Circa AD 1950 to 1959

Tag Area: Era
Novella

The Great Romance

  • as by The Inhabitant
  • 2 vols. [plus a possible lost third volume] (Ashburton Guardian and Dunedin Daily Times [publishers], 1881)

The book‘s opening scene portrays the protagonist, John Hope, awakening from a sleep of 193 years. Hope had been a prominent mid-twentieth-century scientist, who had developed new power sources that enabled air travel and, eventually, space exploration. In the year 1950, Hope had taken a “sleeping draught” that put him into a long suspended animation, as part of a planned experiment. When he wakes in the year 2143, he is met by Alfred and Edith Weir, descendants of John Malcolm Weir, the chemist who had prepared the sleeping draft Hope had taken in 1950.

The original edition of The Great Romance is one of the rarest books extant, with single copies of Parts 1 and 2 existing in New Zealand libraries. After a century of neglect, the book was reprinted by editor Dominic Alessio, first in Science Fiction Studies #61 in 1993 (Part 1) and then in a separate volume in 2008 (Parts 1 and 2, plus Alessio’s commentary on the influence the writing may have had on Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. ). An additional part of the story is thought to have been written, but no copy is known to exist.

Considerable detective work has been applied to the question of the identity of the pseudonymous Inhabitant, although with no definite result. Nevertheless, we lean toward the theory of one “Honnor of Ashburton” because of an annotation to this effect in the only known original copies of the first two volumes of the work. —based on Wikipedia
In the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty my dearest friend, John Malcolm Weir, the greatest chemist of his day, had given me the sleeping draught: it should tie up the senses—life itself—for an indefinite period; and when the appointed years were over life might again be awakened.
Black-and-white photo of the two-story Ashburton, New Zealand, Borough Chambers
                and Public Library with clock tower, circa 1880.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Race through Time 1

A Race through Time


Evil Daniel kidnaps Ellen and takes her to the year 1,000,000 A.D. via metabolic speed-up! Not to worry. Good and compassionate Webster follows via relativistic time dilation! —Michael Main
What I’ve done is to build a time-space traveler, working by atomic energy. Even as long ago as 1913, you know, Rutherford succeeded in partly breaking down the hydrogen atom. By 1933, others succeeded in partially breaking down atoms with high voltages of electricity. But they used up far more energy than they got back, or released. I’ve simply perfected the method to a point where, with an initial bombardment of fifty volts, I can break down one atom and get back thousands of times the energy I put in. There’s nothing strange or wonderful or miraculous about it. I don’t create energy of power from nothing. I simply liberate energy that already exists. Part of the power I use to break down another atom, and so on, while the rest is diverted to propel the torpedo by discharging through tubes—like a rocket. I’ve made one short experimental trip.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Murder in the Time World


Karl Tarig plans to murder his kindly cousin, Dr. Claude Morrison, who took Karl in when nobody else would. Then he'll toss cousin Claude’s body into the time machine that Claude built. Lastly, he’ll sell all of Claude’s valuables and run away in time with the indomitable Ellen Warren. The perfect crime! —Michael Main
To hell with the law! For he had thought out the perfect crime. There could be no dangerous consequences. You can’t hang a man for murder with a body—a corpus delicti. For the first time in the history of crime, a murderer had at his disposal the sure means of ridding himself of his corpse.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a crazed man dragging an unconscious man into a vault
                beside a futuristic chair and control panel.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Tomorrow and Tomorrow


When a typewriter appears on the floor of his boarding room and begins typing messages from the future, down-on-his-luck Steve Temple thinks it must be his old jokester friend Harry—but he’s wrong about that, and the fate of the world 500 years down the line now depends on what Steve does about a recently elected man. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” doesn’t have the notoriety of that other Bradbury story about time travel and an elected official, but even though this one’s riddled with ridiculous ideas on time, it does accurately predict text messaging! —Michael Main
Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimensional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a row of faces above a row of cylinders, receding into
                the distance.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time’s Arrow


Barton and Davis, assistants to Professor Fowler, are on an archaeological dig when a physicist sets up camp next door and speculations abound about viewing into the past—or is it only viewing? —Michael Main
The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Weird Fantasy #13 (1950)

Only Time Will Tell


Start by reading Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941), and then read this one. You’ll enjoy both and stretch your mind around the first ex nihilo idea that we’ve spotted in comic books. Note that the half blueprint itself does have an origin, and you can trace it’s timeline from that origin to the past and back again. It’s only the concept expressed in the blueprint that has no origin. —Michael Main
—are the same piece!
Sitting at a lab bench and twirling knobs on a panel, a scientist talks about a
                brain on the bench in front of him.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Weird Fantasy #14 (1950)

The Trap of Time!


Physicist Don Hartley has a plan to save his beloved Adele, who died in a car crash on a hot July night. —Michael Main
You will be tampering with tremendous natural forces, Don! It is dangerous! You may unleash some awful catastrophe!
Three startled aliens look down at the Earth while all of Europe erupts in a
                giant mushroom cloud explosion.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Weird Fantasy #15 (1950)

I Died Tomorrow!


When a mad scientist with a time machine gets together with a power-crazed university president, the result is deadly (and time travel aspects of the plot makes little sense). —Michael Main
I licked my lips greedily! I had to have that time-machine!
Three men sit at an elaborate control panel in front of a giant screen of a
                cratered moon.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

The Monster Awakes


Av aviator in China during World War II unintentionally awakens a 100-foot tall, sadistic giant named Garaz from a centuries-long sleep. —Michael Main
Thank you for awakening me and freeing me from my prison! Wait! I will not harm you! You are my friend! You will come with me!
No image currently available.
  • Horror
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Weird Fantasy #17 (1951)

The Time Machine and the Shmoe!


Cleaning man Donald Yubyutch is fed up with everyone at the time travel lab thinking he’s nothing but a shmoe. —Michael Main
Please sir, professor, sir! Can I go along with you on the time machine?
In the first of three panels, a group of scientists and engineers discuss their
                newly completed time machine while the cleaner looks on.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Nice Girl with 5 Husbands


On an artist retreat, a man gets blown 100 years into the future where, among other things, group marriage and group parenting are the norm. —Michael Main
“Who are you talking about?”

“My husbands.” She shook her head dolefully. “To find five more difficult men would be positively Martian.”
A slightly abstract black-and-white drawing of a the back of a black man facing
                a lighted woman coming out of the dark with a balancing rock formation in the
                background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The House in the Square


John Balderston’s play Berkeley Square is updated to the 1950s where Peter Standish, now an atomic scientist, is once again transported back to the 18th century (unfortunately, not via a nuclear accident) to woo beautiful Kate Petigrew. —Michael Main
Roger, I believe the 18th century still exists. It’s all around us, if only we could find it. Put it this way: Polaris, the North Star, is very bright, yet its light takes nearly fifty years to reach us. For all we know, Polaris may have ceased to exist somewhere around 1900. Yet we still see it, its past is our present. As far as Polaris is concerned, Teddy Roosevelt is just going down San Juan hill.
Beatrice Campbell, with ringlets in her hair and a crucifix around her neck,
                fans herself outside the house.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

Mickey Mouse, 22 October 1951 to 22 January 1952

Uncle Wombat’s Tock-Tock Time Machine


Mickey Mouse and Goofy ride in a aerodynamic car that
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Choice


In about 200 words, Williams goes to the future and returns with the memory of only one small thing. —Michael Main
How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?
The hooknosed puppet Punch sketches an ink drawing of a bored dog in a fancy
                hat and collar.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Factor, Unknown


In order to save the world, wealthy young Houghton travels back fifty years to set straight his great-uncle’s world-threatening mistakes, but it’s Alison—Houghton’s fiery tempered cousin-once-removed—who has a more genuine interest in saving the future than her father does. —Michael Main
“This is most extraordinary,” he said in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, regarding Houghton benignly from the tall white fortress of his collar. “You say that you have come back through time to instruct me how to arrange my affairs so that they will not be instrumental in destroying the world some fifty years hence.”
Pen-and-ink drawing of a young man in sporty 1950s clothes leading a young
                woman in old-fashioned clothes into a domed time ship.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Tales of Tomorrow (s01e37)

All the Time in the World


The skilled robber is now Henry Judson and his target is now the New York Metropolitan Museum, but the plot essentials remain largely the same as in Clarke’s earlier story: Use the time traveler’s foolproof plan to rob the museum. —Michael Main
Within this five-foot circle, time is speeded up to an almost unbelievable pace. But the world outside the circle remains unchanged.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

All the Time in the World


Robert Ashton is offered a huge amount of money to carry out a foolproof plan of robbing the British Museum of its most valuable holdings. —Michael Main
Your time scale has been altered. A minute in the outer world would be a year in this room.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Space Adventures #1

Time Skipper Visits the City of Brass

  • [writer unknown] and Art Cappello (art)
  • in Space Adventures 1, July 1952

Charlton’s first issue of Space Adventures introduced Hap Holliday, the Time Skipper, who travels with Professor Eon Tempus to the far future to rescue Ula, queen of Futuropolis, from reptile people. The end of this installment assures us that we’ll learn more of Ula in the next issue, but alas, the second and final adventure of the Time Skipper was delayed until Space Adventures #3. —Michael Main
Just skip along with Hap Holliday, the time skipper, in his “Year an Instant” yacht and learn what the world can be like in somebody else’s lifetime!!!
A man in front of a 12-foot sphere shouts, "Professor! It works . . . And we
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #2

Don’t Look!


Yep, the mirror that Harold Whitney got from an odd old man really does let you see what people will look like in the future—a situation that we’d normally mark as a mere time phenomenon and tag as a simple kind of chronoscope. But the story also has a twist at the end that makes me wonder whether the old man was also a time traveler. —Michael Main
I have here a strange invention, a mirror that will let you see how anyone will look at anytime in the future.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable 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
Short Story

There Is a Tide


A sleepless man, struggling with a business decision, sees an earlier occupant of his apartment who is struggling with a decision of his own. —Michael Main
I saw the ghost in my own living room, alone, between three and four in the morning, and I was there, wide awake, for a perfectly sound reason: I was worrying.
Color photo of young twin girls climbing high in the rigging of a ship’s
                mast.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #3

Hands Off!


Eugene Varo makes a dark deal with a visitor from the past who wants Varo’s perfectly crafted artificial hands. This is the first story in Journey into Mystery to have definite time travel. —Michael Main
I have come out of the dim past to bargain for those hands . . . and take them back with me . . . they are too beautiful for this age.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #4

The Bewitched Bike!


When small-time crook Spider steals a time-traveling bike, all he can think to make a profit from it is to rob, murder, and escape to the future. No wonder he’s small-time! —Michael Main
I can be the biggest! I can rob, murder . . . do anything! Then all I have to do is jump on my bike an’ presto, I’m 40 years in the future.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Astonishing #23

Doom of Ages


Three arctic explorers are thankful for the life-saving meat they’ve stumbled across in a frozen mammoth, until they start to wonder what killed the proboscidea. —Michael Main
“I wonder what killed it?” Hafton wondered curiously, cutting swiftly through the thick masses of mastodon meat.
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #6

The Man Who Went Back


A man on death row murders his guards and escapes, getting on an odd bus where everyone is rapidly aging. And when he demands to be taken back, that’s when the real fun begins. —Michael Main
You’ve got to stop the bus . . . turn around or we’ll all soon be dead of old age!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #8

Time Reversal


A blackmailer demonstrates his ability to send an entire city back to prehistoric times. —Michael Main
We received a note telling us that unless we paid the sum of three million dollars this great city would be taken back to prehistoric days.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #9–10

Zadixx from Dimension X!


Professor Wilbur Thompson is the only human still outside of frozen time[/d]. Oh, yes: He’s also the only human who can save humanity from the Zadixx. —Michael Main
But I’ll restore mankind somehow! I’ll find a way! I swear it!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

The Twonky

  • written and directed by Arch Oboler
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 10 June 1953)

Unlike in the original short story of “The Twonky,” the movie’s mad machine is a TV rather than a radio. Also, we never explicitly see the machine’s construction by a time traveler, but the professor’s discussions with the coach make it clear that they  believe the machine is from the future, and that’s good enough for us.

And finally, when you watch the wacky film, you’ll see that Arch Oboler devised a different fate for the Twonky than that in Kuttner and Moore’s original story. —Michael Main
Kerry: Then it is from another world?

Coach Trout: No, from our world, centuries in the future.
A red ball shoots out of the sky as four startled people cower below.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #13

What Harry Saw


If you (or Harry, of course) should happen to see your wife with another man in your chronoscope, be careful about how you proceed. —Michael Main
I turned on the futurescope and saw her kissing Edmund, a man I work with!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #14

The Man Who Owned a World


Evil stepfather George intercepts a build-a-world kit from the future. —Michael Main
Somewhere in the future, a postal error had been made and a package destined for a yet as unborn grandson had been lost in time and delivered to this house!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #16

The Question!


Computer genius and jealous husband Paul Jessup builds a mechanical brain that can answer any question about the future.  —Michael Main
The brain can foretell events for approximately 24 hours in the future!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #18

The Man Who Went Back!


When Jeff Martin floats downstream, he literally floats back in time. Now, if only those two pesky men would quit following him, —Michael Main
It looks like there was something about that swim in the river that threw me back ten years!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #20

The Messenger!


Jeff Calder is a true prankster, but his new messenger, Dal J. Keefe, seems to take every prank without missing a beat. —Michael Main
Messenger, you’re just in time! Recieved a priority order from the top . . . scrounge up a gallow of yellow paint with black stripes.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #21

The Missing Men


After sailing around the world, the Queen of the Sea returns to port without a sole aboard, and only private investigator Dolan knows why. —Michael Main
It’s incredible! How in the world could all those people disappear in mid-ocean?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Return of the Moon Man


During a surprise trip to the moon by Grandpa, Grandma is mad about being left behind and leaves town with another man with a time machine. Grandpa returns, finds another time machine, and strands Grandma in time and space. —Dave Hook
We got the meal ready, and then someone said, “Where is Grandfather?”
A low-resolution newspaper scan with a headline The Return of the Moon Man.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 1

Time Patrol


In the first of a long series of hallowed stories, former military engineer (and noncomformist) Manse Everard is recruited by the Time Patrol to prevent time travelers from making major changes to history. (Don’t worry, history bounces back from the small stuff.) —Michael Main
If you went back to, I would guess, 1946, and worked to prevent your parents’ marriage in 1947, you would still have existed in that year; you would not go out of existence just because you had influenced events. The same would apply even if you had only been in 1946 one microsecond before shooting the man who would otherwise have become your father.
A man climbs a spiraling ramp up the side of a rocket while holding a blaster
                on two men below.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Time Machine


Charlie takes his pals Douglas and John to visit the old Colonel who—says Charlie—has a time machine that travels in the past. —Michael Main
War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose al the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it.
A memorial statue of a soldier is surrounded by 26 abstract figures of red,
                white, and blue soldiers.
  • Mainstream
  • Audience: Families
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

I’m Scared


In the 1950s, a retired man in New York City speculates on a variety of cases of odd temporal occurrences such as the woman who realized that the old dog who persistently followed her in 1947 was actually the puppy she adopted several years later. And then there was the now famous case of Rudolph Fentz who seemingly popped into Times Square on an evening in the 1950s, apparently straight from 1876. —Michael Main
Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Square—the theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the world—and this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before.
A policeman steps toward a wrought-iron fence with abstract, colorful
                skyscrapers in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #27

The Man Who Stopped Time!


After George Applby’s proposal is rejected by his fiancée, George stumbles across a stopwatch that freezes time for other people in the vicinity, so naturally he hatches a scheme to use the watch to break up Nancy and her new boyfriend. —Michael Main
I don’t want some other girl! I want Nancy! If only I could stop time!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Short Movie Cartoon

Casper the Friendly Ghost Theatrical #34

Red White and Boo


Every Casper cartoon had the same plot, including at least one (“Red, White and Boo”) from 1955 where Casper wonders whether people in the past will also be scared of him, so he uses a time machine to visit a caveman, Robert Fulton, Paul Revere, General Washington, and a Revolutionary War battle. —Michael Main
Gee, maybe people in the past won’t be scared of me.
Casper, the Friendly Ghost, startles a horse in front of Paul Revere
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #1

La Caverna del Pasado


Hoping to sell a big story to his editor, reporter Jim Foster fakes photographs of prehistoric animals in a legendary Latin American cave, but when he takes Professor charles Beaduy to the cave, they find more than what was promised.

The cave does bring together animals and people from different times, but whether any actual time travel occurs is debatable. And before you ask, I don’t know what a mastondia is either. —Michael Main
Time must have stood still in this region of Earth. Take a picture of this mastondia before it goes for us.
"Don
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #28

They Wouldn’t Believe Him!


To escape a forced marriage, a woman in the future tries to disappear into the pase, but her fiance tracks her down. —Michael Main
I’ll marry you, Everest! But first may I go on a short time-vacation?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #2

Madam Futura


Madam Futura has an infallible knack for seeing the future—a knack that businessman Ben Gainer plans to exploit, even though he figures her for a fake. —Michael Main
That Madam Futura knows everything! She can see the past, the present, and the future!
In the first two panels, a mystical woman in a green turban looks over a
                crystal ball and reads the future of two people.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #2

Ramakos II Doubled


After actor John Montaro immerses himself in the role of Ramakos II, he receives a visit from the original Ramakos II, who takes Montaro back to ancient Egypt. —Michael Main
Won’t things become rather confused if people see and hear there are two of us?
In the large first panel, two identical Egyptian pharaohs in purple and yellow
                robes argue in on stage in front of an audience.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #31

Dark Room!


In a Chinese tea shop, thirty-something Andrew Wilson wishes he could do everything all over again so that he wasn’t such a financial failure and Jo Clark would marry him. —Michael Main
If I could just go back to my youth, start over! I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made then!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Stop, You’re Killing Me!


Private eye Frank Foley’s latest client claims to have a nearly working time machine that his great great great great grandson is trying to demolish. —Michael Main
At the moment I can’t prove to you that it works. Unless you believe my great great great great grandson really is what I say he is.
A frightened man backs up against a glass booth.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Unusual Tales #3

Don Alvarado’s Treasure


Young Frank Winston has everything a man could ever want, but for the past three months, he's been unable to move on in his ideal life because he’s haunted by dreams of a band of 18th-century Spanish soldiers who buried a treasure chest in the desert north of Mexico. —Michael Main
"Oh, Professor," half chided Helen Crane, "You don’t mean to say that you believe in these dreams. That the past can actually come back into the present."
The first page of the two-page story, "Don Alvarado
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #3

The Lodestone


Businessman Burt Carpe and his scientist sidekick Jeff struggle with coming up with a plan to make money from their time machine. In the end, they take a large lump of carbon back to an unspecified ice age a few million years in the past. Can you guess why? —Michael Main
There she is, my cyclo-metronome, a real live time-machine!
In three panels, a 1950s brown sedan drives through the rain at night.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #33

There’ll Be Some Changes Made


Paul Haines spends his days stewing over the money his 18th-centery ancestor wasted, until he realizes that there’s a way he can get it. I found the story oddly disquieting in that Paul never really faced punishment for his crime and he got the girl too boot—definitely not the usual weird fiction pattern, although I’ll still tag it that way. —Michael Main
Change the past! Why haven’t I thought of this before? It can be done!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #3

Why?


The Bailys are the perfect family with the perfect baby, until one day young Billy wails all night long. —Michael Main
He cried all night—he didn’t stop till just now! He can’t be just teething! I’m taking the day off . . . We’re going to the doctor to find out why!
In the large first panel, a baby wails at night from within a second-storey
                bedroom in a suburban home.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #1

Future . . . Tense!


