Media from Another Time

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Playlet

The Jest of Hahalaba

Against the advice of his alchemist, Sir Arthur calls up the Spirit of Laughter on New Year’s Eve and asks to see the coming year’s issues of the Times. —Michael Main
Sir Arthur Strangways: Only a trifle. I wish to see a file of the Times.
Hahalaba:For what year?
19th-century, hand-drawn map showing Dunsany Castle and its surrounds.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

It Happened Tomorrow

One day at the end of the 19th century, newspaperman Larry Stevens is given the gift of tomorrow’s newspaper by the ghost of the archive man, Pops Benson. That leads him to improve his position at the newspaper by scooping a story, but it also leads to trouble, more of tomorrow’s papers, and a romance with the alluring clairvoyant Sylvia.

So why do I count this as time travel when, for example, The Gap in the Curtain is not? The future newspapers in Gap never actually appeared, and it felt as if they were mere visions of a possible future, whereas we had no doubt that Larry holds an actual copy of tomorrow’s paper in his hands. And besides, It Happened Tomorrow had a great take on how events may be fated and yet, when accompanied by charming misunderstandings, lead to the unexpected.

Early Edition, one of my favorite TV shows, uses the same idea of tomorrow’s paper, but its creators said that the show was not based on this movie. —Michael Main
But I’m afraid I’m going to end up at the St. George Hotel at 6:25 no matter where I go.
Dressed in fancy suits, Dick Powell (as Larry Stevens) and Linda Darnell (as Sylvia) hold up a banner announcing the cast of It Happened Tomorrow.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

The Man Who Looked at Death

A local guide gives a copy of next month’s newspaper to Oren Van Schoon, a cruel and vicious man who will stop at nothing to learn the secrets of India’s fakirs. —Michael Main
This is worth more than all the rope tricks in India! With the information, you can bet on races, plunge into stocks . . . you will know the future!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable 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

Journey into Mystery #45

A Scream on the Screen

Bert Bates crosses some wires while repairing his TV, and suddenly he and his wife are seeing broadcasts from tomorrow. —Michael Main
Say, that’s the Tuesday Review program! And today is Monday! How could that be?
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable 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
Novel

The Here and Now

  • by Ann Brashares
  • (Delacorte Press, April 2014) [print · e-book]
Teenager Prenna James and her mother are two of the survivors of a future plague who return to the early 21st century to live out a quiet life under strict non-interference rules. —Michael Main
“And then I’ll be a proper early-twenty-first-century girl?” I ask. I feel like crying. I don’t want to be set.”
A mozaic of triangular photos and colors forms half of the face of a young woman.
  • Science Fiction
  • Romance
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 1

  • written and directed by multiple people
  • (The CW, USA, 7 October 2014) to 19 May 2015)
Time travel is implied right from the first episode of the CW’s rendition of The Flash where a newspaper from the future is seen in the closing scene. The rest of the first season builds a fine time-travel arc that includes a nefarious time traveler from the far future, a classic grandfather paradox with a twist (sadly not examined), a do-over day for the Flash (which Harrison Wells calls “temporal reversion”), and a final episode that sees the Flash travel back to his childhood (as well as a hint that Rip Hunter himself will soon appear on the CW scene). —Michael Main
Wells: Yes, it’s possible, but problematic. Assuming you could create the conditions necessary to take that journey, that journey would then be fraught with potential pitfalls: the Novikov Principle of Self-Consistency, for example.

Joe: Wait—the what, now?

Barry: If you travel back in time to change something, then you end up being the causal factor of that event.

Cisco: Like . . . Terminator.

Joe: Ah!

Wells: Or is time plastic? Is it mutable, whereby any changes in the continuum could create an alternate timeline?

Cisco: Back to the Future.

Joe: Ah, saw that one, too.
The Flash, in his red costume, zig-zags through an empty city street, leaving a yellow electric bolt behind him.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

Aether

  • written and directed by Jerry Brown, Jr.
  • (Youtube: SuperEpic Channel, 2 April 2018)
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.
Drawing of three astronauts with an abstract background of clouds, outspace, and the word "Aether" in a red, star-filled circle.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable 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
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