Circa AD 1970 to 1999

Tag Area: Era
Novelette

Monsters of Moyen


When the U.S. is attacked with monsterous submarine/aeroplanes by the demagogue Moyen, it's up to Professor Mariel to find a way to save the country, possibly even through the manipulation of time itself! —Michael Main
In this, I have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the mighty genius of Moyen can return them!
Black-and-white drawing of serious old men in suits and ties watching a video
                screen in horror.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Just Imagine


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!
With arms outspread, Maureen O
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novella

Earth’s Mausoleum


Astronomer Norton Vane spots a spaceship emerging from Tycho crater and headed right for him! Apparently, they’ve been asleep under the moon’s surface, waiting for Earth to develop life. —Michael Main
For a space of roughly ten ages we have been asleep, in a state of suspended animation, in that mighty mausoleum known as your Moon.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
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

Of All Possible Worlds


Max Alben Mac Albin is genetically predisposed to survive time travel, so he’s the natural choice to go back in time and shift the course of a missile that shifted the course of history. —Michael Main
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!
Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!
Pen-and-ink drawing of a falling rocket, divided into interleaved horizontal
                stripes that alternate between normal and negative black-and-white.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
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
Short Story

“—All You Zombies—”


A 25-year-old man, originally born as an orphan girl named Jane, tells his story to a 55-year-old bartender who then recruits him for a time-travel adventure. —Michael Main
When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.
A man wearing only a skirt stands on a spaceship while firing a ray gun upward
                at another ship.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #30

A Small Matter of Time


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!
In two large panels with spaceships and a large model of Earth, Professor Amos
                Shute explains a mission to four space pilots.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #85

Off-Limits!


A free spirited space explorer decides to visit Planet 6-G despite it being off limits. —Michael Main
Maybe I’ll even be given rights to 6_G as a reward!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Novel

Si Morley 1

Time and Again


Si goes back to 19th century New York to solve a crime and (of course) fall in love.

This is Janet’s favorite time-travel novel, in which Finney elaborates on themes that were set in earlier stories such as “Double Take.” —Michael Main
There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess.
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Escape from the Planet of the Apes

  • by Paul Dehn, directed by Don Taylor
  • (premiered at an unknown movie theater, Los Angeles, 26 May 1971)

Among the original Apes movies, only this one had true time travel; the others involved only relativistic time dilation, which (as even Dr. Milo knows) is technically not time travel. But in this one, Milo, Cornelius, and Zira are blown back to the time of the original astronauts (given the violence of the explosion, we’re going to call it a time rift) and are persecuted in a 70s made-for-TV manner. —Michael Main
Given the power to alter the future, have we the right to use it?
Roddy McDowall (as Cornelius), Kim Hunter (as Zira), and Milo stand defiantly
                in front of a lineup of militia.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Utterly Perfect Murder


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.
An abstract design of a person in a bed seen through a double-hung window inset
                in a stone wall.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Slaughterhouse-Five


Billy Pilgrim’s life, unstuck in time, is faithfully brought to the big screen, including the role of fellow patient Mr. Rosewater who, I believe, is reading a Kilgore Trout story. —Michael Main
I have come unstuck in time.
A Nazi soldier aims a gun at a dark figure on a snow-covered horizon.
  • 1973 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

  • by Robert Silverberg
  • in Infinity Four, edited by Robert Hoskins (Lancer Books, November 1972)

When all eleven families on Redford Crescent receive a newspaper from the middle of next week, the result is a hastily called neighborhood meeting and an assortment of get-rich-quick plans. —Michael Main
Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper?
A hairless man (or possibly an android) emerges from a giant rectangular portal
                with a puzzled expression.
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Topolino #911

Zio Paperone e la scorribanda nei secoli


After waking an Egyptian pharaoh from a millennia-long sleep, Uncle Scrooge summons Donald and Gearloose, eventually realizing that they can restore the pharoah to his rightful throne via a trip to ancient Egypt in Gearloose’s not-quite-finished time machine. That doesn’t go quite as planned, and on the way home, they manage to turn the future into a money-mint-land or somnethin’?. —based on Duck Comics Revue
Il veicolo aveva bisogno di una messa a punto! Comunque, siamo sulla “strada” giusta! Tenetevi forte!
translate Keep your seat belts buckled at all times! In the unlikely event of a water landing, your seat cushion doubles as a flotation device.
In three panels, Uncle Scrooge is visited by three fawning minions and then
                decides to visit his private museum.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Breckenridge and the Continuum

  • by Robert Silverberg
  • in Showcase, edited by Roger Elwood (Harper and Row, June 1973)

Wall Street investor Noel Breckenridge has been summoned to the far future, possibly to tell stories, but is there a larger purpose? —Michael Main
Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.
The red edge of a partial sphere, possibly with abstract craters or flames,
                behind a list of twelve author names.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Idaho Transfer


A group of secretive scientists develop time travel near Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, discovering a near-future apocalypse. Since anyone much over age 20 can’t survive traveling, they’re in the process of sending a group of young people, including Isa and her withdrawn sister Karen, beyond the apocalypse to rebuild civilization. Things go wrong (not the least of which are the plot, the dialogue, the acting, the sound track, and the requirement that the young Jane Fonda lookalikes must strip to travel through time), but even so, the film has a certain unprepossessing appeal. —Michael Main
You see, Dad and Lewis are trying to get it together, to secretly transfer a lot of young people into the future, bypassing the eco-crisis or whatever it is. Start a new civilization.
A partly-clothed man and a nude woman sit in front of a time machine and then
                disappear.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Sleeper


Jazz musician Miles Monroe is conscripted into a long sleep and awakened 200 years later. —Michael Main
Look, you gotta be kidding. I wanna go back to sleep! If I don't get at least 600 years, I'm grouchy all day.
A montage of Woody Allen in the future, capped by Allen and Diane Keaton in a
                heli-chair.
  • 1974 Hugo
  • 1974 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Time Phenomena
Early Chapter Book

Dinosaur Machines 4

The Day of the Dinosaurs


When one of them pulls the lever on the museum's dinosaur display, three children are transported back to a prehistoric dinosaur land. —the Library of Congress
Allosaurus stopped as the water rushed over his feet. They could see the bulk of him, his neck and heavy legs; his tail that was flattenedon the sides. He was big as a full grown tree. Then he turned and Joe saw his teeth. They were jagged as steak knives.
Over a white, clockwise spiral on a green background, three teenagers spin.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

Dinosaur Machines 3

Death of a Dinosaur


Carmen, Joe, and Riley go back through time once more to witness the end of the dinosaurs. —the Library of Congress
Over a green background, the white silhouette of a T-rex looms large over three
                teenagers
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

Dinosaur Machines 2

The Dinosaur Trap


Joe and Riley go back to dinosaur land determined to bring back Carmen who stayed behind on their last trip. [Whew!] —the Library of Congress
Over a green background, the white silhouette of a pterodactyl swoops toward
                three teenagers.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

Dinosaur Machines 1

Escape from Tyrannosaurus


Kids today are pandered to way too much in that every book they’re given to read presents an unrealistically rosie view of life. No, that’s not for me! Give my kids the harsh reality of life and time travel! Case in point: Three kids travel to the Cretcaeous where they meet a T. rex. Two return. —Michael Main
Over a green background, the white silhouette of a T-rex approaches two
                teenagers.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Trips

  • by Robert Silverberg
  • in The Feast of St. Dionysus (Charles Scribner’s Sons, March 1975)

Silverberg’s introduction to “Trip” in the collection Trips, vol. 4 of the Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg (Subterranean Press, 2009), states that he wrote the story with the goal of being the ultimate alternative universes story, and he lived up to that goal, devising nearly a dozen alternative Bay Area universes for his hero Cameron to express his wanderlust. Admittedly, there’s no actual time travel because the story was part of an anthology of ultimate sf, and Silverberg left the time travelin’ to Philip K. Dick’s “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts.” But there is a world that Cameron thinks is a 1950s San Francisco (it isn’t) and there’s a chance that Cameron experiences the passage of time at rates that differ from world to world.

Warning: The first publication of the story in that ultimate anthology (Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology) was “cut to shreds” by a ham-handed editor at Charterhouse, so your best bet is to read it in one of Silverberg’s later collections. —Michael Main
There’s an infinity of worlds, Elizabeth, side by side, worlds in which all possible variations of every possible event take place. Worlds in which you and I are happily married, in which you and I have been married and divorced, in which you and I don’t exist, in which you exist and I don’t, in which we meet and loathe one another, in which—in which—do you see, Elizabeth, there's a world for everything, and I’ve been traveling from world to world.
A yellow light emanates from a tower, illuminating a barron landscape with a
                person in a spacesuit and a woman in a voluminous dress.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novel

A String in the Harp


Twelve-year-old Peter Morgan is not happy about being uprooted from Massachusetts and hauled off to a tiny coastal hamlet in Wales, but he is fascinated by the ancient harp key that he finds wedged between two cracks on a dike. Oh, did I mention that the key is magic, letting him (and eventually other children) see the legendary Welsh bard Taliesin? —Michael Main
I can tell you that the things you have seen and explained with reason could fit the story of Taliesin, though your sister would rather not hear it.
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Nonsuch Lure

  • by Mary Luke
  • (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, September 1976)

—based on publicity material
Timothy spoke. “Are you there? In 1536?” He avoided using Andrew’s name. If there was to be an answer, any name would be unfamiliar at the moment. “Do you wish to tell me, my friend, what you see?”
A young blonde woman in a Tudor-style, orange dress stands in front of a young
                man and a palace.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Time Travelers


ABC-TV picked up this failed pilot (a proposed revival of The Time Tunnel) and aired it as a made-for-TV movie in which Dr. Clinton Earnshaw and his government-sent sidekick Jeff Adams venture back to 1871 to track down a cure for a modern-day epidemic. —Michael Main
He didn’t tell you that we do time research here? That you’re going to travel back in time to 1871?
ABC Friday Night Movie: A mob races through the Great Chicago Fire.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Pursuit of the Pankera


The 2020 posthumous publication of this 1977 manscript shows us Heinlein’s first forey into the multiperson solipsism of semi-mad scientist Jake Burroughs, his beautiful daughter Deety, her strong love interest Zeb Carter, Hilda Corners and their time/dimension-traveling ship Gay Deceiver. In all, the earlier manuscript has three adventures that were significantly changed in his eventual 1980 publication of the work, retitled as The Number of the Beast:
  1. In Pankera, the Mars Ten actually is Barsoom where the gang meets the Princess of Mars and others, while in Beast, Mars Ten is a relatively boring futuristic British Mars.
  2. Pankera has a long adventure in the Lensman universe, while Beast has only a few pages.
  3. Pankera’s ending is a 30-page, rushed description of how they plan to launch a major war against the Panki, while Beast’s 130-page ending takes the gang to the universe of Dora and Lazurus Long where they rescue Maureen from the past and are joined by a passel of Heinlein’s characters.
In both books, Gay Deceiver can clearly travel through any one of three time axes at will, although that ability is largely ignored apart from Maureen’s rescue in Beast. Because of this, we had a fierce debate up in the ITTDB Citadel about whether to even include Pankera in the database. In the end, we decided yes, marking it as the parent work of Beast, but on account of no easily recognizable time travel, we also marked it as having only debatable time travel. —Michael Main
Sharpie, you have just invented multiperson solipsism. I didn’t think that was mathematically possible.
A young man and woman stand defiantly in the foreground, with an older man and
                woman, a spaceship, and multiple planets behind them.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Film

Dead of Night [segment 1]

Second Chance


For the first of three short segments of the TV movie Dead of Night, Richard Matheson wrote this adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1956 story “Second Chance” where a college student lovingly restores a 1920s-era Jordan Playboy roadster and takes it back in time. —Michael Main
I remember what someone once said; I think it was Einstein or somebody like that. He compared time to a winding river, with all of us in a boat drifting along between two high banks. And we can’t see the future beyond the next curve or the past beyond the curves in back of us, but it’s all still there, as real as the moment around us. To which I now add my own theory . . . that you can’t drive into the past in a modern car because there were no modern cars back then, and you can’t drive into 1926 along a four-lane superhighway, but my car and I—the way I felt about it anyway—were literally rejected that night by our own time.
Ed Begley, Jr., (as Frank) and Orin Cannon (as the old farmer) hike
                determinedly through a dry field.
  • Fantasy
  • 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
Feature Film

Jubilee

  • written and directed by Derek Jarman
  • (at movie theaters, UK, February 1978)

In this early punk movie, John Dee, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, calls forth the spirit Ariel who transports Dee and the queen to an anarchistic and largely unintelligible) England not far beyond the 1970s. —Michael Main
Now shall one king rise up against another. And there shall be bloodshed throughout the whole world, fighting between the devil, his kingdom, and the kingdom of light.
Black-and-white drawing of a punk Britannia sneering at us all.
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Satire
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Time Machine


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

Rainy Day in Halicarnassus

  • by R. A. Lafferty
  • in At the Sleepy Sailor: A Tribute to R. A. Lafferty, edited by Guy H. Lillian III (The Sons of the Sand, 1979) [fanzine]

Time-trippers from the 29th century arrive in 20th century Turkey to interview Socrates, who is still alive, contrary to his rumored death by hemlock.  The time travel episode takes place within a larger story of Socrates giving a guided tour to two sailors. —Fred Galvin
And the interview was a great success. The old master used the hundred or so questions as takeoff points for truly masterful illuminations. It really was the archeological-historical coup of the century.
Pen-and-ink drawing of R. A. Lafferty sitting at a bar, surrounded by
                science fiction and fantasy characters.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Day Time Ended


After an hour or so of mundane conversation and weird happenings—a triple supernova, a UFO, a tiny mannequin/alien, and creepy lights, and alien monsters transporting in and out—the Williams family and their horses are transported through a time-space warp to an unknown time for the other twenty minutes of the movie. (The creepy lights stick around, too.) It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think they’re going to live out their lives amongst the weird lights and crystal structures of this new time. —Michael Main
Steve, you know what this is, don’t cha? It’s a time-space warp.
An old man (played by Jim Davis) and his family cower as spaceships release a
                dinosaur from a nearby cliff.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time after Time

  • written and directed by Nicholas Meyer
  • (Toronto International Film Festival, 7 September 1979)

Apart from the hero in The Time Machine movie (1960), this is the earliest that I’ve seen of the H.G.‑Wells-as-time-traveler subgenre. Our hero chases Jack the Ripper into the 20th century. —Michael Main
Ninety years ago I was a freak; today I am an amateur.
Strobe images of a man in front of a giant stopwatch.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Closing the Timelid


Centuries in the future, Orion throws an illicit party in which the partygoers get to experience complete death in the past. —Michael Main
Ah, agony in a tearing that made him feel, for the first time, every particle of his body as it screamed in pain.
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Number of the Beast


Semi-mad scientist Jake Burroughs, his beautiful daughter Deety, her strong love interest Zeb Carter, Hilda Corners (“Aunt Hilda” if you prefer) and their time/dimension-traveling ship Gay Deceiver yak and smooch their way though many time periods in many universes (including that of Lazurus Long), soon realizing the true nature of the world as pantheistic multiperson solipsism.

In Heinlein’s first version of this novel, written in 1977, the middle third of the story takes place on Barsoom, but in the 1980 published version, Barsoom was replaced by a futuristic British Mars —Michael Main
Sharpie, you have just invented multiperson solipsism. I didn’t think that was mathematically possible.
A man with long, 1970s-style hair stands with a futuristic rifle in a prairie
                with a walled compound and yellow sky behind him.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Final Countdown


Observer Warren Lasky is aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz when a storm takes the carrier back to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Should they prevent the attack? What will be the consequences of saving a politician who may become Roosevelt’s running mate? Then the ship is returned to the present before they can do anything vaguely cool. —Michael Main
Today is December 7, 1941. I’m sure we are all aware of the significance of this date in this place in history. We are going to fight a battle that was lost before most of you were born. This time, with God’s help, it’s going to be different. . . . Good Luck.
The U.S.S. Nimitz emerges from a stormy time portal into a scene with World War
                2 planes.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

A Touch of Petulance

  • by Ray Bradbury
  • in Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley (The Viking Press, August 1980)

On his way home on the train, Jonathan Hughes meets Jonathan Hughes + 20 years and receives a warning that his marriage to a lovely young bride will end in murder. —Michael Main
Me, thought the young man. Why, that old man is . . . me.
Blood red letters state the title Dark Forces, with a yellow subtitle "New
                Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror".
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Somewhere in Time


An elderly woman presses a pocket watch into a man’s hand, beseeching him to come back to her, and eventually) he does come back to her. We count this as science fiction rather than fantasy because of Professor Finney(!)’s attempt at an explanation of time travel via self-hypnosis, similar to the method in Jack Finney’s Time and Again (1970). In addition, the film may contain the first example of a looping artifact with no beginning and no end.

Wayne Winsett, owner of Time Warp Comics, tells me that this is his favorite time travel movie. Wayne is not alone in his assessment of Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, as the film now enjoys a mild cult following. —Michael Main
Come back to me.
Christopher Reeve (full body) and Jane Seymour (just her head) think longingly
                of each other.
  • Science Fiction
  • Romance
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Bank and Shoal of Time

  • by R. A. Lafferty
  • in A Spadeful of Spacetime, edited by Fred Saberhagen (Ace Books, February 1981)

Peter Luna brings five “time attempter” experts to his estate, hoping that he’ll be able to pass on his secret for getting over the time shoal that prevents them from exploring the past. —Michael Main
This was the message received by a dozen or so experts in the "time attempters" field:

"I have succeeded in establishing a creeping time-satellite or time-shuttle at my estate of Moonwick near Lunel in the Herault Department of the Peoples Republic of France. If you are really experts in your field, you will appreciate the importance of this. From this time-shuttle, which is just beyond the ‘shoal’ of all of you to whom I am sending this message, it will be possible for you to launch genuine time probes. I am sending this to a dozen or so and I hope for acceptance from at least five. I must have a matched set of at least five. Some soon. A very little bit after ‘soon’ will be too late for me to transmit the shuttle to you. Bring ideas only. Everything else for frugal and break-through living is provided. You will receive various transportation chits and enabling papers. Peter Luna.”

The World Courier Service (“No questions asked. Messages carried anywhere or anywhen in the world”) delivered these messages to the dozen or so persons who were experts in the time field. And some of the people gave assent and some didn’t. So, the next day, the Courier Service delivered airline tickets, train tickets, and International Taxi Coupons to five of the experts who had agreed to go to Moonwick.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Bandits


A boy’s bedroom is invaded by six dwarves who have stolen The Supreme Being’s map, which naturally leads both boy and dwarves on adventures through time. —Michael Main
Is it all ready? Right. Come on then. Back to creation. We mustn’t waste any more time. They’ll think I’ve lost control again and put it all down to evolution.
Head shots of the film
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Le temps chevauché

  • Time ride
  • Time Reversal
  • by Anne Sauvy
  • in Les flammes de pierre: Nouvelles (Editions Montalba, 1982)

An 80-year-old man thinks back to his younger days of climbing in the Alps, when he and a friend aided Xavier Berthiand after an avalanche took out his rope and two companions. —Michael Main
A wooded ridge, drawn or possibly photographed, in sepia colors.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

Unsound Variations


Peter Norten and his wife Kathy already had a rocky marriage before heading up to Bruce Bunnish’s Colorado mansion for a ten-year reunion with Bruce and two other members of the Northwestern University B Team that Peter captained to a near-win at the North American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship. But will Peter and Kathy’s marriage survive the trip, and just how did Bruce end up as the only member of the team to go on to success? —Michael Main
Time is said to be the fourth dimension, but it differs from the other three in one conspicuous way—our consciousness moves along it. From past to present only, alas. Time itselfdoes not flow, no more than, say, width can flow. Our minds flicker from one instant of time to the next. This analogy was my starting point. I reasoned that if consciousness can move in one direction, it can move in the other direction as well. It took me fifty years to work out the details, however, and make what I call a flashback possible.
A blue-skinned, bikini-clad, sword-wielding woman flies over a forest on the
                neck of a dragon.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Fresh Eggs!


More than a year before The Far Side’s first time travel, we had two typical Larsonian explorers stumbling upon a find that just might indicate time travel.  —Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann


Now that I know that one of the Monkees wrote this time-travel yarn of a dirtbiker riding his motorcycle through a time portal and into the Old West, the universe begins to make sense. —Michael Main
You shot it. What a bunch of dumb sons of bitches. You shot it—a machine, you butt-heads!
Three cowboys ride through a flat grid embedded in a silhouette of a modern-day
                motorcycle rider.
  • Science Fiction
  • Western
  • 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
Short Story

The Toynbee Convector


You’ll enjoy this story, but I’ll give away no more beyond the quote below. By the way, if you get the original publication, you’ll also see Kurt Vonnegut and Marilyn Monroe. —Michael Main
What can I do to save us from ourselves? How to save my friends, my city, my state, my country, the entire world from this obsession with doom? Well, it was in my library late one night that my hand, searching along shelves, touched at last on an old and beloved book by H. G. Wells. His time device called, ghostlike, down the years. I heard! I understood. I truly listened. Then I blueprinted. I built. I traveled [. . .]
Futuristic white buildings with rounded corners, tall spires, and black stripes
                sit beside an hourglass on a pedestal.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

The Philadelphia Experiment I

The Philadelphia Experiment


Seaman David Herdeg and his pal are thrown from 1943 to 1984 during a naval experiment gone awry, and in that future, David is the only one who can save a missing town (provided he can dodge enough bullets and perhaps win the heart of Allison Hayes). —Michael Main
Navy owes me 40 years back pay.
Michael Paré and Nancy Allen race out of a projected landscape into the bright
                lights of a crawling tank.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension


Banzaiers keep writing to the ITTDB Citadel, telling us to add this cult movie to our database (or else we should prepare ourselves for the unexpected, as He would). We finally gave in to keep them from banzaiing us, but alas, oscillation overthruster ≠ flux capacitor, and the rock-musician-neurosurgeon-particle-physicist Banzai merely travels through all the dimensions except time. —Michael Main
May I pass along my congratulations for your great interdimensional breakthrough. I am sure, in the miserable annals of the Earth, you will be duly enshrined.
Peter Weller (as Buckaroo Banzai) stands calmly while behind him, a spaceship
                navagates a debris field.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Terminator 1

The Terminator


Artificially intelligent machines from 2029 send a killer cyborg back to 1984 to kill Sara Connor because, in 2029, her son John will lead the resistance against the machines’ rule.

The story has a classic self-defeating act: The Terminator goes back in time to kill Sara Connor, causing Kyle Reese to follow and become romantic with Sara Connor, causing John Connor to be born and eventually lead the revolution, causing the Terminator to go back in time to kill Sara Connor, . . . —Michael Main
Kyle: [to Sarah at the Tech-Noir Club] Come with me if you want to live.
Gun-toting Arnold Schwarzenegger in his trademarked Terminator sunglasses and
                fingerless gloves.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Non ci resta che piangere


While stranded in a thunderstorm in Tuscany, lifelong friends Mario and Saverrio find themselves unexpectedly in 1492, whereupon they fall in love a few times, pretend to be the composer of “Yesterday” and other modern-day hits, and come to the conclusion that they must stop Columbus from discovering America (either to prevent the genocide of the Native Americans or to prevent Mario’s sister from having her heart broken, depending on who you believe), and try rather pitifully to explain trains and other modern marvels to da Vinci, including a proposal to split the proceeds “thirty-three, thirty-three, and thirty-three!”

An extended director’s cut also expands the story of one of their heartthrob-esse, an Amazon named Astriaha]], but we don’t know the details of its release or whether an English-subtitled release of the film exists. —based on Wikipedia
Trentatré, trentatré e trentatré!
translate Thirty-three, thirty-three, and thirty-three.
Laid-back Massimo Troisi (as Mario) and pleading Roberto Benigni (as Saverio)
                pose in front of Botticelli’s Venus on the Half-Shell and Giorgione’s Sleeping
                Venus.
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Merlin and the Sword

  • by David Wyles, directed by Clive Donner
  • (at limited theaters, Davao, Phillipines, 5 January 1985) [We’re uncertain whether this debut in the Philippines had the title “Merlin and the Sword” or whether that title was not introduced until the later VHS tape. We also don’t know whether the Philipines release was the full CBS broadcast from later in 1985 or was the shortened version for the VHS (or possibly some other cut).]

When Katherine Davidson falls into an underground ice cave beneath Stonehenge, she finds that Merlin and his lover Niniane have been trapped there for a millennium, whereupon Merlin and Niniane proceed to show Katherine the story of how Morgan le Fay trapped them. —Michael Main
Love cancels all curses, love breaks all spells. Love is a magic greater than any wizard or witch, warlock or shaman.
Edward Woodward (as Merlin) raises both arms amid a montage of Malcolm McDowell
                (as Arthur), Candice Bergen (as Morgan Le Fay), and othe Camelot residents.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s01e02)

The Playground


Charles visits his boyhood playground, at first on his own and then with his own son. There, he sees Ralph, the bully who tormented him, who’s still a boy and who still seems to be tormenting Charlie.

Perhaps Ralph was meant to be a ghost bully, perhaps the curly haired boy is young Charlie, perhaps Charlie switches bodies with his own son, or perhaps there’s time travel invovled. We doubt that even Captain Kirk could sort out all those perhapses in this TV version of Ray Bradbury’s story starring William Shatner. But clarity can be had if you read the original story, which takes about the same amount of time as watching the TV episode but shows the rich inner life of Charles Underwood and leaves no ambiguity about what’s up with “Ralph.” —Michael Main
Ralph? The bully. When I was a kid, he used to wait for me on the corner every day.
William Shatner (as "the Papa") sits in a swing at night, looking on in horror
                at something nearby.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable 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
Feature Film

My Science Project


Not even the support of a young Fisher Stevens (Gary’s friend Chuck from Early Edition) could rescue this story of a high school motorhead who steals a power-sucking, space-time transforming orb from a military base for his science project. —Michael Main
Now that sounds like we’re dealing with a time-space warp.
John Stockwell (as Michael Harlan) carries his futuristic science project into
                a cloud along with three buddies and their schoolbooks and guns.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

The Pure Product


A cynical sociopath from the future goes on a crime spree (sometimes with random blood, sometimes with trite tripping on his future drugs) across 20th-century North America. —Michael Main
“I said, have you got something going,” she repeated, still with the accent—the accent of my own time.
Black-and-white illustration or photograph of a screaming bald man behind a
                steering wheel.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Peggy Sue Got Married


Middle-aged Peggy Sue has two grown children and an adulterous husband whom she married at 18, so will she do things the same when she finds herself back in 1960 in her senior year of high school? —Michael Main
Well, Mr Snelgrove, I happen to know that in the future I will not have the slightest use for algebra, and I speak from experience.
Holding an old-fashioned key, Kathleen Turner (as Peggy Sue) looks eagerly
                through a giant keyhole.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Star Trek IV

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home


As the brave crew of the Enterprise are returning to Earth on a Klingon Bird of Prey to stand trial for the events of the previous movie, Spock determines that Earth’s demise is imminent unless they can return to 1986 and retrieve a humpback whale (which they proceed to do).

I saw this in the theater with Deb Baker and Jon Shultis during a winter trip to Pittsburgh for a small computer science education conference. —Michael Main
McCoy: You realize that by giving him the formula you’re altering the future.
Scotty: Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?
Headshots of the Enterprise crew overlook a Klingon ship passing over the
                Golden Gate bridge.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

from The Teacher of Symmetry Cycle

Фотография Пушкин (1799–2099)

  • Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)
  • Pushkin’s photograph (1799–2099)
  • Pushkin’s Photograph (1799–2099)
  • by Андре́й Би́тов
  • Znamia, January 1987

In 1985, an author has visions of a time traveler named Igor from 2099. The traveler is being sent by his comrades in the domed city of St. Petersburg back to the 19th century, where he is tasked with capturing images and audio of motherland’s supreme father of poetry, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.

Note: A dissertation by Gulius Natalya Sergeevna notes that this story is part of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consisted of a series of avant-garde stories purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named A. Tired-Boffin and loosely translated to Russian by Bitov. The English version of “Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)” was said to have been called “Shakespeare’s Photograph” (or possibly “Stern’s Laughter” or “Swift’s Pill”), and presumably it was about Shakespeare rather than Pushkin.

Sergeevna explains that all this artistic mystification was part of an extensive footnote to “Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099),” but up in the ITTDB Citadel, we’ve yet to track down the footnote. Perhaps it was part of the 1987 publication in Znamia, or maybe it did not appear until the story was published along with the rest of the cycle in Bitov’s 1988 collection, Chelovek v peyzazhe. It is not listed in the table of contents of "]Prepodavatelʹ simmetrii(2008), which was translated to English as Symmetry Teacher (2014). —Michael Main
. . . мы сможем в будущем, и не таком, господа-товарищи, далеком, заснять всю жизнь Пушкина скрытой камерой, записать его гол . . . представляете, какое это будет счастье, когда каждый школьник сможет услышать, как Пушкин читает собственные стихи!
translate . . . we will be able in the future, and, gentlemen-comrades, not such a distant one, to photograph Pushkin’s entire life with a hidden camera, record his voice . . . imagine how wonderful it will be when every schoolboy will be able to hear Pushkin read his own poetry!
Journal cover with red text on a white background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Timestalkers


After the death of his wife and child, Dr. Scott McKenzie stumbles upon a tintype photograph from the Old West showing three corpses, a shooter, and a modern Magnum 357, leading him to develop a theory of time travel that is confirmed when a beautiful woman from the future appears and takes him back to the Old West to chase the shooter, save President Cleveland, and pursue other obvious plot developments.

Spoiler: At the end, I believe that Georgia uses her time crystal to send Scott back for a do-over on the day of his family’s death. This is disappointing since up until that point, the film has set up a perfect example of a single, nonbranching timeline. —Michael Main
What if Cole came back to set off a chain of events that would eventually destroy the one man who stood in his way?
Gun-toting Lauren Hutton (as Georgia Crawford) and William Devane (as Scott
                McKenzie) look on as lightning comes out of Klaus Kinski (as Dr. Joseph Cole).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

from The Teacher of Symmetry Cycle

Преподаватель симметрии


Based on a review at the Modern Novel website, part of this story involves the devil showing photographs of the future to a man named Vanoski (an obscure author from the 1930s). So, we’ve got photos-from-the-future, but no actual time travel. However, there is time travel in another story (“Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)”) from the Teacher of Symmetry Cycle. And just to pile satire on top of satire, the 16 stories in the cycle were purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named A. Tired-Boffin, and Bitov was merely the humble messenger who provided translations of these lost gems into Russian.

Also, according to Fantlab[/b] and Labirint, this is the central story of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consists of 16 of avant-garde stories by an unknown English author, A. Tired-Boffin (1859–1937). Bitov purportedly found and translated some of these stories to Russian.
Итак, на фотографии был бесспорно я, и мое будущее лицо мне нравилось и подходило, но чем же оно тогда было так искажено?
translate So, it was undeniably me in the photograph, and I liked and suited my future face, but why was it so distorted then?
Title page of a Russian story with a sketched, black-and-white portrait of the
                author, Andrei Bitov, at the top.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Forever Yours, Anna


Handwriting expert Gordon Siles becomes obsessed with four censored letters written by a woman named Anna to an introverted scientist whose missing research results may have national security implications. —Michael Main
It should have ended there, Gordon knew, but it did not end. Where are you, Anna? he thought at the world being swampted in cold rain. Why hadn’t shecome forward, attended the funeral, turned in the papers?
Staring into a yellow and brown vortex, two similar women crouch side-by-side.
  • 1987 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Time Guardian


When terminatoresque cyborgs attack a future Australian city (headed by Quantum Leap’s favorite scoundrel, Dean Stockwell, and defended by everyone’s favorite princess, Carrie Fisher), the scientists take them all back to 1988—a fine plan until the evil cyborgs follow. —Michael Main
One city attempted to escape their onslaught by unraveling the secrets of time and travelling back in a desperate search for a safer age . . . they succeeded and time was their friend until the arrival yet again of their relentless enemy.
Tom Burlinson (as Ballard) shows off his sunglasses, blaster, and biceps.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

The Cold-Blooded/Warm-Blooded Debate


We may never solve the conundrum of whether the dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded.
—Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Future Past


While working at his extravagant computer, computer whiz-kid Harlan, comes into contact with a group from the future including a fairly absurd professor. What happens is that a young man comes from the future back to the present and appears to be Harlan's grown self—a self-centred and smug exploitive man. The two clash while the professor tries to get the old Harlan back to the future. —based on Peter Malone’s film reviews
Title card from the movie Future Past, in a green, computer-readable font.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Turning Point

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in The Drabble Project, edited by Rob Meades and David B. Wake (Beccon Publications, April 1988)

In exactly 100 words, Madison goes back in time to meet himself at the turning point of his young life.

Thanks to Marc Richardson for sending this one to me. —Michael Main
He was a clerk.
Lurid green cover for [_The Drabble Project_], listing all the authors
                of its 100-word stories.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s02e10)

Tyrannosaurus Rex


It’s hard to believe with a title like this, but just like Bradbury’s original “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” this adaptation for TV had no time travel. —Michael Main
My beauties. Not alive, but alive. Dead, but not dead. Clay and then liquid rubber. Yes, oh yes. I moved you and then frame by frame photographed you.
Cris Campion (as John Terwilliger) sits at his workbench building a T. rex
                model and eating peanuts.
  • Mainstream
  • No Time Phenomena
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation, s01e26

The Neutral Zone


The Enterprise stumbles upon a ship of cryogenic containers, three of which are still working and contain people from the late 20th century. —Michael Main
We have run into an unusual situation, sir: There are people on board. Frozen.
Michael Dorn (as Lieutenant Worf) examines a frozen body through the window of
                a cryogenic chamber.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Waxwork I

Waxwork

  • written and directed by Anthony Hickox
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 17 June 1988)

This first of the two Waxwork horror films has secondary worlds, but no time travel. Move along to Waxwork II. —Michael Main
I hear you were having drinks with the butler the other night. Now, you know that sort of thing leads to anarchy.
A butler invites you through a door to see eleven ghoulish heads.
  • Horror
  • Comedy
  • No Time Phenomena
Feature Film

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey


To ward off the Black Death, young Griffin, local hero Connor, and others from their village plan to dig a hole through the Earth where they’ll give an offering to the powers that be, but instead, they end up digging a tunnel to a marvelous twentieth-century city. —Michael Main
Think how much power you’d need for all that!
A woman, a child, and a cloaked figure tall Celtic cross on a cliff above a
                modern city.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Ripples in the Dirac Sea


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.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a man holding a woman in front of him with a peace sign
                on her sleeve and a complex clockface behind.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1989 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Bill & Ted I

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure


The Two Great Ones, Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan, are the subjects of time-traveler Rufus’s mission, but instead they end up using his machine to write a history report to save their band, Wyld Stallyns. —Michael Main
Most excellent!
Alex Winter (A K A Bill) and Keanu Reeves (A K A Ted) sit on top of a phone
                booth crammed with Napoleon and other historical figures in orbit around Earth.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • 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 (s01e03)

Star-Crossed


Why would anybody leap into English Professor Gerald Bryant during June 1972? Sam is certain that his mission is to he can reconcile his own future quantum physicist girlfriend with her father so that her fear of commitment won’t cause her to leave Sam at the alter in another twelve years. —Michael Main
Don’t ya see, Al? I’m here to give Donna and I a second chance.
Teri Hatcher (as Donna Elesee) and Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett) study a book
                together at a library table.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Field of Dreams


Corn farmer Ray Kinsella is called to build a ballpark in his cornfield; once the field is built, various ballplayers from the past come. The players seem more like ghosts who regard the field as their heaven rather than time travelers, so the actual time travel element is slight, arising from a walk when Ray slips into 1972. —Michael Main
If you build it, they will come.
Kevin Costner (as Ray Kinsella) stands in front of his green, diamond-shaped
                corn field.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Warlock I

Warlock


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

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e03)

The Lake


The TV adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Lake” focuses more on the adult man, who’s now thirty-something Doug, but the story structure and pathos of his lost childhood love remain intact. —Michael Main
If I finish it, will you come?
Exactly half of a large sand castle with a trail of footprints looping around
                it.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Millennium


Cheryl Ladd plays Louise Baltimore opposite Kris Kristopherson’s Bill Smith in this movie adaptation of Varley’s novel (1983), although on-screen credit is given only to his earlier short story “Air Raid” (1977). —Michael Main
For one thing, paradoxes can occur. Say you build a time machine, go backwards in time and murder your father when he was ten years old. That means you were never born. And if you were never born, how did you build the time machine? Paradox! It's the possibility of wiping out your own existence that makes most people rule out time-travel. Still, why not? If you were careful, you could do it.
A passenger jet flies into a starburst of light.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Quantum Leap (s02e02)

Disco Inferno


Sam finds out what it’s like to be a stuntman in a family with broken dynamics and (to him but not Al) in an era with broken music. —Michael Main
Disco’s not gonna last forever. I got a feeling it’s probably gonna die in a couple of years.
Scott Bakula (as Sam Beckett in a white suit with wide lapels) strikes a disco
                dance pose with one hand pointing high into the air.
  • 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
Novel

Time Was


Time travel via a spaceship that got too close to an uncharted black hole. Our hero, Caleb Hornblower, survives to have a romance with Liberty Stone, a woman from a couple hundred years before he was born. The romantic element is definitely stronger than the science, but there are some interesting discussions about past versus future technology and different social norms. There’s also a fun ride on an aircycle! And a bit of comedy when Liberty’s parents arrive unexpectedly. But only the one time travel event is documented, so this remains heavier on the Romance than the Time Travel.

The story continues in a 1990 sequel, Times Change. —Tandy Ringoringo
The cockpit lights went out, leaving only the whirl of kaleidoscopic colors from the instrument panel. His ship went into a spiral, tumbling end over end like a stone fired from a slingshot. Now the light was white, hot and brilliant. Instinctively he threw up an arm to shield his eyes. The sudden crushing pressure on his chest left him helpless to do more than gasp for breath.
Standing by a creek in the woods, a dark-haired man draws a woman toward him
                for a kiss.
  • Romance
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Times Change


Jacob (J.T.) Hornblower, astrophysicist, deliberately travels back a couple of centuries to shake some sense into his brother Caleb, who had foolishly (in J.T.’s opinion) decided to stay in the past. A little more science than the first book in this duology, but still heavier on the romance angle, as J.T. finds himself strongly attracted to Sunbeam (Sunny) Stone. Both J.T. and Sunny are opinionated and bullheaded, as well as having blackbelts, so there is also more conflict in this book. The documented return trip to the future includes a brief description of physical side-effects. —Tandy Ringoringo
And now he stood and wondered. If he dug for it, he would come upon the same box. The box that he had left with his parents only days before. The box would exist here, beneath his feet, just as it existed in his own time. As he existed.

If he dug it up now and carried it back to his ship, it would not be there for him to find on that high summer day in the twenty-third century. And if that was true, how could he be here, in this time, to dig it up at all?
A blonde woman and an Elvis lookalike cudddle on the floor by candlelight.
  • Romance
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

The Hemingway Hoax


Literature professor John Baird and conman Sylvester Castlemaine hatch a plan to get rich forging Hemingway’s lost stories, but before long, Baird is confronted by an apparent guardian of the many timelines in the form of Hemingway himself. —Michael Main
I’m from the future and the past and other temporalities that you can’t comprehend. But all you need to know is that yiou must not write this Hemingway story. If you do, I or someone like me will have to kill you.
A Hemingway-esqu man has various heads and appendages coming out of his head.
  • 1991 Hugo
  • 1991 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Horror
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future III

Back to the Future III


Marty and 1955-Doc travel back to the Old West where 1985-Doc is trapped along with various Biff ancestors and a possible love interest for Doc. —Michael Main
Doc: [blowing train whistle] I’ve wanted to do that my whole life!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty), Christopher Lloyd (as Doc), and Mary Steenburger (as
                Clara) in Western garb beside the DeLorean and a flaming train track.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Future Zone

  • written and directed by David A. Prior
  • (direct-to-video, USA, 18 July 1990)

John Tucker—a gunslinging cop in future Mobile, Alabama, played by David Carradine—is visited by thirty-year-old Billy who’s almost as quick on the draw as John. But—ah, Grasshopper—just where does the visitor’s prescient knowledge come from, and more to the point given the ending of the film: Who taught Billy to shoot? —Michael Main
Tucker: Where’d you learn to shoot like that?
Billy: You might say I learned from the best.
Tucker: And who might that be?
Billy: You’d never believe me.
Defiant Ted Prior (as Billy Tucker) stands in front of robot-armed David
                Carradine as John Tucker).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Spirit of ’76

  • written and directed by Lucas Reiner
  • (at limited movie theaters, USA, 12 October 1990)

It would seem that singing about the girl whose ♫ head was lost in time ♫ wasn’t David Cassidy’s only intersection with time travelers. In the year 2176, three time travelers aiming for 1776 end up in the time of David Cassidy and disco instead. —Michael Main
Channel Six, our foremost epistomological anthrosociologist has redlined and outlined you for a mission back in time.
A skateboarding Statue of Liberty in 70s platform shoes is observed by three
                flying men from the future.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e06)

Touch of Petulance


A faithful adaptation of Bradbury’s 1980 story of a man who returns to his warn his younger self about the future course of his marriage. —Michael Main
We are one, the same person: Jonathan Hughes.
Sitting on a train, Eddie Albert (as old Jonathan Hughes) looks out over a
                newspaper.
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Jacob’s Ladder


Vietnam War vet Jacob might be experiencing time travel and a couple of alternative universes where he lives with a different wife in 1975 New York or where his dead son Gabe is alive again. But a full explanation of the events is never given in the plot, and it seems more likely to be the result of a government drug experiment, or maybe passing through Hell, or—most likely— a moment-of-death experience. —Michael Main
Eckhart saw Hell too. He said the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, he said, they’re freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you’re frightened of dying and . . . and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth. It’s just a matter of how you look at it, that's all. So don’t worry, okay? Okay?
The screaming face of Tim Robbins (as Jacob Singer) on a black background.
  • Horror
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Barbarians


In an ancient world of swords, sorcery, loin cloths, and bejeweled bikinis, an evil thief kills King Deran’s queen before escaping to modern-day Los Angeles. Since the thief also took a magic amulet with him, a loinclothless wizardess sends Deran after him to retrieve the amulet and avenge the queen’s brutal death. —Michael Main
The man you seek is in this world no longer. You must travel to another time to find him.
Scantily dressed barbarians Deron McBee (as Doran) and Jonne Ayers (as Lystra)
                stand in front of a forest with a modern city showing in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Time Log


Two unexpected time machine inventors, Thak and Gork, not to be confused with Grog (inventor of wheel) and Thag (maker of fire) from the slightly later cartoon of 3 June 1991.
—Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Terminator 2

Terminator 2: Judgment Day


Once more, the machines from 2029 send back a killer cyborg, this time a T-1000 to kill young John Connor in 1995, but Resistance-leader Connor of the future counters by sending a reprogrammed original T-800 to save himself. —Michael Main
The T-800: [to Sarah at the Pescadero State Hospital] Come with me if you want to live.
Shotgun-toting Arnold Schwarzenegger in his trademarked Terminator sunglasses
                sits stoically on his stolen motorcycle.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1992 Hugo
  • 1991 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Bill & Ted II

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey


Two Evil Robots from the future are out to destroy Bill & Ted and their babes. After all that, the Two Great Ones begin a journey that starts with Death and ends with Two Little Ones. —Michael Main
Look, after we get away from this guy, we use the booth. We time travel back to before the concert and set up the things we need to get him now.
Alex Winter (A K A Bill) and Keanu Reeves (A K A Ted) pressed up against a pane
                of glasss in this pre-release poster.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s05e06)

The Utterly Perfect Murder


I felt that Bradbury’s adaptation of his own 1971 story lost its impact by turning young Doug’s childhood tortures into clichéd scenes—and still leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether there’s a moment of time travel. —Michael Main
Old Doug: Doug, Doug. . . . Come on out and play.
A black-and-white overhead photo of a young boy playing a grand piano.
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail


A lovely series of letters between Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella—as conveyed by messenger albatross in 1492!—describing a modern-day NYC, wondrous yet horrifying. —Dave Hook
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Groundhog Day


In the quintessential time loop movie, jaded weatherman Phil Connors (no relation to John Connor) is in Puxtahawny to cover the Groundhog Day goings-on, continually repeating the day and—after losing his jaded edge—striving for Rita’s heart. —Michael Main
So this will be the last time we do Groundhog together.
An apathetic Bill Murray (as Phil) is trapped in an alarm clock as fed-up Andie
                MacDowell (Rita) gives a patronizing smile.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Sailor Moon (s02e36)

未来への旅立ち!時空回廊の戦い

  • Mirai e no tabidachi! Jikū kairō no tatakai
  • Departure for the future! Battle of the space-time corridor
  • Journey to the Future: Battle in the Space-Time Corridor
  • by Sumisawa Katsuyuki, directed by Kosaka Harume
  • (TV Asahi, Japan) 22 January 1994)

Sailor Moon and the gang travel to the Door of Space and Time where they hope to head to the future and rescue Chibiusa’s mommy. Sailor Pluto opens the Space-Time Door for them, which takes them to Planet Crystal Tokyo and a slew of baddies. Their adventure in the future is continued in the next few episodes, but we haven’t yet indexed those. —Michael Main
Sailor Pluto opens the Door of Space and Time as Sailor Moon and the others
                watch in awe.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Cloche vaine


At the end of her long successful writing career, a woman is still haunted by her sister’s death four decades earlier. —Michael Main
An orange glow flows over a naked torso and head holding a bright sword with
                Jupiter and stars in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Oneupmanship


Professor Weinberg one-ups Professor DeWitt.
—Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

From Time to Time


Finney’s sequel to Time and Again initially finds Si Morley living a happy life in the 19th century with his 19th century family, while The Project in the future never even got started because he prevented the inventor’s parents from ever meeting. But vague memories linger in some of the Project member’s minds, and Morley can’t stay put. —Michael Main
They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—
|pending alt-text|
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

12 Monkeys


In the year 2035, with the world devastated by an artificially engineered plague, convict James Cole is sent back in time to gather information about the plague’s origin so the scientists can figure out how to fight it. —Michael Main
If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.
The faces of Bruce Willis (as old James with one red eye), Brat Pitt (as young
                James), and Madeline Stowe (as Kathryn) stare out of the shadows.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (s02e08)

Inna-Gadda-Sabrina


In a crossover involving all four of ABC’s Friday night family-friendly shows, Salem eats Sabrina’s time ball, sending their world back to the 1960s and sending each of the other shows’ characters to a different decade as well. You could argue that the time ball causes the whole culture to experience the world as if it were back in the 1960s rather than producing actual time travel. —Inmate Jan
You hold it and your surroundings become whatever decade you think of.
On the set of Sabrina’s house, Caroline Rhea (as Hilda), Melissa Joan Hart
                (as Sabrina), and Beth Broderick (as Zelda) flash peace signs in sixties clothes.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Boy Meets World (s05e06)

No Guts, No Cory


As part of ABC’s Friday night crossover, Salem (the cat from tag-4138 Sabrina) transports the Boy Meets World world to 1940s America where Cory, his dad, and Shawn all ship off to war. —Michael Main
I don’t know how I would handle living back then. You know, I wonder what it was like during World War II.
Down on one knee, Ben Savage (as Cory Matthews in a World War 2 uniform)
                proposes to Danielle Fishel (as Topenga in a 1940s dress).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable 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
TV Episode

Teen Angel (s01e07)

One Dog Night


The final part of ABC’s Friday night crossover took Salem the cat to Teen Angel’s house where he transports Teen Angel and the family back to the time of disco and, apparently, altered the course of the 1976 presidential election. —Michael Main
Oh, honey, you can go any time. Disco’s gonna last forever.
Closing title card Episode 7 of Teen Angel, with a logo for abc dot com and
                Melissa Joan Hart (as Sabrina) talking with Mike Damus (as the Teen Angel).
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e09)

All in the Family Room


Slighted by his sister, Travis uses Genie’s time travel portal to run away to a pirate ship. —based on ShareTV
On a pirate ship in pirate drab, John Ales (as the Genie) and Nathan Lawrence
                (as Travis) stare each other down.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

You Wish (s01e13)

Gift of the Travi


When Genie gives each of the kids a Christmas wish, Mickey wishes for a white Christmas in LA, and Travis wishes that it would be Christmas every day. Yeah, like that ever works out. —Michael Main
I wish every day was Christmas.
An exhausted Santa Claus waves his hands in frustration.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Happy Ending


High school teacher Bob Wells: Is this the story of him living backward through time? Or is the story merely being told in reverse? Or is something else going on with Bob's student Karl Downs? —Michael Main
The doors opened and students backed in, pointedly not looking at Bob as they took their seats.
Wispy images of three people emerge from an hour glass.
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Galaxy Quest


Some TV shows (we won’t mention any names) live on for their fans decades after cancellation. The result might be that aliens think the heroes of these shows are real, in which case the aforementioned heroes could be kidnapped to rescue the aforementioned aliens (and to figure out whether the Omega 13 will destroy the universe in 13 seconds or reverse time for that aforementioned number of seconds).

Tim and I watched this at Lake Cushman during a trip to the northwest in 2003, and I was as surprised as anyone about how much we laughed at Tim Allen’s parody. —Michael Main
Larado: Your orders, sir? [pause] Sir, your orders?
Commander Taggart: Activate the Omega 13. [To be continued . . .]
The NSEA Protector starship blasts its way out of a TV screen showing Tim Allen
                (as Jason Nesmeth), Sigourney Weaver (as Gwen DeMarco), and Alan Rickman (as
                Alexander Dane).
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • 2000 Hugo
  • 2000 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants [s1:e14A]

SB-129


The first of SpongeBob’s family to foray into time was Squidward, whose accidental cryofreeze took him two millennia into the future. Of course, even primitive sponges know that that was not actual time travel, but future-SpongeTrons point the six-limbed cephalopod to a time machine that took him on two actual time travel trips before returning him to his own time. No, we don’t know whether one of the future SpongeTrons is SB-129, but we do note that the production code for this episode was 2515-129. —Inmate Jan
Well, why didn’t ya just ask? The time machine is down the hall and to the left.
Squidward, the green anthropomorphized squid, looks in shock at a throw switch
                with labels for Future and Past.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Deuxième vie


Shortly after the tragic French loss in the 1982 World Cup, an indecisive and depressed thirty-year-old Frenchman is thrown sixteen years into the future by a car crash, where he sees the French national team finally win a World Cup, and his ignoble future self shocks him into doing everything he can to go back to ’82 to ply a nobler course. —based on Wikipedia
An old and a young Patrick Braoudè (as old and young Vincent) are shocked to
                face each other.
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

13 Going On 30


Everything that could go wrong is going wrong for 13-year-old Jenna Rink. If only she could be already grown up in the future! —Michael Main
I wanna be thirty and flirty and thriving.
Jennifer Garner (as adult Jenna Rink) stands tall in a polka dot summer dress,
                with skirt blowing in the wind, holding a child
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Harry Potter 3

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban


Compared to the books, I find the Harry Potter movies drawn-out and boring, but I rewatched this one during the pandemic and found that I enjoyed all three thirteen-year-olds as well as Hagrid, Sirius, Snape, Lupin, and—most of all—the fact that the filmmakers didn’t blithely destroy the single static timeline out of a misplaced sense that time travelers are meant to change the timeline willy-nilly. —Michael Main
Hang on! That’s not possible. Ancient Runes is at the same time as Divination. You’d have to be in two classes at once.
Daniel Radcliffe (as Harry Potter), Emma Watson (as Hermione Granger), and
                Rupurt Grint (as Ron Weasley) are watching something that spooks Harry, fascinates
                Hermione, and terrifies Ron.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Santa Clause 3

The Escape Clause


Now that Santa and Mrs. Claus have the North Pole running smoothly, the Counsel of Legendary Figures has called an emergency meeting on Christmas Eve! The evil Jack Frost has been making trouble, looking to take over the holiday! So he launches a plan to sabotage the toy factory and compel Scott to invoke the little-known Escape Clause and wish he'd never become Santa. —from publicity material
This is the part where I’m transported through time and everything goes back to the way it was, like I’d never become Santa at all.
Tim Allen (as Santa) and Martin Short (as Jack Frost) smile out at us over a
                winter scene in a tiny town.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

This Must Be the Place


At a bar, Andrea meets a loopy man who seems to already know her; he leaves a mysterious message on a napkin, which turns out to be a hint about their next meeting where the man is younger and no longer knows her. —Michael Main
If I had the power to decide never to meet him again, I reasoned, surely I had the power to change the course of the relationship for the better.
A collage of Tom Cruise and other likely figures from the 1980s beside a
                countdown of years to 1984.
  • Science Fiction
  • Music and Musicals
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time’s Arrow


A physicist with a dead girlfriend experiences various precognition episodes leading up to his attempt to travel to the past to undead the girlfriend, or at least plant the seeds for the precognition. —Michael Main
I’m certain I didn’t send myself any mail recently, but then again, I have plans to do so in the near future—or near past, I suppose.
Text from "Time
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

When You Reach Me


Miranda has an odd friend named Marcus who knows a lot about time machines, another friend named Sal who has stopped hanging out with her, and a man—not really a friend—who sleeps under the mailbox out front. And then there are those mysterious notes from someone who seems to know quite a lot, but also needs her to write about everything that’s happening in her twelve-year-old life. —Michael Main
So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they left.
An abstract map of square city blocks with a few buildings, a shoe, a bread
                bag, a jacket with two pockets, a book, and other oddities in front of a city
                skyline.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Girl Who Leapt through Time #3

時をかける少女

  • Toki o Kakeru Shojo
  • Time-soaring girl
  • Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt through Time
  • by 菅野友恵, directed by 谷口正晃
  • (at movie theaters, Japan, 13 March 2010)

In this second sequel to Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1965 novel 時をかける少女 [⁠The Girl Who Leapt through Time⁠], Naka Riisa plays the daughter, Akari, of a grown-up Kazuko (the original “girl who leapt through time”). Akari tries to leap back to the time of her mother’s first love, Kazuo, in hopes that he can bring her mom out of a coma induced by a car accident.

The actress Naka Riisa has another connection to time-leaping girls: In the first sequel to the original novel, , a 2006 anime adaptation, Riisa voiced the lead character, Makoto, who was Kazuko’s niece. So if I have this right: The original leaper is Kazuko; Kazuko’s niece Makoto is the leaper in the 2006 anime; and Kazuko’s daughter Akari is the leaper in the 2010 live-action movie. So in some sense, Riisa is her own cousin. —Michael Main
Naka Riisa (as Yoshiyama Akari) stands apprehensively in her school uniform.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Hot Tub Time Machine


Three middle-aged losers (along with a nephew) head back to their teenaged bodies at a ski resort twentysome years earlier. —Michael Main
Yes, exactly. You step on a bug and the fucking Internet is never invented.
An equation! Old mug shots of the four cast members plus alcohol plus squirrel
                equals young mug shots and a hot tub.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Rocking My Dreamboat


Jameson is a jerk. He pretends to love his mother, with whom he shares a house. He discovers time travel via a Legoland Time Machine and uses it to destroy women who “dumped” him. Yep, this guy is a real “winner.” —Tandy Ringoringo
He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.
A Lego man sits at the controls of a Lego time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 68

Lessons Learned

  • [writer and director unknown]
  • (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 68, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011)

SpongeBob and faithful Patrick use the boxy time machine from “SB-129” to travel back and give advice to their younger selves. —Michael Main
Patrick, with this time machine, we can go back to the past and make our young selves wiser!
Cartoon character Sponge-Bob and his starfish pal Patrick stand in a boxy time
                machine in front of their younger selves.
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Anna Green 1

Time between Us


Somewhat self-absorbed 16-year-old Anna Green manages to fall for the first time traveler she ever meets, not realizing that he’s a time traveler or that he’s hoping his mission to 1995 will be a short-term affair. —Jeff Delgado
It’s too easy for me to say the wrong thing today, and if I do, we may never meet at all
A teenage girl looks into the distance on a beach with her arms clutched around
                her waist.
  • Romance
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Insidious 2

Insidious: Chapter 2


The first scene goes back to the time of Josh (the dad in Insidious) as a boy when he was possessed by a woman in white. The movie then returns to the present day, just after a possessed Josh murdered the exorcist who had treated him as a child, and gives a horrific, supernatural explanation of it all—including time travel via a demon world of non-linear time. —Michael Main
I, uh, digitized the actual footage taken from the night. I, uh, cropped and lightened the image.
Frightened Rose Byrnes (as Renai Lambert) holds a hammer in one hand and
                clutches two children (played by Ty Simpkins and Andrew Astor) to her with the
                other.
  • Horror
  • 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
Novelette

Magic Tree House: Merlin Mission 24*

Soccer on Sunday


Jack and Annie search for the fourth secret of greatness for Merlin in Mexico City at the 1970 World Cup Games. They hope to learn something new from soccer player great, Pele. —based on fandom.com
On a muddy field, barefooted Jack jumps high to kick a soccer ball while Annie
                runs toward him.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Videoville


In late 1986, geek Tim Stanek (he prefers the term “nerd”) and his high-school buddy Louis are approached one night by an unheard-of sort of person: a sensitive and inclusive football jock who asks them to come with him on a mission that needs their particular kind of resourcefulness. —Michael Main
AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, NFLX
False-color nebulae and stars.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

12 Monkeys, Season 1


Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow). —Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]
A man
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
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
Comic Book Series

The Rift


The crash of a 1941 World War II plane in a 21st-century Kansas field sets off a chain of plots and subplots involving the pilot, a mother on the run, a precotious young boy, a government agency, and multiple jumps through a time rift. —Michael Main
Smoke billows into a bright blue sky scarred by a rip in the heavens—what we’ll come to know as . . . The Rift
Above a bright red background, a single-wing propeller plane trails smokefrom
                its engine and wings.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

1989


What are you to do when you fail your high school final exams? In Shakir’s case, he decides to get his friend’s friend to send him back in time a few months to give himself a copy of the exam papers, which seems like a good plan if only he would listen to the warnings about not returning before he leaves. —Michael Main
Large yellow-and-black striped number 1989 superimposed over a lone house at
                night.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Creeped Out (s01e05)

A Boy Called Red


After his parents break up, Vincent visits his Dad’s childhood home where Auntie Jeanne encourages him to explore—without even putting that cursed well off limits, the very well where Dad lost his best friend back in the summer of ’85! —Inmate Jan
When your dad was younger, he had a best friend, a boy called Red. Red disappeared down that well.
Young Malen Clarkson (as Vincent) reaches out in amazement at a glowing white
                globe larger than his head.
  • Horror
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

7 Splinters of Time


While on medical leave for his mental health, police detective Darius Lafaux is called back in to investigate a case that turns into multiple murders of men who look exactly like himself. —Michael Main
Alise: You died ten years ago.
Darius: I was born ten years ago.
Two versions of Edoardo Ballerini (as Darius and Daniel) are merged into a
                single photo beside four other movie scenes.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Novel

Here and Now and Then


When time travel agent Kin Stewart finds himself rapidly losing his memory and stranded in 1996, he writes a journal of his life in the future and proceeds to break every rule in the book by creating a new life and family in his new present . . . until a retriever shows up in 2014. —Michael Main
Science fiction. She thought the journal was filled with tales, like her Doctor Who or Heather’s Star Trek shows.
Two paper dolls--a man and a woman--run on opposite sides of a looped,
                non-Moebius, strip of paper with the San Francisco skyline along its edge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Future of Another Timeline


Tess is a geologist (because, of course, geologists control the time travel of the giant ancient machines) and a member of the Daughters of Harriet (Senator Harriet Tubman, that is, from 19th-century Mississippi). On the surface, the Daughters are time travel scholars, but in reality, Tess and her fellow Daughters are fighting a pitched changewar for women’s rights against the oppressors known as the Comstockers. One more thing: While she’s at it,Tess also hopes to also save the souls of her teenaged self and her underground feminist punk friends in the 1990s, with a particular focus on their vigilante killing spree and young Beth’s abortion. —Michael Main
All five Machines had limitations, but the hardest to surmount was what travelers call the Long Four Years. Wormholes only opened for people who remained within twenty kilometers of a Machine for at least 1,680 days.
A watch dial with Roman numerals inside a dark blue flower on a bright red
                background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

In the Shadow of the Moon


Nine years after a gruesome mass murder, the case is reopened in the face of a copycat. As you might expect, Detective Thomas Lockhart poo-poos the notion that time travel is the only explanation for the set of present-day keys that were in the sealed evidence box of the nine-year-old case. —Michael Main
Last year? How in the hell did she have these keys in 1988?
An image of Boyd Holbrook (as Locke) blends into a nighttime scene of modern
                Cleopatra Coleman (as Rya) walking down an old-time city street.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Terminator 6

Terminator: Dark Fate


After the excitement of T2, you’d have thought that Sarah Connor and her son John could have settled down for a well-deserved, peaceful life. But, no: First a leftover T-800 Model 101 Terminator kills young John, and then 20 years later, Sarah meets two new characters—young Dani Ramos and an enhanced woman from the future—who are running from a new kind of terminator built by a new kind of Skynet. Certainly a fun T-romp, cast in the mold of T2, but really?!, if those johnny-come-lately millennial writers wanna live, they can’t be messing with the come-with-me line. —Michael Main
Grace: [to Dani and Diego at the car assembly plant] Come with me or you’re dead in the next 30 seconds.
Linda Hamilton (as Sarah Connor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (as the Terminator),
                and two new characters stand defiantly as a Rev-9 terminator walks single-mindedly
                toward us all.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Oona Out of Order


On Oona Lockhart’s 19th birthday, her mind leaps into her 51-year-old body where she learns that she’s fated to leap into a random year on every coming birthday, living each year once in a normal manner except for her discontinous consciousness. —Michael Main
Do I ever find any kind of stability? Or do I live life year after year like some kind of existential hobo?
Drawing of the face of a startled young woman with red lipstick, straight brown
                hair, and bangs.
  • Mainstream
  • 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
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • ten episodes (Netflix, USA, 31 July 2020)

Five’s plan for the Umbrella siblings to escape the apocalypse by going into the past ends up scattering them throughout different years of Dallas in the 1960s. They manage okay on their own until shortly after 11/22/63, when secondary effects from changes to the timeline cause a nuclear holocaust that can be averted only by recently arrived Five jumping back to 11/15/63 to exert his unique charm into getting the gang to work together. —Michael Main
Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”
All seven siblings of the Umbrella Academy walk in a straight line in their
                blue uniforms over a background of 1960s psychedelic black lines.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Christmas Chronicles 2


Two years after the first Christmas Chronicles movie, young Kate Pierce is sitting on a beach in Cancun, missing her father and losing her status as a True Believer, all of which causes her to try flying back to Boston on her own—a plan that plays right into evil Belsnickel’s plan to overthrow Santa Claus and Mrs. Santa Claus. —Michael Main
Santa: [shaking head] Only Belsnickel would power a time machine with triple-A’s.
Kurt Russell (as Santa) and Goldie Hawn (as Mrs. Santa) pose in front of his
                village and two sleighs in the sky.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Best. Scientist. EVER.


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

WandaVision


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

Time Traveler at the Grocery Store circa 1992


Twentieth-century grocery store aisles provide a vision of a world of dust that's coming. —Michael Main
Some days it’s hard to believe that there’s not something wrong with the lettuce.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Lost between the Plates


A woman seems to be chasing someone via random jumps through time. —Michael Main
I’ve been chasing him for years and forever. Spinning through time and space without a sail.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Loki, Season 1


Hang on to your Tesseracts! Apparently, in Endgame, when the Avengers traveled back in time to swipe various things from the 2012 Avengers, they inadvertantly started a branch in time where Loki ended up with the Tesseract. Of course, once that occurred, the Time Variance Authority spotted him as a Variant and quickly recruited him to help in their fight against even more variant Variants. —Michael Main
Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branches growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified.
Tom Hiddleston (as Loki) stands with his arms crossed and an annoyed look on
                his face, in front of a large analog clock with multiple hands.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e03)

Quantum Entanglement


The new Fantasy Island inches closer to actual time travel when Elana helps “invisible” Eileen understand her relationship with her grown daughter by acting as a Dickensian guide and showing Eileen how her daughter experienced growing up. And young Ruby receives news of how her family is managing without her. —Michael Main
Eileen: She absolutely loved it here.
Elena: Are you sure?
Kiara Barnes (as young Ruby Akuda), dresseed in white, looks wiser than her
                years with tropical trees behind her.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

Fantasy Island (v3s01e07), pt. 2

The Bromance


Brian Cole, a hard-core survivalist, faces his greatest challenge: working with and understanding his own young self. —Michael Main
I might be you, but I’m not a moron.
Lying on a rocky slope, Eric Winter (as Brian Cole) looks skyward while an
                out-of-focus Roselyn Sanchez (as Elena Roarke) stands calmly in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Flashback


After high-powered lawyer Charlie Leroy gets her client cleared from a rape charge by claiming that the accuser’s lacy underwear was consent to have sex, Charlie finds herself transported by a divine cabdriver to historical moments that were key for women’s rights. —Michael Main
Attends . . . si maman n'épouse pas papa, je vais pas naître. Je viens de me tuer.
translate Wait . . . if Mom never marries Dad, I won’t be born. I just killed myself.
Issa Doumbia (as cabdriver Hubert) leans on a cab in front of Caroline Vigneaux
                (as Charlie), who is surrounded by lots of people from history.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı, Season 1

  • Midnight at Pera Palace
  • Midnight at the Pera Palace
  • by Elif Usman, directed by Emre Şahin and Nisan Dağ
  • (Netflix, worldwide, 3 March 2022) [8 episodes]

While researching an article about the 130th anniversary of Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel, dedicated journalist Esra Koksuz finds herself at the hotel back in 1919, investigating the murder of her own doppelgänger and racing to stop the murder of Turkey’s founder. —Michael Main
Mustafa Kemal 16 Mayıs günü o gemiye sağ salim binemezse Kurtsuluşı Savaşı başlamayacak. Cumhuriyet kurulmayacak. Türkiye diye bir ülke olmayacak.
translate If Mustafa Kamal doesn’t board that ship on May the 16th, the War of Independence won’t begin, the Republic won’t be founded, and Turkey will never come to be!
No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

This Time Tomorrow


After turning forty in a snit because of her career decisions, her unexciting boyfriend, and her dying father, Alice Stern wakes up on her 16th birthday in her teen body. —Michael Main
“I know it’s your birthday,” Leonard said. “You’ve made me watch Sixteen Candles enough times to ensure that I wouldn’t let this one slide.”
A light brown scribble winds its way around a lighter brown cover of Straub’s
                novel, This Time Tomorrow.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • 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

Crazy


While in a coma, a patient hears everything in the hospital room for 50 years. —Michael Main
But I heard everything, and I followed what was happening in the world.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable 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
Feature Film

Totally Killer


It’s fortunate that Jamie’s best friend in high school is building a time machine so that Jamie can go back to when Mom was in high school to stop the serial killer who killed Mom’s three friends—and just now killed Mom, too! —Michael Main
If your parents don’t get married and have kids, then basically you just have no life to go home to because everything woud be different. No one would have any idea who you are.
No image currently available.
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite 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