The debut of Rod Clayton’s first teleplay is being broadcast live tonight, and he hopes that it’ll provide the boost to his career that he’s been waiting for. But then a time scanner from the future arrives and shuts down the whole production. —Michael Main
I am a scanner, a man whose job it is to scan the past, to find any small occurrence which might change the future world!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #35

Fallon’s Folly!


Professor Fallon’s research into artificial suns may not be taken seriously today, but there are other times where it could be the very thing that’s needed. —Michael Main
Research has to be along practical lines! The trustees demand it!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #35

The Long Journey


College janitor Tad Sheen has discovered a chemical formula that he believes will take him through time. —Michael Main
Tad was certain that if he mixed ammonia with a chemical he had brewed called Dyproxylin, then heated this mixture in a flask to boiling, chilled it suddenly, you could, by breathing the fumes, project yourself forward in time.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #35

Turn Back the Clock!


After turning back the hands on the campus clock tower, star athelete Ambrose McCallister finds himself at a stadium in ancient Greece with no memory of who he is. —Michael Main
I saw this move somewhere . . . If I could just remember!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #2

Among Those Missing!


Earth’s finest scientific minds are being taken to the future to save a crumbling society. —Michael Main
Here is a chart of the fifty outstanding brians in our country! You will notice that thirty-two have disappeared to date!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #36

I, the Pharaoh


This story could be a fantasy about Egyptologist Ted Craven, who studies Pharaoh Ras Hati-Ka so deeply that he eventually becomes the ancient Egyptian; but there are clues that the whole story is only a delusion in Craven’s overworked mind. Or perhaps it’s all a dream of the pharaoh himself. —Michael Main
No . . . it’s all an illusion! I’ve been working too hard!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #36

Something Is Happening in There


Yes! They had sf nerds even back in the 1950s, but they called them “born fools.” In this case, the born fool is Ebenezer, who believes that a secretive new stranger is building a time machine. —Michael Main
It’s just like this picture . . . of a time machine!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #37

The Deep Freeze


Fresh off a heist of $150,000, three crooks freeze themselves for 150 years to escape the law. —Michael Main
We were in suspended animation for two hundred years!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #5

The Man Who Changed Times


A prisoner, Vincent Rand, is offered a way out of his ten-year sentence. —Michael Main
Wouldn’t you prefer being free, even five hundred years in the past, to serving out a ten year sentence in this prison?
In three panels, a man in a green suit makes a proposal to a prisoner about
                travel to the past.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #38

Stone Face!


When Richard Dell buys a stone statue and puts it in his side show, he doesn’t realize that aliens turned their compatriot to stone for a good reason centuries ago. —Michael Main
Step right up, folks! See the wonder of the century!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #38

Those Who Vanish!


Conman Pete Arlen buys a magic spring that purportedly makes people twenty years younger, and then he unloads it before knowing all the particulars of its magic. —Michael Main
You mean to tell me that the waters of Chi-Na-Nichi actually makes people twenty years younger!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #40

I Saw a Demon!


When Dr. Morgan succeeds in playing back sound from ancient Egyptian rocks, an ancient Egyptian demon unexpectedly appears. —Michael Main
I forgot! Sounds could be etched on this rock by voices in its vicinity over the ages, since it was first formed!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #40

The Question That Can’t Be Answered!


Reporter Ned Parker tries to expose a fraudulent hypnotist, but instead he ends up being hypnotized and sent into his look-alike descendant 500 years in the future. —Michael Main
It was Ned who fell under the hypnotic trance . . . and Ned who responded to the commands of Jiminez!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #41

He Came from Nowhere


As a government scientist makes a breakthrough discovery, he’s confronted out of nowhere by a time traveling kidnapper from a future government. —Michael Main
Your work, this house, everything must be destroyed!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #40

The Swirling Mist!


Reporter Jeff Coates is working on a series of articles about the old Mississippi river mansions when he spots a riverboat near the old, dilapidated Waverly plantation. —Michael Main
Peculiar things go on ’round that old mansion!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #42

He Saw the Future


A bump on the head from a falling (small) bag of concrete gives Harry the ability to see the future in exactly the way he needs. —Michael Main
So it wasn’t too surprising that Harry just happened to be passing by the new building going up when a small bag of cement fell from the second story scaffolding.
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

Life Sentence!


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!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #6

Caveman


Herman Pringle despairs of ever having the respect of his wife Clara, so much so that he daydreams of living the life of of a caveman where every man’s wife was his servant. —Michael Main
But she’d never push me around if we lived back in the time of the cavemen! No, siree! I’d be boss.
In the large first panel, a man in a business suit stands in front of a larger
                version of himself as a caveman.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

The Panhandler


One of the six time travelers who’ve arrived to intervene in Doug Cotter’s panhandling life just seems to know far too much about Doug’s private life. —Michael Main
You haven’t a prison record yet. But you will have . . . unless you let us help you!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #6

The Eye That’s Never Shut!


The eye of an ancient Greek sphinx statue tells Rex Ronoff that he can steal the Great Sultana Diamond and never be caught. —Michael Main
The eye says I won’t get caught . . . and it is never wrong!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

While the City Sleeps!


When the police come looking for Zeno the midget who pretends to be a ventriliquist’s dummy, he takes a suspended animation pill to make it seem that he’s a real wooden dummy. —Michael Main
See this pill? I got it from a chemist-pal of mine who’s working on suspended animation!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #45

Look to the Future


Now that Ben Jaremy is the last of the Jaremys, he finds himself reluctant to sell the family farm that he left forty years ago. —Michael Main
There is no money . . . just the house. As the last of the Jaremys, it’s your duty.
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #45

A Scream on the Screen


Bert Bates crosses some wires while repairing his TV, and suddenly he and his wife are seeing broadcasts from tomorrow. —Michael Main
Say, that’s the Tuesday Review program! And today is Monday! How could that be?
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #45

What Happened to Harrison


Harrison bets his academics reputation on being able to show that his rival’s claim of sending a man’s subconscious back in time is hooey. —Michael Main
Keep your voice down, Harrison! You might wake Martin, and that would be dangerous! It would alter the past!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #7

The Man Who Could See Tomorrow


A plain Joe just wants to get rid of the scarey power he has to see tomorrow’s events today. —Michael Main
I heard that story you just told . . . and I believe you!
In the large first panel, a man in an unbutton shirt pleads with a doctor who
                assures him that nothing is wrong.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #46

The Middle of the Night!


While repairing a watch, Alfred Mott realizes that it can take him back in time, so he heads back to the time of Louis XVI to steal the French crown jewels. —Michael Main
After I repaired it, I tested the our hand by pushing it backward all the way around . . . and today became yesterday!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #47

The Blinding Flash!


In order to retrieve his cigarette lighter from a crime scene, a small-time thief agrees to be a test subject for Professor Mark Hanson’s atom-powered machine that sends an astral projection of a person into the past. Oh, I almost forgot: There’s one other volunteer, too. —Michael Main
Professor Mark Hanson has tus far been unable to get a single person to use his remarkable discovery for recovering the past!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #8

The Man Who Couldn’t Be Killed!


The law of the land states that Henri Benrey must be executed on a Monday, so he gets a medicine man on Devil’s Island to give him a potion that will wipe out all his Mondays. —Michael Main
They can not hang me now, Annette! I have all the time in the world to escape from this island!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #8

The Night of March 5th


The machine that spy Bruno Ames steals takes him one year into the future where the Daily Bugle tells him his boss has been sentenced to life in prison. —Michael Main
I just left Novitch this morning! How could he have been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced, all in one day?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #48

Don’t Turn Around!


Just when two burglars approach his house, reclusie scientist Frank Mulford finishes his time machine to retrieve people from the past. —Michael Main
What a mad idea . . . thinking I could bring people from the past with this machine!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Man Outside


When young Martin’s mother abandons him, a gaggle of his descendants descend from the future to ensure his safety. —Michael Main
His face was pallid, because he spend little time in the sun, andhis speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
A castle sits atop a vaguely drawn hill, possibly shrouded in mist.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #9

Clairvoyance


Young David Fenner just wants to play baseball, but when an electric charge zaps him with the power of clairvoyance, researchers at the local university have other plans for the boy. —Michael Main
There were no ill effects from the shock! But some days later, the first signs of his hunusual new power appeared . . .
In the large first panel, a group of visitors marvel at a statue on a
                university campus of a young boy posing with a baseball and bat.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #9

The Day I Lived Over Again


While on the lam, hardened criminal Blackie Nelson gets a chance to live the day over—and this time he plans to evade the police and win the girl! —Michael Main
The day’s starting over again! This doll’s going to fall for me . . . Only this time I’m going to work things different!
In the large first panel, a man in a business suit stands in front of a larger
                version of himself as a caveman.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #10

Man from the Ages


A military post in Alaska discovers a prehistoric man frozen in ice. —Michael Main
You are right, Jason. This is big!! A beast-like human, frozen solid for who knows how many thousands of years . . . perhaps millions of years, and perfectly preserved!
In the large first panel, three military men stand around an ice hole
                discussing a frozen man in the ice.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #11

Dream On . . . !


Fred Cotton refuses to sleep because each of his nightmares later comes true! —Michael Main
He fought sleep like a man fighting demons! But no man can stay awake forever! His eyelids began to close, heavy with fatigue, his head began to nod . . .
In three large panels, Fred Cotton wakes up from a seemingly impossible dream
                of a giant sea monster.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #11

Noise in the Cellar


Once again, a plumber receives an emergency call from 12 Hedge Row. —Michael Main
Will you come right over? My water heater looks dangerous!
In May of 1915, a woman asks her husband to go into the cellar to check out a
                strange noise.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #11

Second Chance


After Dr. Paul Faine accomplishes his life’s work, he begins to reflect on the past and whether the world is ready for limitless power. —Michael Main
Now we will see into the coree of the atom . . . the core which is the basis of all things! We will be able to produce life in the test tube, blow up the world with the touch of a finger!
In three large panels, a white-haired scientist examines something through a
                large microscope.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #12

Time of the Dragon


RAF pilot Clive St. George is a snooty chap because of his fine ancestry until one day he has motor trouble while flying through a storm. —Michael Main
Motor trouble! Must go down! According to my reckoning I must be close to my ancestral home in West Croyden . . .
The life of snooty Clive St. George is shown in a series of three large panels
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #14

Giant from the Unknown


While digging a well, farmer John Grainey stumbles upon a buried giant. —Michael Main
I believe your giant was in some scientific vault from another age [. . .]
In one large panel and two smaller panels, farmer John Grainey uncovers the
                body of a giant and calls in the local university.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #52

Travelers in Time!


Hollywood writer Norman Crane pitches an idea for a crazy new show to his boss. —Michael Main
Yes sir! It’s a story about time travel . . . time travel and haunted houses!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #53

Beware of Tomorrow!


An unnamed traveler from the future tries to warn scientists of three coming disasters. —Michael Main
Three times I have come to give warnings—to help you, and I have been treated with scorn and ridicule!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 3

Brave to Be a King


Patrolman Keith Denison uses some sketchy tactics (sketchy to the Patrol, that is) to track down his partner Keith Denison, who’s disappeared in the time of the Persian King Cyrus the Great, —Michael Main
In the case of a missing man, you were not required to search for him just because a record somewhere said you had done so. But how else would you stand a chance of finding him? You might possibly go back and thereby change events so that you did find him after all—in which case the report you filed would “always” have recorded your success, and you alone would know the “former” truth.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

MUgwump Four


Oh, dear! Albert Miller has dialed a wrong number on the Mugwump-4 exchange, and the mutants who answered have decided that the only solution is to catapult him into the future where he won’t be able to upset their plans for World Domination. —Michael Main
At this stage in our campaign, we can take no risks. You’ll have to go. Prepare the temporal centrifuge, Mordecai.
A cartoonish pen-and-ink drawing of a tall, sad sack kind of man and a short,
                fat, bald businessman.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e05)

Walking Distance


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.
Michael Montgomery (as young Marty) carves his name into a post on a bandstand,
                while Gig Young (as old Martin) looks on.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #55

I Can Live Forever!


A scientist studying redwoods finds the secret of eternal life. —Michael Main
Now, the elements that sustain the life of the redwoods, will act upon me!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e12)

What You Need


Rod Serling does an admirable job translating the original story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore to the small screen. The story’s two main incidents (the scissors and the shoes) come through with little change. In this version, the curious shopkeeper has become a street vendor, and the man who’s interested in the vendor’s goods is now a darker lowlife than the original newspaperman. Also, the science fiction aspect has been replaced by psychic precognition, solidly in the realm of fantasy, but not quite into weird fiction. —Michael Main
What have you got in there? Some sort of machine? Crystal ball? . . . You can see ahead, can’t you? You can look into the future.
On a city sidewalk at night, Steve Cochran (as Fred Renard) menacingly
                approaches Ernest Truex (as the street vendor Pedott).
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Time Patrol 4

The Only Game in Town


While on a two-man mission to stop a Mongol party from exploring North America in AD 1280, Patrolman John Sandoval gets a cracked skull, which leaves Manse Everard to figure out a way to save John and the mission while waxing philosophical about time travel and the Time Patrol. —Michael Main
Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #56

I Brought Zog Back to Life!


Who woulda thunk that a giant alien encased in a giant ice cube would use Latin letters to announce its name to the world? And who woulda thunk that a headstrong scientist would release the beast against the wise counsel of the rest of the world? —Michael Main
Gentlemen, our scientists don’t know why that creature is on our planet. But they do know if he were ever free of that glacier—he could meance our entire world!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Time Patrol 4

The Only Game in Town


While on a two-man mission to stop a Mongol party from exploring North America in AD 1280, Patrolman John Sandoval gets a cracked skull, which leaves Manse Everard to figure out a way to save John and the mission while waxing philosophical about time travel and the Time Patrol. —Michael Main
Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e18)

The Last Flight


World War I pilot Terry Decker flies through a white cloud and emerges 42 years later, landing at an American Air Force Base in France, at which point he proves that a Nieuport 28 biplane is capable of doing a causal loop just as well as he can do an Immelmann Turn. —Michael Main
Kenneth Haigh (as Leftenant Terry Decker) stands in his Royal Flight Corps
                uniform in front of his Nieuport 28 biplane.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #71

The Boy Who Vanished!


A lame boy wishes he could go to the future to live the stories in his sci-fi comics. —Michael Main
Maybe—maybe I could travel into the future by thinking myself there.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #75

The Magic of Mordoo!


Franz finds Katrina attractive, but he wishes she were younger, so he approaches a Bavarian magician to make her young again. —Michael Main
But I want a young wife--a glamorous one! Not a middle-aged female!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Wyprawa profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga’s voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) 19 years before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]

Oh, tensor! Oh, turbulent perturbation! Some time before Professor Tarantoga invented a time machine and met a schizophrenic man from the fourth millennium, he apparently invented a transporter that took him and his new assistant Chybek to a series of progressively more advanced civilizations, the last of which included a barefaced cook who had an embarrasing accident in the cosmic kitchen, resulting in mankind (and indirectly resulting in time travel for the professor and Chybek). —Michael Main
I znów mi się przypaliło—jedno spiralne ramie, od spodu, na trzysta parseków—i znowu wybiegła mi słonecznica, i ścięło się, i będzie zgęstek, i powstanie białko, przeklęte białko! I znowu będzie ewolucja, i ludzkość, i cywilizacja, i będę się musiał tłumaczyć, usprawiedliwiać, składać we dwoje, przepraszać, że to niechcący, że przez przypadek . . . Ale to wy, nie ja!
translate And I got burned again—one spiral arm, underneath, three hundred parsecs—and again a sunflower came out of me and it was choked and there will be a bundle of white, cursed protein! And there will be evolution again, and humanity and civilization, and I will have to justify, justify, put together, apologize that it’s accidentally, that by accident . . .
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Mirror


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 face of a young woman, with long hair parted in the middle, looks out from
                an oval mirror.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

Twilight Zone: The Movie

Time Out

  • written and directed by John Landis
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 24 June 1983)

The Twilight Zone anthology movie reprises three of the original show’s stories along with one new story, “Time Out” by John Landis, in which disgruntled bigot Bill Connor finds himself as a Jew in World War II German occupied Europe, a black man facing the clan in mid-20th century America, and a man in a Vietnamese jungle during the Second Indochina War. —Michael Main
Ray, help! Larry! It’s me!
Five startled faces superimposed over a starry sky above a logo for Twilight
                Zone, the Movie.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future I

Back to the Future


Typical skateboarding teenager Marty McFly meets Doc Brown for the first test of his DeLorean time machine, but when Libyan terrorists strike, things go awry, Marty and the DeLorean end up in 1955 where his parents are teens, and the Doc of 1955 must now send Marty back to the future. —Michael Main
Next Saturday night, we’re sending you . . . back to the future!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty McFly) emerges from the open door of the DeLorean onto
                two flaming tire tracks.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1986 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e01–02)

Genesis


Physicist and all-around good guy Sam Beckett rushes his time machine into production—funding is about to be cut!—and as a consequence, he leaps into the life of a USAF test pilot, where Sam and his holographic cohort Al have a moral mission. And after setting things right in that pilot’s life, Sam—“oh, boy”—takes a few moments to win the big baseball game in 1968. —Inmate Jan
One end of this string represents your birth, the other end your death. You tie the ends together, and your life is a loop. Ball the loop, and the days of your life touch each other out of sequence, therefore leaping to one point in the string to another . . .
A worried Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett), dressed as a test pilot, stares out of
                the small cockpit of the experimental X2 plane.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Sports
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e04)

The Right Hand of God


Sam leaps into professional boxer Clarence “Kid”Cody in 1974, where he must win his first legitimate fight in a year to save the sisters of St. Mary’s, start a new life with Dixie, and also—if things work out as expected in the Rumble in the Jungle—escape the mob. —Michael Main
That surprise punch in the last inning . . . it was inspired.
Michelle Joyner (as Sister Angela) leans to one side and waves into a boxing
                ring.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e05)

How the Tess Was Won


Sam leaps into Doc Young, DVM, back in 1956 Lubbock, Texas, where it seems his purpose is to out-rope, out-ride, and out-posthole-dig cowgirl Tess McGill in an effort to win her heart. —Michael Main
You can’t expect me to do this and not get involved. So if Tess falls in love with Doc, I’d appreciate it if you just leap me outta here as soon as possible.
Covered in mud in a pig sty, an exasperated Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) holds
                up a piglet.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e07)

The Color of Truth


Upon arriving in an Alabama diner in 1955, Sam sits at the counter and sees an elderly Black man looking back at him from the mirror. —Michael Main
You’re hear to save her tomorrow, not to initiate the civil rights activity in the South.
Howard Matthew Johnson (as an older Black man, Jesse Tyler) looks out from a
                reflection in a window at Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett).
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s01e09)

Play It Again, Seymour


Sam arrives in 1953 as a private eye who looks like Humphrey Bogart and has to solve the mystery of his partner’s murder while trying to figure out his relationship with his partner’s wife and the eager kid at the newsstand. —Michael Main
Kid, if I’m lucky I’m gonna spend the rest of my life leaping around from one place to another instead of face down in a pool of blood.
Dressed in overcoats and fedora hats, Claudia Christian (as Allison Grimsley)
                and Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) stare into each others eyes.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e01)

Honeymoon Express


Sam pops into newly married Tom McBride (a New York policeman), who is headed to Niagara Falls with his new bride (a budding lawyer and the daughter of a senator). The two of them engage in the usual honeymoon activities—fighting off ex-boyfriend thugs, rolling underneath moving trains, studying for the bar exam—while unbeknownst to Sam, Al is at a Senate committee meeting in Washington, D.C., fighting for the life of Project Quantum Leap. Oh, yes, and it’s now official: Sam and Al believe that God has taken control of the project, although Al refuses to be pinned down as to which god she is. —Michael Main
This committee has decided that your 2.4 billion dollar funding request for Project Quantum Leap . . .
Dean Stockton (as Admiral Al Calavicci) sits at attention in his dress-white
                uniform.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e03)

The Americanization of Machiko


In 1953, Sam steps off a bus as a sailor returning home from Japan with—surprise! to Sam and everyone else—a new bride named Machiko. —Michael Main
“I try to find a husband . . . to find my husband”
Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) and Leila Lee Olsen (as Machiko, dressed in a
                Japanese robe) pick daisies on the roadside.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e06)

Good Morning, Peoria


Somewhat disoriented Sam—as Howlin’ Chic Howell at a 50’s radio station—must help station owner Rachel Powell defend rock’n’roll from the town elders and mobs of pitchfork-carrying, record-burning hayseeds. —Michael Main
Fred, I appreciate your opinion, but no matter how many editorials you publish, I am not gonna stop playing rock’n’roll.
No image currently available.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future II

Back to the Future II


Doc Brown takes Marty and Jennifer from 1985 to 2015 to save their children from a bad fate, but the consequences pile up when Biff also gets in on the time-travel action. —Michael Main
The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe—women!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty) and Christopher Lloyd (as Doc) check their watches
                beside the DeLorean in a lightning storm.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e07)

Genie without a Cause


In the third part of ABC’s Friday night crossover, Sabrina’s cat Salem transports the You Wish gang to the 1950s Travis has a James Dean-ish drag race, Genie inspires a young Bob Dylan, and Salem tries to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Felix the Cat. —Michael Main
I hope this is the one where she stomps on the grapes.
Closing title card Episode 7 of You Wish, with an ad for abc dot com and
                Sabrina riding a bicycle across the moon.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

Edelstein Trilogie, Book 2

Saphirblau

  • Sapphire blue
  • Sapphire Blue
  • by Kerstin Gier
  • (Arena Verlag, January 2010)

Apart from amusing blustering from the Count during her trips to the 18th century, time travel took a back seat to Gwenny’s on-again-off-again romance with Gideon in this second book of the trilogy. Gwenny’s new pal, the ghost/demon/gargoyle Xemerius, was enjoyable, though we wish that he would be time traveller #13. —Michael Main
Rubinrot, Begabt mit der Magie des Raben, Schließt G-Dur den Kreis, Den zwölf gebildet haben.
translate Ruby Red, with G-major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven.
Black silhouettes of a young 18th-century man and woman on a blue background.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Boy in His Winter


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.
A empty raft with not much space for two people floats on a wide river toward
                distant skyscrapers.
  • Mainstream
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

The Age of Adaline


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.
A color photo of a sad Blake Lively’s (as Adaline) is broken into a grid of
                thirty rectangles with various 20th-century years written on some.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Time Phenomena
Audio Play Series

3 seasons

ars Paradoxica


—pending
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Million Eyes 0.01

Who Is Rudolph Fentz?


It would seem that Jack Finney got it wrong in his 1951 story “I’m Scared.” But never fear! C. R. Berry tells us the true story of how a certain Mr. Rudolph Fentz came to find himself in front of a cab on a busy street next to Times Square. —Michael Main
At 11.15pm, Forrest was passing through Times Square, New York City, heading for his apartment on West 51st Street during Times Square’s busiest time, theatre letting out time. Carving through the crowds, wishing he’d gone a different way, Forrest noticed a man in his thirties standing in the middle of the road.
Pen-and-ink drawing of Santa Clause putting up a large poster with a photo of
                an elderly couple walking across a bridge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance


Superhero teens Phoebe and Max and their younger siblings have heard their parents tell a hometown hero legend once too often, so they “borrow” Cousin Blobbin’s time machine to find out the truth. But they manage to screw up the past and create a disaster in their own time, so they have to make a second round trip to sort it all out.

And just for fun . . . we get to see a flying pig three times! [Sadly, we have no Flying Pig tag. —the curator] —Tandy Ringoringo
If we see ourselves in the past, the whole universe could close in on itself. Watch a movie, you bookworm!
Jack Griffo (as Max) and Kira Kosarin (as Phoebe) pose in a leather jacket and
                poodle skirt for a 1950s dance.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 1

Pancakes and Poison

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, October 2018) [e-book]

Ella is in Oregon in the early 2000s, driving back from Thanksgiving at her parents’ house, when suddenly a flash of blinding light startles her. Within a couple of minutes, her Jeep hits a patch of ice, skids, and ends up in a snowdrift. When it won't restart, she hikes to the nearest town, past a welcoming sign stating “Visitors, turn back. Leave now.” With no other options, she continues walking and gets a room at the Keystone Inn. The next day, she discovers that Keystone is a bit strange. Ultimately she learns that it was plucked out of Colorado in 1951. The light flash occurs every few days, and the town jumps to another location and time—sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. —Tandy Ringoringo
Since she couldn’t recall having passed any cabins within the last several miles, she decided to plunge ahead into the strange, foreign landscape glittering in the cold. Because, when in doubt, go towards the creepy Twilight Zone landscape.
A skillet of pancakes and a bottle of poison with small-town storefronts in the
                background.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 2

The Body in the Boat

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, November 2018) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone for a couple of weeks. Her friend Will has cobbled together scuba diving equipment, and they plan to go to the lake to test it. Unfortunately, Will’s boat is in the middle of the lake, and when they get to it, there is a body. When Will finally gets to dive, he discovers a skeleton. As for time travel, a caravan of Romani show up and set up camp by the lake. —Tandy Ringoringo
They would be playing God, and not only that but what if their tampering resulted in making the future worse? Their altering of history could set off a chain reaction, events woven together in an unforeseen way, that resulted in World War III or the zombie apocalypse for all she knew.
A skeleton hand emerges from a rowboat on a beach with small-town storefronts
                in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 3

Christmas Corpse

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, December 2018) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone for two to four weeks. After a ride on a sled down a snow-covered hill, she discovers . . . yet another body. She also gets involved in making pumpkin pies, even thoigh baking is not her strong point. And, of course, decides to investigate the murder. —Tandy Ringoringo
Soon after her arrival, light flashed like a dome over the town. When it had dissipated, they were in a new location—and a new time. Now, just like the other citizens, she was a woman out of place and out of time.
An axe cuts into a piece of pumpkin pie on a beach with small-town storefronts
                in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Out of Time

