Butterfly Effect

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Short Story

Hindsight

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.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a man standing at a futuristic control panel, looking at a wall-sized hatched screen displaying a flying ship.
  • Science Fiction
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e06)

A Sound of Thunder

Bradbury himself wrote the teleplay for this first on-screen adaptation of his famous story, and somehow he managed to do it without the word “butterfly” appearing in the script (though we do see the critter at the end). —Michael Main
Travis: We might destroy a roach—or a flower, even—and destroy an important link in the species.

Eckles: So?
A gaping T rex shows its sharp teeth and red gums.
  • 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
Novel

Infinity Ring 1

A Mutiny in Time

This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic). —Michael Main
Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.
An eight-pointed gold compass, marked in twenty-degree intervals around the edge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • 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
TV Episode

Castle (s06e05)

Time Will Tell

A murder investigation leads to a suspect (Doyle) who says he traveled back in time to stop a catastrophe that will result in at least half the people on the planet dying. —Tandy Ringoringo
Ryan: I thought it was kind of derivative.
Esposito: Like a mash-up of 12 Monkeys and Terminator.
No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

The Treehouse #5

The 65-Storey Treehouse

  • by Andy Griffiths (story) and Terry Denton (art)
  • (Macmillan Australia, August 2015)
Each installment of Andy and Terry’s Treehouse series sees the house grow upward, but what if the house never had a proper building permit? No problem, if you’ve got a time machine in a wheelie trash bin! Caution: Important detours along the way may be necessary to save antkind and The Time Machine. —Michael Main
“Don’t you see?” says Terry. “We’ll just travel back in time and get a permit for the treehouse.”
A Giant cartoon tree with a spiral staircase winding around it and dozens of entrances and crazy happenings.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance

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

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

Paradoxes of Time Travel

Ryan Wasserman’s philosophical book is one of two books* that need to live on your nonfiction shelf. One by one and with complete reference to the past literature, he presents all the major paradoxes of time travel along with different models of time travel and arguments against time travel even being possible. Just get it and read it cover-to-cover. As a bonus, Professor Wasserman, who is on the Philosophy faculty at Western Washington State University, will cheerfully have discussions about time travel issues via e-mail with those of us up in the nearby ITTDB Citadel.

* The other, of course, is Paul J. Nahin’s Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction, Second Edition. —Michael Main
Each of the foregoing cases involves a self-defeating act—an act such that, if it were performed, it wold not be. Self-defeating acts are obviously impossible, since the performance of such an act would imply a contradiction. Yet time travel seems to make such acts possible. This suggests the following line of argument against backward time travel:

(P1) If backward time travel were possible, it would be possible to perform a self-defeating act.

(P2) It is impossible to perform a self-defeating act.

(C) Backward time travel is impossible.
A descending spiral of Roman numerals in the style of a clockface.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Nonfiction
  • 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
Novel

Throwback 1

Throwback

When 13-year-old Corey Fletcher first finds himself transported back in time, he doesn’t realize how it happened or that he is one of the rare travelers who can actually change the timeline, rescue his Papou, and maybe even save his grandma from 9/11. —Michael Main
So . . . some people inherit diabetess, some inherit curly hair, and I inherited time travel?
A stylized drawing of a teenager, with a baseball cap and a backpack, hanging from the hand of a large clock.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • 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
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 8

The Secret in the Sarcophagus

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, July 2020) [e-book]
Ella has been in Keystone a couple of years. They are in a new location, beside the pyramids of Giza, apparently shortly after most of them were constructed. And they get to meet some ancient Egyptians, enabling Ella and a couple of archealogists to learn a bit about pronunciation of the pre-Coptic language. And discuss the possibility of the butterfly effect. —Tandy Ringoringo
“Because we don’t know how returning to our own timelines will affect things.”

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

The Lilies

Four Archwell Academy seniors, each with their own buried secrets, find themselves in a sinister time loop after the mysterious disappearance of a classmate. As they relive their darkest memories during a lockdown at their elite all-girls school, they uncover chilling clues that could unravel the dark truth behind the prestigious Lilies Society. Can they work together to escape the loop and protect their futures before their secrets are exposed? —from Raegan Revord’s Book Club
But as the clock hands turn, memory erodes the mind. Her secrets are best buried in a loop that turns to dust, where the present turns to past and past remains unjust.
Blue swirling leaves are covered by the book’s title and tagline: Bury the secrets, Remember the promise.
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel