is a mystery, or that we could not understand it if it were explained to us.
Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan (Alfred A. Knopf, 1940).

The Lake

by Ray Bradbury
In this tragic tale, Doug returns to the lakeshore where a decade before, at age twelve, he built sandcastles with Tally, his first love.
— Michael Main
Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest.
“The Lake” by Ray Bradbury, in Weird Tales, May 1944.

Portrait of Jennie

by Paul Osborn et al. , directed by William Dieterle
Unlike the original novella, only Eben can see Jennie, bringing up the possibility that she is but a ghost. The ghost theory is supported by her mild premonitions of their evenutal fate (which also differs in some ways from the novella), but we nevertheless hold out some hope that director (and the revolving cadre of five writers) intended the film to portray Jennie’s time travel.
— Michael Main
There’s something different about that child. I wondered if my pencil could catch it.
Portrait of Jennie by Paul Osborn et al. , directed by William Dieterle (premiered at an unknown movie theater, Los Angeles, 25 December 1948).

Journey into Mystery #42

Life Sentence!

by Carl Wessler and Robert Q. Sale
Leo Sampsom is a four-time thief serving a life sentence. So what has he got to lose when a strange man offers him a pill that will put him back into his own body right before his last theft?
— Michael Main
But what if those pills really work? I’d be out of prison . . . free, back twenty years!
“Life Sentence!” by Carl Wessler and Robert Q. Sale, in Journey into Mystery #42 (Atlas Comics, December 1956).

The Twilight Zone (r1s01e05)

Walking Distance

by Rod Serling, directed by Robert Stevens
Stopped at a gas station outside of his boyhood hometown, burnt-out executive Martin Sloan decides to explore the town, which surprisingly has not changed at all in twenty-some years.
— Michael Main
I know you’ve come from a long way from here . . . a long way and a long time.
The Twilight Zone (v1s01e05), “Walking Distance” by Rod Serling, directed by Robert Stevens (CBS-TV, USA, 30 October 1959).

Unusual Tales #27

Look into the Future

by Joe Gill [?] and Steve Ditko
Decades ago, a prescient dream gave a young man confidence to ruthlessly pursue his ambitions.
— Michael Main
The mine did cave later . . . but mining is a dangerous business and some always die! The important thing is, I got production!
“Look into the Future” by Joe Gill [?] and Steve Ditko, Unusual Tales #27 (Charlton Comics, April 1961).

Unusual Tales #30

A Small Matter of Time

by Joe Gill [?] and Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio
The title suggests that Professor Amos Shute’s intrepid travelers are going back in time to four planets that are identical in every way to our own, but then again, perhaps those four planets were merely at earlier times to begin with. We won’t say one way or another, but we are glad that the Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, and World War III were all averted on some Earth.
— Michael Main
In what time period will you find yourselves when you land at your particular destinatoin!
“A Small Matter of Time” by Joe Gill [?] and Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio, Unusual Tales #30 (Charlton Comics, October 1961).

Star Trek (s01e28)

The City on the Edge of Forever

by Harlan Ellison, directed by Joseph Pevney
After a delirious Bones hurtles through a time portal to the 1930s, Kirk and Spock follow to save him and stop dangerous changes to the timeline, no matter the cost.
— Michael Main
Star Trek (s01e28), “The City on the Edge of Forever” by Harlan Ellison, directed by Joseph Pevney (NBC-TV, USA, 6 April 1967).

Only Yesterday

by Ted White
Near the start of the Great Depression, a man waits for college student Donna Smith—someday to be Donna Albright—at the trolley stop near her rural Virgina home.
— Michael Main
Nervously fingering his narrow lapel, he broke the silence, saying, “I’d like to tell you some things . . . Totally outrageous things. You have to promise me just one thing first.”
“Only Yesterday” by Ted White, Amazing Stories, July 1969.

The Utterly Perfect Murder

by Ray Bradbury
A moving story of an outcast boy who continued to feel the pain of how he’d been excluded throughout his adult life. You’ll need to decide for yourself whether time travel creeps in.
— Michael Main
I tossed the few bits of gravel and did the thing that had never been done, ever in my life.
“My Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury, in Playboy, August 1971.

“Willie’s Blues”

by Robert J. Tilley
A music historian travels back to the 1930s to uncover the real story of how Willie Turnhill rose from an extra in the Curry Band to tenor sax virtuoso ever.
— Michael Main
He thinks of me now as the one person who’ll be able to say who’s the original and who’s the plagiarist when “the other guy” does eventually turn up!
“‘Willie’s Blues’” by Robert J. Tilley, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1972.

The Mirror

by Marlys Millhiser
In 1978, a 20-year-old Boulder woman exchanges places with her grandmother in 1900 on the eve of their respective weddings.
— Michael Main
He thought she wouldn’t answer but finally she said, “What if I can’t go back? What if I have to live out Brandy’s life? She lives an awfully long time, Corbin.”
The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978).

Ripples in the Dirac Sea

by Geoffrey A. Landis
A physics guy invents a time machine that can go only backward and must always return the traveler to the exact same present from which he left.
— Michael Main
  1. Travel is possible only into the past.
  2. The object transported will return to exactly the time and place of departure.
  3. It is not possible to bring objects from the past to the present.
  4. Actions in the past cannot change the present.
“Ripples in the Dirac Sea” by Geoffrey A. Landis, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October 1988.

Magic Tree House: Merlin Mission 8*

Blizzard of the Blue Moon

by Mary Pope Osborne
The magic tree house carries Jack and Annie to New York City in 1938 on a mission to rescue the last unicorn.
— based on fandom.com
Blizzard of the Blue Moon by Mary Pope Osborne (Random House, September 2006) [print · e-book].

Miri and Molly 1

The Magic Half

by Annie Barrows
As a middle child stuck between two sets of twins, eleven-year-old Miri Gill feels an outsider until one day in her attic room, she slips back in time from the 21st century to 1935 where she meets Molly, another eleven-year-old who needs her help.

Also in need of some help is the model of time travel in the story, which is a mishmash of popular representations that no person at age eleven or elsewhen should be exposed to. Specifically, I would have enjoyed an attempt to square the Branching Timeline implied by the hole in floor with the single nonbranching, static timeline and Ex Nihilo paradox hinted at by the time-travel device. I truly liked that ex nihilo paradox, and wish it had been explicitly dealt with rather than swept under the carpet.

— Michael Main
If you think about it too long, you’re going to go crazy, and then I’ll never get to your time.
The Magic Half by Annie Barrows (Bloomsbury Children’s Books, January 2008).

Dimensions

by Antony Neely, directed by Sloan U’Ren
Imagine you’re a young boy in 1921 Cambridge when your equally young first love dies in a deep well. What would you do? Naturally, you’d vow to become a great scientist in an artsy movie so you could go back in time to alter the tragic event.

Apparently, people in early 20th-century Cambridge espouse many wise thoughts about time, parallel universes that encompass every possible combination of events again and again, and something about every decision every made creating a branch point. In the end, it's difficult to make a cohesive model of time from the plotline of Dimensions, but we tried our best to do so in our plot notes.

— Michael Main
Annie: Are you ready to leave?
Stephen: Yes.
Annie: How long will it take?
Stephen: I don’t know: seconds, decades, an eternity.
Annie: An eternity? For a few moments together?
Stephen: Yes.
Dimensions by Antony Neely, directed by Sloan U’Ren (Cambridge Film Festival, 21 September 2011).

Todd Family 1

Life after Life

by Kate Atkinson
In one instantiation of her life, Ursula Todd dies just moments after her birth in 1910. Fortunately (for the sake of the novel), time seems to be cyclic, so she and the rest of the world get many chances at life. At times, she partially recalls her other lives, resulting in many consequences to history and her personal development.
— Michael Main
So much hot air rising above the tables in the Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.

“Time isn’t circular,” she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a palimpsest.”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “That sounds very vexing.”
“And memories are sometimes in the future.”

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, March 2013).

The Boy in His Winter

by Norman Lock
After Huck Finn and Jim fall asleep on an appropriated raft in Hannibal, Mo., they find themselves floating down the Mississippi for decades without ever aging a day themselves.
— Michael Main
We came by the raft dishonestly. We’d only meant to do a little fishing. It was cool and nice under the big willow with its whips trailing over the water. Christ, it was a scorcher of a day. The whole town must have fallen asleep, along with Jim and me. When we finally did wake, if we ever did, the raft was too far along in space and time to return it. We could no longer reverse ourselves, our motions in all five dimensions, than fly to the moon.
The Boy in His Winter by Norman Lock (Bellevue Literary Press, May 2014).

The Age of Adaline

by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, directed by Lee Toland Krieger
Adaline lives most of the 20th century and into the 21st, all at age 29 with no actual time travel.
— Michael Main
Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go.
The Age of Adaline by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, directed by Lee Toland Krieger (at movie theaters, Belgium, 8 April 2015).

In Another Time

by Jillian Cantor
Hanna Ginsberg—a young Jewish violinist in Germany during the rise of Hitler—awakens in a field in 1946 with no memory of the past decade.
— Michael Main
“Do you have a time machine,” he’d asked his father. It was hard to fathom, unbelievable even as he’d said it, but the idea fascinated him with little-boy wonder.
In Another Time by Jillian Cantor (Harper Perennial, March 2019) [print · e-book].

The Ottoman Secret

by Raymond Khoury
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.

The Ottoman Secret by Raymond Khoury (Michael Joseph, May 2019).

Secret Agent Moe Berg #6

Billie the Kid

by Rick Wilber
In an alternate history leading up to a 1945 atomic bomb in southern California, young Billie “the Kid” Davis grows up in the mid-20th century, playing shortstop better than any of the boys, flying B-25s with her Dad, and eventually—with Moe Berg and the woman-with-many-names—taking on that bomb.
— Michael Main
This is your moment, Billie. Coming up right now. Save the worlds, Billie. Change everything. You can do it.
“Billie the Kid” by Rick Wilber, Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October 2021.
as of 10:08 p.m. MDT, 5 May 2024
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