  • written and directed by Matt Handy
  • (unknown release details, 2019)

A government agent from 1951 follows three alien invaders through a time portal to 21st-century Lost Angeles where he teams up with a local cop to track the trio down before they can signal their cohorts. —Michael Main
Sir: [pointing at a billborad of the Space Shuttle] That is why we leapt into the future. We fly that back to the armada and show them where this planet is.
A man in a business suit and a fedora runs toward a bright, pastel purple light
                with Los Angeles, spaceships, and hills in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

In Another Time


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 a diagonally split photo a man on one side holds the hand of a woman on the
                other while a World War 2 plane flies overhead.
  • Romance
  • Music and Musicals
  • War
  • 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

Traveling Town Mysteries 5

Perils and Plunder

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

Ella has been in Keystone for a couple of months. This time she tries to solve the murder of a pirate, whose body disappeared shortly after she saw it. Also, she and Will have finished mapping the Keystone boundary, and she is trying to find the cause of the time-and-location jumps. Hint: The boundary seems to be a circle with Twin Hills at the center. —Tandy Ringoringo
“I only intended to make a small inter-dimensional field, so to speak,” the professor continued. “Just large enough to encompass my house. At first, it worked. The field or bubble drew the enormous energy required to create the bridge from the fifth dimension itself and folded space-time.

“But then something went wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. The bubble expanded. It kept growing, drawing more and more power from the fifth dimension. I shut off the machine, but it was of no use. The field had become independent of the device.

“Eventually, the bubble stabilized. From what I can tell, we’re stuck in an inter-dimensional, space-time feedback loop.”
A treasure chest on a street of small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 6

Gastly Glitch

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

Ella has been in Keystone since last Thanksgiving. This time the town is in the age of reptiles. Someone gets killed by a dinosaur—but it seems the dinosaur was lured to the victim. —Tandy Ringoringo
How many people could say they slept through a herd of dinosaurs?
Part of an animal and an early Macintosh computer oozing blood on a street of
                small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 7

Campfire Catastrophe

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, April 2020) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone over a year now. They are in a new location: “another forest of deciduous trees and low mountains. It blended nicely with the native Colorado plant life.” And they start off with a nice camping trip with some school kids. But one of the kids wanders off into a cave, and when Ella finds her, there is a dying man present. —Tandy Ringoringo
[. . .] the bubble could transfer to a flux capacitor in a DeLorean, and we could use the car to travel back to the future.
A small camping tent, campfire, and backpack on a street of small-town
                storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 8

The Secret in the Sarcophagus

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, July 2020) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone a couple of years. They are in a new location, beside the pyramids of Giza, apparently shortly after most of them were constructed. And they get to meet some ancient Egyptians, enabling Ella and a couple of archealogists to learn a bit about pronunciation of the pre-Coptic language. And discuss the possibility of the butterfly effect. —Tandy Ringoringo
“Because we don’t know how returning to our own timelines will affect things.”

She let out an exasperated noise. “For God’s sake, Will, that’s why you go back to a few seconds before you enter Keystone for the first time. It’s Time Travel 101.”
A mummy walks away from a golden sarcophagus on a street of small-town
                storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 9

Fesival Felony

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, January 2021) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone at least a couple of years. This story includes the construction of a memorial wall for citizens of Keystone who have been left behind, either outside of town during a jump or by dying. And a village festival, complete with a Ferris wheel, food stalls, pie-eating contests, and something that the author calls a “scavenger hunt,”involving following clues rather than collecting items. Of course, Ella finds at least one dead body, and works with her friends to solve a couple of related mysteries. But this book contains no significant time travel. The closest thing is a time-capsule. Oh, and the folks already in Keystone from prior jumps to other times and places.
—Tandy Ringoringo
“Do you know, most nights when I’m trying to fall asleep, I can still see the faces of my friends who died in the war?”

“What? I had no idea . . . do you mean WWI?”

He nodded. “I enlisted as soon as I turned eighteen. Served from 1917 to 1918.”
A candy cotton barrow, a pocketwatch with no face, and a pile of something with
                a bone on a street of small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 10

The Spartan in the Speaker

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, October 2021) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone at least a couple of years. This time, the village travels to ancient Greece, near a camp of Spartan soldiers. There is another murder, apparently by one of the Spartans. And Ella, Wink, and Flo get into trouble again. —Tandy Ringoringo
Ella had seen the doctor’s exercise outfit on a previous occasion, but it still made her choke with stifled laughter. With the blinding neon leotard, tights, belt, and headband, she could have stepped straight out of an Olivia Newton-John music video.

Pauline caught Ella staring and sighed. “I told you, I was driving home from my Jazzercise class when I passed through Keystone just before it jumped.”
A spartan helmet and a jukebox on a street of small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 3

  • 0
  • (Netflix, 22 June 2022)

After stopping the JFK-induced apocalypse in Season 2, the six Umbrella siblings return to 2019 where they no longer exist and their still-living father has founded The Sparrow Academy in their stead. —Michael Main
Well, someone killed our mothers, so we shouldn’t exist, but clearly we do exist, and the universe can’t handle it, which is a problem.
The six living siblings of the Umbrella Academy gather in colorful garb on a
                luggage rack along with their dead brother and new friend from 1963.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Ad Nauseam


Illegal time travelers Jin and Rhea are stuck in a time loop in the 1950s. —Michael Main
Was this the fourth, or the fifth time around?
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Traveling Town Mysteries 10.5

Party Pandemonium

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, October 2022) [e-book]

A jack o’lantern amid spider webs.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Ghosts of Christmas Always


This time around, the usual three ghosts are only one of the many three-ghost teams who are given a yearly assignment to scrooge one of the many Scrooges who seem to be more numerous than ever before. Together with their 2022 assignment—Peter Baron, an unsatisfied son of a food baron—they provide a nice tear-jerker for the entire family. —Michael Main
He’s like the anti-Scrooge.
No image currently available.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 11

Sodas and Spies

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, November 2022) [e-book]

A soda stamped as poison on a wintery street of small-town storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny


Indiana Jones and his goddaughter set out to find the missing half of Archimedes’s “clock” (or Antikythera Mechanism). With all the usual hair-raising chases, stunts, Nazis (or former Nazis), and the added twist of some actual time travel near the end. —Tandy Ringoringo
Helena: Well, for starters, you’d have changed the course of history.
Indy: That supposed to be a bad thing?
No image currently available.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 12

Medieval Mayhem

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Greenfield Press Ltd, forthcoming) [e-book]

A jestor’s hat and an arrow stuck in a lyre on a street of small-town
                storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel