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The Internet Time Travel Database

Media from Another Time

Time Travel Tropes

The Jest of Hahalaba

by Lord Dunsany

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?

The Jest of Hahalaba by Lord Dunsany, unknown first performance, circa 1926.

It Happened Tomorrow

by Dudley Nichols and René Clair, directed by René Clair

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.

It Happened Tomorrow by Dudley Nichols and René Clair, directed by René Clair (premiered for the Allied Forces, Bougainville Island, New Guinea, 27 March 1944).

I’m Scared

by Jack Finney

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.

“I’m Scared” by Jack Finney, in Collier’s, 15 September 1951, pp. 24ff..

What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

by Robert Silverberg

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?

“What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper” by Robert Silverberg, in Infinity Four, edited by Robert Hoskins (Lancer Books, November 1972).

The Here and Now

by Ann Brashares

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.”

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, April 2014) [print · e-book].

The Flash, Season 1

written and directed by multiple people

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, season 1 written and directed by multiple people (The CW, USA, 7 October 2014) to 19 May 2015).

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).

Fusco Brothers, 7 August 2022

Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen

by J. C. Duffy

You’re listening to the soothing sounds of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians . . .

Fusco Brothers, “Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen” by J. C. Duffy, 7 August 2022.

The Peripheral, Season 1

by Scott B. Smith, et al., directed by Vincenzo Natali and Alrick Riley

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.

The Peripheral, Season 1 by Scott B. Smith, et al., directed by Vincenzo Natali and Alrick Riley, 8 episodes (Amazon Prime, 21 October 2022 to 2 December 2022).

as of 3:57 a.m. MDT, 6 May 2024
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