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The Internet Time Travel Database

Unspecified Future Year

Time Periods

Taa the Terrible

by Malcolm Jameson
After a run-in with an oppressive governor on the planet Arania, tourist Larry Frazer and a helpful human Nelda must decide what they’ll do with their knowledge that all the planet’s natives are entering a long sleep to protect them from Taa the Terrible.
— Michael Main
My people now go into the long sleep. We do that out of terror of Taa, for when he roams the land in wrath no thing that can feel, see or hear can survive.Only in these catacombs is it possible to bear his thunders and live. We call it the Sleep of Ten Thousand Years, though no one knows how long the time really is.
“Taa the Terrible” by Malcolm Jameson, in Astonishing Stories, December 1933.

Hindsight

by Jack Williamson
Years ago, engineer Bill Webster abandoned Earth for the employ of the piratical Astrarch far beyond the orbit of Mars; now the Astrarch is aiming the final blow at a defeated Earth, and Bill wonders whether the gun sights he invented can spot—and change!—events in the past.
— Michael Main
The tracer fields are following all the world lines that intersected at the battle, back across the months and years. The analyzers will isolate the smallest—hence most easily altered—essential factor.
“Hindsight” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, May 1940.

Special Knowledge

by A. Bertram Chandler
A man in WW2 Britain trades minds with his descendant, an officer on a spaceship. They are shipwrecked on Venus, where his 20th century seaman’s experience saves the day.
— Dave Hook
“Special Knowledge” by A. Bertram Chandler, Astounding Science Fiction, February 1946.

Rescue Party

by Arthur C. Clarke
Only a smidgen of unimportant time phenomena in the first paragraph of this ominous first contact story.
— Michael Main
But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning.
“Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke, Astounding Science Fiction, May 1946.

Vintage Season

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
More and more strange people are appearing each day in and around Oliver Wilson’s home; the explanation from the euphoric redhead leads him to believe they are time travelers gathering for an important event.
— Michael Main
Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.
“Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding, September 1946.

Stalemate in Space

by Charles L. Harness
Even though this story was reprinted as “Stalemate in Time” in the 1960s, it still was just a battle between two death stars. No time travel.
— Michael Main
For twenty years, in company with her great father, she had watched The Defender grow from a vast metal skeleton into a planet-sized battle globe.
“Stalemate in Space” by Charles L. Harness, Planet Stories, Summer 1949.

Private Eye

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
A jilted man plans murderous revenge while trying to avoid any behavior that would reveal his plans to the government’s all-seeing technology that can reconstruct the past from electromagnetic and sound waves.
— Michael Main
It was sensitive enough to pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter, descramble and screen them, and reproduce the image of what had happened.
“Private Eye” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science Fiction, January 1949.

The Choice

by Wayland Hilton-Young
In about 200 words, Williams goes to the future and returns with the memory of only one small thing.
— Michael Main
How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?
“The Choice” by Wayland Hilton-Young, in Punch, 19 March 1952.

Paycheck

by Philip K. Dick
Apparently, Jennings agreed to work as a specialized mechanic for two years at Rethrick Construction, having his memory wiped at the end in return for 50,000 credits—except instead of a bag full of credits, the memory-wiped Jennings is left holding a bag of seven trinkets and no idea why he would have agreed to such a thing.
— Michael Main
But the big puzzle: how had he—his earlier self—known that a piece of wire and a bus token would save his life? He had known, all right. Known in advance. But how? And the other five. Probably they were just as precious, or would be.
“Paycheck” by Philip K. Dick, Imagination, June 1953.

Journey into Mystery #14

The Man Who Owned a World

by an unknown writer, Vic Carrabotta, and Jack Abel
Evil stepfather George intercepts a build-a-world kit from the future.
— Michael Main
Somewhere in the future, a postal error had been made and a package destined for a yet as unborn grandson had been lost in time and delivered to this house!
“The Man Who Owned a World” by an unknown writer, Vic Carrabotta, and Jack Abel, in Journey into Mystery #14 (Atlas Comics, February 1954).

Jon’s World

by Philip K. Dick
First the Soviets and the Westerners fought. Then the Westerners brought Schonerman’s killer robots into the mix. Then the robots fought both human sides. You know all that from Dick’s earlier story, “Second Variety.” But now it’s long after the desolation, long enough that Caleb Ryan and his financial backer Kastner are willing to bring back the secret of Schonerman’s robots from the past to make their world a better place for surviving mankind, including Ryan’s visionary son Jon.
— Michael Main
And then the terminator’s claws began to manufacture their own varieties and attack Soviets and Westerners alike. The only humans that survived were those at the UN base on Luna.
“Jon’s World” by Philip K. Dick, in Time to Come: Science-Fiction Stories of Tomorrow, edited by August Derleth; Farrar (Strass and Young, April 1954).

Journey into Mystery #35

Fallon’s Folly!

by unknown writers and Paul Reinman
Professor Fallon’s research into artificial suns may not be taken seriously today, but there are other times where it could be the very thing that’s needed.
— Michael Main
Research has to be along practical lines! The trustees demand it!
“Fallon’s Folly!” by unknown writers and Paul Reinman, in Journey into Mystery #35 (Atlas Comics, June 1956).

Journey into Mystery #36

Something Is Happening in There

by unknown writers and Carl Hubbell
Yes! They had sf nerds even back in the 1950s, but they called them “born fools.” In this case, the born fool is Ebenezer, who believes that a secretive new stranger is building a time machine.
— Michael Main
It’s just like this picture . . . of a time machine!
“Something Is Happening in There!” by unknown writers and Carl Hubbell, in Journey into Mystery #36 (Atlas Comics, July 1956).

Conquest over Time

by Michael Shaara
A fun story of first contact with a planet where astrology reigns supreme, but despite the story’s title, there is no actual time travel™ or other time phenomena.
— Michael Main
Every event that happens on this cockeyed world, from a picnic to a wedding to a company merger or a war, it’s all based on astrology.
“Conquest over Time” by Michael Shaara, Fantastic Universe, November 1956.

Journey into Mystery #41

He Came from Nowhere

by an unknown writer and Gray Morrow
As a government scientist makes a breakthrough discovery, he’s confronted out of nowhere by a time traveling kidnapper from a future government.
— Michael Main
Your work, this house, everything must be destroyed!
“He Came from Nowhere” by an unknown writer and Gray Morrow, in Journey into Mystery #41 (Atlas Comics, December 1956).

Time Travel Inc.

by Robert F. Young
I found this in one of three old sf magazines that I traded for at Denver’s own West Side Books. (Thank you, Lois.) Both the title and the table-of-contents blurb (They wanted to witness the Crucifixion) foreshadow Moorcock’s “Behold the Man,” although the story is not as vivid.
— Michael Main
Oh . . . The Crucifixion. You want to witness it, of course—
“Time Travel Inc.” by Robert F. Young, Super-Science Fiction, February 1958.

Passage to Gomorrah

by Robert F. Young
In a future of FTL spaceships, time storms between the stars, and male-only space explorers, young Berenice had run away to the stars as a sex worker. But when she inexplicably becomes pregnant, the powers-that-be book passage for her on Captain Cross’s ship to the exhile planet called Gomorrah.
— Michael Main
“But wouldn’t our objective reality be affected?”

He nodded. “It could be,” he said, “since, in the absence of any real passage of time, it would be in temporal ratio to our involvement in our pasts, which might force it into a different time plane altogether.”

“Passage to Gomorrah” by Robert F. Young, Fantastic January 1959.

Future Science Fiction, February 1960

Through Other Eyes

by R. A. Lafferty
Although the story is not about time travel, the characters do spend the first couple of pages reminiscing about their disappointing experiences with a time machine.
— Fred Galvin
“And watching the great Pythagorous at work.”
“And the three days that he spent on that little surveying problem. How one longed to hand him a slide-rule through the barrier and explain its working.”
“Through Other Eyes” by R. A. Lafferty, Future Science Fiction, February 1960.

La jetée

English release: La Jetée Literal: The pier

written and directed by Chris Marker
In a world made uninhabitable by the Third World War, a prisoner is chosen as being the only person with vivid enough memories of the past to travel through time and return with salvation.

This 28-minute photo montage with about 1,200 words of narration has a nice seed of an idea, but I find it insulting to other talented filmmakers that Time magazine ranked this sketch of a film as #1 in their 2010 list of best time travel movies.

— Michael Main
Tel était le but des expériences : projeter dans le Temps des émissaires, appeler le passé et l’avenit au secours du présent.
Such was the purpose of the experiments: to project emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and the Future to the aid of the Present.
English
La jetée written and directed by Chris Marker (at movie theaters, France, 16 February 1962).

When You Care, When You Love

by Theodore Sturgeon
Sylva—an heiress who is used to getting her way—devises a plan to (sort of) save her terminally ill lover, Guy Gibbon.
— Michael Main
But lots of things were crazier and some bigger, nd now they’re commonplace.
“When You Care, When You Love” by Theodore Sturgeon, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1962.

Unusual Tales #47

The Unwelcome Guest

by Joe Gill [?] and Bill Molno
After a car accident, Steve Teller stumbles into a house that takes him from one time to another.
— Michael Main
Open up! I’ve had enough of this! Whatever crazy explanation there is, I want it now!
“The Unwelcome Guest” by Joe Gill [?] and Bill Molno, Unusual Tales #47 (Charlton Comics, November 1964).

The Keys to December

by Roger Zelazny
Tens of thousands of people, genegineered for an iceworld are left homeless after a nova, so they set out to create their own world, not realizing the potentialities of the indiginous life.
— Michael Main
The vanguard arrived, decked out in refrigeration suits, installed ten Worldchange units in either hemisphere, began setting up coldsleep bunkers in several of the larger caverns.
“The Keys to December” by Roger Zelazny, New Worlds, August 1966.

Light of Other Days

by Bob Shaw
On a driving holiday in Argyll, Mr. and Mrs. Garland hope to find a way out of their hateful marriage, but instead they find a field of slow glass harvesting the light of other days.
— Michael Main
Apart from its stupendous novelty value, the commercial success of slow glass was founded on the fact that having a scenedow was the exact emotional equivalent of owning land.
“Light of Other Days” by Bob Shaw, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1966.

Dragonriders of Pern 1A

Weyr Search

by Anne McCaffrey
Time travel doesn’t yet occur in this first of the Pern stories, but hop on over to the second story for the first display of a dragon jumping between times.
— Michael Main
The danger was definitely not within the walls of Hold Ruath. Nor approaching the paved perimeter without the Hold where relentless grass had forced new growth through the ancient mortar, green witness to the deterioration of the once stone-clean Hold.
“Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey, Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact, October 1967.

Dragonriders of Pern 1B

Dragonrider

by Anne McCaffrey
By the time that Lessa of Ruatha Hold becomes Weyrwoman of the only remaining dragon weyr, the end of all Pern seems imminent since a single weyr is not enough to fight off the falling threads from the Red Star.

“Dragonrider,” which was first released as a two-part Analog serial (December 1967 and January 1968), was the second Pern story, appearing after the shorter novella “Weyr Search” (October 1967). Together, the two stories formed the first Pern novel, Dragonflight (1968). When the online version of the ITTDB was in a nascent stage, my friend Allison Thompson-Brown reminded me that the dragons can travel to a new when as well as a new where, and that time travel first appeared near the end of “Dragonrider.” Time travel on Pern occurs in a single, static timeline, so the dragons and their riders can never change anything known to be certain in the past.

— Michael Main
“Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go as easily to a when as to a where.”

Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.

“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”

“Dragonrider” by Anne McCaffrey, 2-part serial, Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact, December 1967 to January 1968.

Dragonriders of Pern 1 [fix-up]

Dragonflight

by Anne McCaffrey
By the time that Lessa of Ruatha Hold becomes Weyrwoman of the only remaining dragon weyr, the end of all Pern seems a possibility since a single weyr is not enough to fight off the falling threads from the Red Star.

Allison Thompson-Brown reminded me that dragons can go when as well as where, and the travel through time always results in a stable time loop, so that dragon travel can never change anything known to be certain in the past. The actual whening part (or going between time, as it’s called) didn’t come until the third installment (Part 2 of “Dragonrider” in the Jan 1968 Analog), but I’ll date the concept back to the slightly earlier appearance of the first story (“Weyr Search” in Oct 1967). The two stories were fixed up into the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, in July of 1968, but it was another ten years before I discovered it.

“Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go as easily to a when as to a where.”

Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.

“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey (Ballantine Books, July 1968).

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1

Light of Other Days

by Tony Isabella, Gene Colan, and Mike Esposito
Until the last page, this was a nice adaptation of Bob Shaw’s original story. Don’t know why they felt a need to change it or add an epilogue.
— Michael Main
The commercial success of slow glass was founded on the fact that owning a scnedow was the exact emotional equivalent of owning land.
“Light of Other Days” by Tony Isabella, Gene Colan, and Mike Esposito, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1, January 1975.

Closing the Timelid

by Orson Scott Card
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.
“Closing the Timelid” by Orson Scott Card, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1979.

Professor Noah’s Spaceship

by Brian Wildsmith
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.
Professor Noah’s Spaceship by Brian Wildsmith (Oxford University Press, December 1980).

The River of Time

by David Brin
Daniel Brand, a science fiction writer, walks us through the new world where he lives that started when a large number of people seemingly froze in place.
— Michael Main
Physicians listened to heartbeats that dragged on, lonely and deep, for over a minute per. They worried over eyes that refused to blink, yet remained somehow moist. They despaired over encephalograms whose spikes could be counted in single neuron flashes, adding up to a complex pattern that was . . . normal!
“Co-Existence” by David Brin, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 1982.

Cherryh’s Alternate Realities #1

Port Eternity

by C. J. Cherryh
Living an isolated life on the spaceship Maid of Astolat, Lady Dela and her crew of cloned servants designed in the image of Arthurian legends are pulled into a parallel dimension, but despite the title of this first book in Cherryh’s Alternate Realities series, there is no actual time travel.
— from publicity material
Then it was as if whatever was holding us had just stopped existing, no jolt, but like sliding on oil, like a horrible falling where there is no falling.
Port Eternity by C. J. Cherryh (DAW Books, October 1982).

Slow Birds

by Ian Watson
Every year, Jason Babbidge competes in the skate-sailing race on the two-and-a-half-mile-wide glass surfaces left behind by slowly flying birds when they occassionally explode before disappearing. This year’a race is not a win for Jason, but even worse is what happens when his brother Daniel climbs aboard one of the birds afterwards.
— Michael Main
They were called slow birds because the flew through the air—at the stately pace of three feet per minute.
“Slow Birds” by Ian Watson, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1983.

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg
Charles Phillips is a 20th-century New Yorker in a future world of immortal leisurites who reconstruct cities from the past.
— Michael Main
He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them. That he knew. He knew that his name was Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities, not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg and Parks and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and Buenos Ares and a multitude of others, all at the same time.
“Sailing to Byzantium” by Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1985.

The Pure Product

by John Kessel
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.
“The Pure Product” by John Kessel, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 1986.

Himself in Anachron

by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger
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.
“Lui-même en Anachron” by Cordwainer Smith and Genevieve Linebarger, in Les puissances de’espace [The powers of space[/em] (Presses Pocket, September 1987).

Frankenstein Unbound

by Roger Corman and F. X. Feeney, directed by Roger Corman
Joe Buchanan invents a weapon that’s meant to be so terrible it will end war forever, but the weapon causes time rifts, one of which takes him (and his futuristic talking car, a.k.a. his electric carriage) back in time to where he meets Dr. Frankenstein (a standoffish man, but willing to talk science), Frankenstein’s monster (who is fascinated with the talking car), and Mary Wollstonecraft (a budding author).

The film did a good job of bringing Brian Aldiss’s book’s premise to the screen, with a better pace than the book, but the short dream sequences were ineffective for me and Dr. Frankenstein is more of a clichéd villain than in the book.

— Michael Main
Zero pollution, maximum ozone shield: Something tells me we’re not in New Los Angeles any more.
Frankenstein Unbound by Roger Corman and F. X. Feeney, directed by Roger Corman (at movie theaters, Uruguay, 1 November 1990).

A Time Odyssey 1

Time’s Eye

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
And she was continually amazed at how easily everyone else accepted their situation, the blunt, apparently undeniable reality of the time slips, across a hundred and fifty years in her case, perhaps a million years or more for the wretched pithecine and her infant in their net cage.
Time’s Eye by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, January 2004).

The Hat Thing

by Matthew Hughes
A nameless man tells another how to spot time travelers.
— Michael Main
Sure. Researchers. Tourists. Criminals altering their present by manipulating the past. Religious pilgrims. Collectors. Who knows what motivates people in a million years from now?
“The Hat Thing” by Matthew Hughes, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2004.

Horrid Henry stories 13.2

Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine

by Francesca Simon
Henry builds a time machine out of the box that the washing machine arrived in, and he’s his usual horrid self in bringing with his little brother Peter up to speed about the whole thing.
— Michael Main
“I’m going to the future and you can’t stop me,” said Peter.
“Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine” by Francesca Simon, in Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine [four stories] (Orion Children’s Books, 2005).

Diving Universe 1A

Diving into the Wreck

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The first story in the Diving Universe series finds the captain (a.k.a. “Boss”) of Nobody’s Business and her motley crew of five wreck divers grappling with a five-thousand-year-old derelict spaceship that’s farther from Earth than it has any right to be. Their own spaceship has an FTL Drive, which always implies time travel, and there are suggestions that the old ship has areas of differing time rates based on interdimensional, parallel universe hand-waving, but the confirmation of actual time travel doesn’t occur until later in the Diving Universe series.
— Michael Main
A few documents, smuggled to the colonies on Earth’s Moon, suggested that stealth tech was based on interdimensional science—that the ships didn’t vanish off radar because of a “cloak” but because they traveled, briefly, into another world—a parallel universe that’s similar to our own.

I recognized the theory—it’s the one on which time travel is based, even though we’ve never discovered time travel, at least not in any useful way, and researchers all over the universe discourage experimentation in it. They prefer the other theory of time travel, the one that says time is not linear, that we only perceive it as linear, and to actually time travel would be to alter the human brain.

But what Squishy is telling me is that it’s possible to time travel, it’s possible to open small windows in other dimensions, and bend them to our will.

“Diving into the Wreck” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2005.

Diving Universe 1B

The Room of Lost Souls

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
This time around, “Boss” puts together a crew to dive into the central part of an age-old abandoned space station where many have entered but, apparently, only Boss (long ago, as a young girl) has ever returned. The universe is largely unchanged from the first Diving Universe story, replete with mysterious interdimensional ambiguities and timey-wimey goings-on, but still no actual time travel.
— Michael Main
The exterior parts of the station move in a slower time frame. The interior part, nearest the stealth tech itself, is moving at an accelerated pace.
“Diving into the Shipwreck” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2008.

Fiddle

by Tim Pratt
Fiddles had not yet been invented during Nero’s time. So just how did that rumor get started?
— Tandy Ringoringo
At any rate, ready your cameras and make sure your bows are rosined.
“Fiddle” by Tim Pratt, Daily Science Fiction, 6 September 2010 [webzine].

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67

Time Machine

[writer and director unknown]
In the first of three time travel mini-episodes—each around one minute long—SpongeBob and Patrick put their hot tub time machine through the works, hoping to find Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy in their prime.
— Michael Main
Will they get it right? Will SpongeBob and Patrick get to see their superheroes in their super-prime?
“Time Machine” [writer and director unknown] (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011).

Effect and Cause

by Ken Liu
A pilot on a one-man ship in a space battle repeatedly lives backward through fifteen seconds and then forward again with the chance to do things differently each time.
— Michael Main
Ignoring this, I sit down at the table to pick up a cup and spit calding hot coffee into it. Then I proceed to vomit food onto my plate so I can sculpt it with a knife and fork into peas, carrots, and omelette.
“Effect and Cause” by Ken Liu, in Galaxy’s Edge #2, May 2013 [print · e-zine · webzine].

Historicity

by Bob Newbell
In the moments before a jump, a traveler muses over the realities of time travel.
— Michael Main
That's a much nicer narrative device than having to find the right kind of black hole orbiting the right kind of star and then build a machine around both of them.
“Historicity” by Bob Newbell, 365 Tomorrows, 24 July 2013 [webzine].

Marley and Marley

by J. R. Dawson
Somewhat jaded 28-year-old Marley comes back through time to take care of 12-year-old orphaned Marley.
— Michael Main
He told me all the horrible things that would happen if I broke any Time Laws. Worlds would collapse. I would turn inside out. Important people would die and important things wouldn’t happen.
“Marley and Marley” by J. R. Dawson, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2017.

Aether

written and directed by Jerry Brown, Jr.
At the moment when the speedometer on the Aether spaceship clicked over from .999999c to 1.00000c, a collective cheer erupted up in the ITTDB Citadel. Was it a jaw-dropping dramatic moment? Seems unlikely, but we were looking for something to cheer for in this cryptic story of three men who headed to the future via relativistic time travel, only to find themselves trapped in post-apocalyptic outer space and quantum technobabble.
— Michael Main
It nullifies Gödel’s theorem.
Aether written and directed by Jerry Brown, Jr. (Youtube: SuperEpic Channel, 2 April 2018).

One Giant Step

by John H. Dromey
A damaged time probe provides an ominous warning for human time travel.
— Michael Main
[. . .] all of the data-gathering instruments are kaput.
“One Giant Step” by John H. Dromey, in Chronos: An Anthology of Time Drabbles, edited by Eric S. Fomley (Shacklebound Books, August 2018).

ドロステのはてで僕ら

Dorosute no hate de bokura English release: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes Literal: We at the end of the Droste

by 上田誠, directed by 山口淳太
For the first sixty minutes, a perfect static timeline seemed to be emerging from Kato’s video stream from two minutes in the future. We might even get some philosophical commentary on free will! Alas, that was not to be as the final ten minutes presented a more commonplace ending, although the single-take nagamawashi was executed with perfection and garnered this fun film an Eloi Medal.

P.S. Don’t skip the end-credits!

— Michael Main
Your monitor and the shop’s TV are linked with a two-minute delay.
[ex=bare]ドロステのはてで僕ら | We at the end of the Droste | Dorosute no hate de bokura[/ex] by 上田誠, directed by 山口淳太 (at limited theaters, Japan, 5 June 2020).

Goodbye, Howard Henning

by John E. Stith
Did you ever wonder what happens when a time traveler makes a mistake? Don’t miss Stith’s “Story behind the Story” at the end of the web page.
— Michael Main
This isn’t Germany. And this can’t be 1924.
“Goodbye, Howard Henning” by John E. Stith, in Nature Futures, 15 July 2020.

Time Traveler at the Grocery Store circa 1992

by Kristian Macaron
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.
“Time Traveler at the Grocery Store circa 1992” by Kristian Macaron, Asimov’s Science Fiction, March/April 2021.

Lost between the Plates

by Benjamin Abbott
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.
“Lost between the Plates” by Benjamin Abbott, Daily Science Fiction, 21 May 2021 [webzine].

Vacation in Sunny Future

by Terence Kuch
The narrator takes a vacation to the future, since going to the past is sensibly banned.
— Michael Main
Like all those stories where the world goes to hell because of some tiny stupid thing I might do back then.
“Vacation in Sunny Future” by Terence Kuch, Daily Science Fiction, 4 November 2021 [webzine].

Paean for a Branch Ghost

by Filip Wiltgren
In the far future, a woman who had lived through the Sobibor extermination camp manipulates the system to go back and rescue the rest of her family.
— Michael Main
“Twentieth century,” said Davos, and I whistled, long, and low, and falling. “Special assignment,” he said, and I whistled again. I’d never heard of anyone going that far back.
“Paean for a Branch Ghost” by Filip Wiltgren, Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022 [e-zine · webzine].

Lightyear

by Jason Headley and Angus MacLane, directed by Angus MacLane
Despite having relativistic time dilation, actual time travel, and a nice treatment of various time travel tropes, the story of Buzz Lightyear (the movie character) who was the basis for Buzz Lightyear (the toy) fell far short of infinity in terms of plot and fun.
— Michael Main
Time dilation is quite simple. As you approached hyperspeed, your time slowed relative to our own, so during your mission, you aged only minutes, while the rest of us have aged years. Simply put, the faster you fly—
Lightyear by Jason Headley and Angus MacLane, directed by Angus MacLane (at movie theaters, Philippines et al., 15 June 2022).
as of 2:47 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
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