Unspecified Past Year

Tag Area: Era
Novelette

Silver Dome

  • by Harl Vincent
  • in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930
In an underground city, Queen Phaestra uses a past-viewing machine of vague nature to show the destruction of Atlantis to two good-hearted men. But Atlantis itself is not visited, and there are no time phenomena apart from the viewing. —Michael Main
This is accomplished by means of extremely complex vibrations penetrating earth, metals, buildings, space itself, and returning to our viewing and sound reproducing spheres to reveal the desired past or present occurrences at the point at which the rays of vibrations are directed.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a guide, dressed only in a short skirt, shows two modern men the view of a city of four-storey hexagonal buildings.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Wanderer of Infinity

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

Journey into Mystery #3

Hands Off!

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

Unusual Tales #1

La Caverna del Pasado

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

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

Journey into Mystery #38

Stone Face!

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

Journey into Mystery #39

I Lived Four Times!

Stefan Orjanski, a Hungarian soldier, is taken by his love to a sorcerer who can help him desert the army, but the help requires first living through part of the lives of four others. —Michael Main
I felt so strange . . . as if I were not alone! As if I were not myself!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #48

Don’t Turn Around!

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

Unusual Tales #14

Giant from the Unknown

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

Routine Exercise

“It was like a distant depth charge, yet—” it sent Captain Harvey’s nuclear sub to a different time where “—the enemy, whoever they were, technically outclassed his own culture by about fifteen hundred years, if not more.” Or maybe it was something else out there in that fetid heat. —Michael Main
The past—could there be such a thing as a time-shift? The whole idea was a paradox, wasn’t it? Like that yarn about the chap who went back in time and murdered his own grandfather.
A man in a low-cut, high-fashion, purple dress reaches for four sparkling geometric shapes.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

Professor Noah’s Spaceship

Professor Noah rescues all the animals from a dying planet, and during their journey of 40 days and 40 nights they plan to travel through a time-zone to take them hundreds of years into the future. At one point, the elephant must take a spacewalk to fix the time-zone guideance fin, which suggests that the time-zone is some sort of a wormhole or other time portal in space rather than mere reletavistic time dilation—and indeed there is actual time travel! —Michael Main
He put on a special space-suit, went out through the air-lock, and pulled the fin into shape.
A long parade of colorful animals marches toward a fat, finned spaceship in the distance.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Himself in Anachron

Tasco Magnon, time traveler, decides to take his new bride on his next trip through time—a quest to find the mythical Knot in Time—where the two of them get trapped, and only one can return.

After Smith’s death in 1966, the story was completed by his wife, Genevieve Linebarger, and sold to Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Vision, but that anthology was endlessly delayed. So in 1987, a translated version of the story was published in a French collection of Smith’s stories, and that was the first published version (although we’ve listed it as an English story, since that’s how it was written). The English version was finally published in Smith’s 1993 complete short science fiction collection by NESFA. By then, Ellison’s rights to the story had expired, although that didn’t stop him from suing NESFA. —Michael Main
‘Honeymoon in time,’ indeed. Why? Is it that your woman is jealous of your time trips? Don’t be an idiot, Tasco. You know that ship’s not built for two.
Spaceships float around a giant structure capped by a skull with spikey hair.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite 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
Early Chapter Book

The Magic Tree House 28

High Tide in Hawaii

When Jack and Annie visit Hawaii before any Western influences, Annie is the more natural surfer. They also discover a fourth kind of magic in the everyday world, earning the title of Magicians of Everyday Magic. —Michael Main
Jack took a deep breath. “I’d like to read a little about surfing first,” he said. He put his board down and pulled out the research book.
With leis around their necks, young Jack and Annie surf on a smooth wave.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Magic Tree House: Merlin Mission 18*

Dogs in the Dead of Night

Jack and Annie travel to a monastery in the Swiss Alps where, with the help of St. Bernard dogs and magic, they seek the second of four special objects necessary to break the spell on Merlin’s pet penguin, Penny. —based on fandom.com
Dressed as monks in brown robes, young Jack and Annie race through snow after a bounding Saint Bernard.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • 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
Cartoon

What If  . . . ? (s01e04)

What If . . . Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

As we all know, when the world’s formost surgeon, Doctor Strange, lost the use of his hands in a car wreck, it prompted him to search out mystic treatments and eventually become the Master of the Mystic Arts. But what if he had lost something else in that wreck? —Michael Main
The Ancient One: Her death is an Absolute Point in time.
Dr. Strange: Absolute?
A.O.: Unchangable. Unmovable. Without her death, you would never have defeated Dormamu and become the Sorcerer Supreme—and the guardian of the Eye of Agamotto. If you erase her death, you never start your journey.
A computer animated cartoon drawing of Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange) casting a spell.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

Fusco Brothers, 7 August 2022

Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen

You’re listening to the soothing sounds of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians . . .
Al Fusco relaxes on a couch while a voice to the side announces "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen."
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel