Letters, Texts, Phone Calls, Talking, and Other Direct Communications through Time

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Short Story

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

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

I’m Scared

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

Unusual Tales #11

Noise in the Cellar

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

시월애

  • Siworae
  • Time-transcending love
  • Il Mare
  • by 여지나 et al., directed by 이현승
  • (at movie theaters, South Korea, 9 September 2000)
In December of 1997, when Sung-hyun moves into the newly built house-on-stilts above the tidal sand, he names it Il Mare from the Italian for “the sea”—and via a letter in the mailbox, he learns that Eun-joo wants him to forward any mail that may arrive for her, since she has just moved out . . . in December of 1999. —Michael Main
Sung-hyun! Don’t go there!
Jun Ji-hyun (as Kim Eun-ji) and Lee Jung-jae (as Han Sung-hyun ) stare longingly into each others eyes over a mailbox by the sea.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Lake House

Letters—eventually love letters—pass back and forth between Dr. Kate Foster and architect Alex Wyler who are two years apart in time. —Michael Main
It’s kind of a long distance relationship.
Sandra Bullock (as Kate Foster in full color) and Keanu Reeves (as Alex Wyler in black-and-white) cuddle.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • 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
Serial Film

Dating Rules [.s1]

Dating Rules from My Future Self I: Lucy

Nice and nerdy Lucy gets romantic advice from her future self via text messages.

Fellow ITTDB indexer Janet found this one on the web, and we watched a daily installment with tea during my first September up in the ITTDB Citadel. —Michael Main
Lucy: tell me who this is.
Unknown: I’m u 10 years in the future.
Nicely dressed Shiri Appleby (as Lucy) smiles at us over her cell phone.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Dating Rules [.s2]

Dating Rules from My Future Self II: Chloe

In the second season, our heroine switches to lovely and lonely Chloe (Candice Accola). Now, if we can only get writer Sallie Patrick to slip some time travel into the other show she works on, Revenge. —Michael Main
Chloe, you have to believe me. I’m here to help you help me . . . help us!
Candice Accola (as Chloe) twists her hair around the fingers of one hand and dangles her high heels from the other.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Audio Play Series

3 seasons

ars Paradoxica

—pending
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

내가 이 나라의 평강공주다

  • Mai onri leobeusong
  • My only lovesong
  • My Only Love Song
  • by 김수진, directed by 민두식
  • (Netflix, 9 June 2017)
Diva actress Song Soo-jung drives off in a huff in her manager’s VW van—Boing Boing—only to find herself in the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo where she meets characters from her historical TV show including the real Princess Pyeonggang and the roguish hero On-Dal. —Michael Main
A cheerful Gong Seung-yeon (as Soo-jung) drives a cute white van while a frightened Lee Jong-hyun (as On Dal) hangs on beside her.
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Your Day Plus One

How would you like to receive your own tweets 24 hours before you send them? —Michael Main
I stumbled over @yourdayplus1when I first joined Twitter [. . .]
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • 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
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 1

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • 10 episodes (Netflix, USA, 15 February 2019)
Of the 43 children born 1 October 1989 with no gestation period, the eccentric and sometimes cruel billionaire Reginald Hargreeves brought up seven of them and turned them into the super-powered group called the Umbrella Academy when they developed powers. Nearly thirty years later, after Hargreeves dies, the five surviving members of the group gather at their family home. Oh, and: Number Six died some time ago and only Number Four can see him; Number Five disappeared about seventeen years ago, but he’s back (and in his 13-year-old body) after living 45 years in a post-apocalyptic future that’s scheduled to start in eight days. —Michael Main
As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race. I did find something else: the date it happens. . . . The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.
The six living siblings of the Umbrella Academy gather in colorful garb under a black umbrella held by Luthor.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

ドロステのはてで僕ら

  • Dorosute no hate de bokura
  • We at the end of the Droste
  • Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
  • by 上田誠, directed by 山口淳太
  • (at limited theaters, Japan, 5 June 2020)
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
In front of the entire cast, Kazunari Tosa (as Kato) holds up a monitor depicting infinitely regressing images of monitors.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Short Story

Re: Bubble 476

A tilted view of a partially lit Saturn with the sun above and a green moon outside of the rings.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Solos [s1.e01]

Leah

While talking to her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, brilliant scientist Leah Salavara’s subconscious brings up just the idea that’s needed to video chat with herself in other times and eventually complete the final step that leads to actual time travel with a surprisingly complex set of motives. —Michael Main
Okay, so in order to run a reverse dimensional location search, I need to know what the interdimensional VIN is on your computer.
A startled Anne Hathaway (as physicist Leah Salavara) looks up from her computer in a lab packed with electronics and futuristic screens.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Unredacted Reports from 1546

  • by Leah Cypess
  • Future Science Fiction Digest #11, June 2021 [e-zine · webzine]
An 18-year-old history student hopes to show that her research subject, 16th-century poet Lucia of Gonzaga, was a modern woman supressed by her time period, but as the traveling student sends messages back to her 21st-century mentor, she reveals more than just history as she’d hoped it would be. —Michael Main
You were wrong about my age, though. In the sixteenth century, I’m an adult. I am physically mature and able to bear children, and that’s all that matters. No one cares about the completeness of my frontal lobe.
Large, spherical glass terrariums float above a futuristic city in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Ad Nauseam

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

The Peripheral, Season 1

When Flynne Fisher’s ne’er-do-well brother lands a lucrative gig testing new VR tech, he drafts Flynne to do the heavy lifting, and she’s bowled over by the future world the VR has created—until she realizes it’s more than a sim. —Michael Main
If it were time travel, as you say, you’d be here physically. This is merely a matter of data transfer: quantum tunneling is the technical term for it. I understand your confusion.
Close-up of Chloë Grace Moretz (as Flynne Fisher) with her eyes obscured by a scene of rural North Carolina underneath an upside-down futuristic London.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Miniseries

8 episodes

Bodies

Slowly, the investigations of four different appearances of the same body come together in four different years from 1890 to 2053. —Michael Main
My thesis dared to posit that cause and effect is malleable, right? Which therefore makes time, as we know it, totally changable and fluid.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel