Adolf Hitler

Tag Area: Real-World Character
Short Story

The Man Who Never Grew Young

  • by Fritz Leiber
  • in Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947)
Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disinterred, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.
It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.
A stylized pen-and-ink drawing of a cloaked man on a horse with a silhouette of Saturn in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #30

A Small Matter of Time

The title suggests that Professor Amos Shute’s intrepid travelers are going back in time to four planets that are identical in every way to our own, but then again, perhaps those four planets were merely at earlier times to begin with. We won’t say one way or another, but we are glad that the Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, and World War III were all averted on some Earth. —Michael Main
In what time period will you find yourselves when you land at your particular destinatoin!
In two large panels with spaceships and a large model of Earth, Professor Amos Shute explains a mission to four space pilots.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Finalizing History

In early 1960, Perry Mason author Earl (not Erle) Stanley Gardner and his wife host John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, Douglas MacArthur and Jackie Kennedy to discuss a shared dream in which a time-traveling alien requires them to pick one person to eliminate from history as a prerequisite to a final revision of mankind’s history. —Michael Main
If one of these people dies young, that will pay your debt.
A grid of nine black-and-white head shots of the people in “Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyon.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Every So Often

  • by Rich Larson
  • in Datafall: Collected Speculative Fiction [e-book] (Rich Larson, August 2012)
Victor is one of the many protectors of the timeline from rogue rewinders. In his case, his five-year mission is to protect a small dark-haired boy in 1894 Austria. —Michael Main
“I’m maintaining the Quo,” he says simply.
Silhouette of a man holding a child’s hand in front of arcing streams of neon green data.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Loneliness of Time Travel

A twist on how meeting yourself for coffee interacts with how time travel works in your universe. —Michael Main
You have no idea how many of my younger selves freak out when I show up.
A star emerging from behind a blue planet.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Todd Family 1

Life after Life

In one instantiation of her life, Ursula Todd dies just moments after her birth in 1910. Fortunately (for the sake of the novel), time seems to be cyclic, so she and the rest of the world get many chances at life. At times, she partially recalls her other lives, resulting in many consequences to history and her personal development. —Michael Main
So much hot air rising above the tables in the Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.

“Time isn’t circular,” she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a palimpsest.”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “That sounds very vexing.”
“And memories are sometimes in the future.”
A young girl faces a wall with Roman numerals of a clock and an arch leading to a war scene.
  • Fantasy
  • War
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

A Promise of Time Travel

  • written and directed by Craig Jessen, produced by April Grace Lowe
  • (North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina, 16 August 2016)
After fifteen years of estrangement, bookish Zelda Jones reunites with her best friend from high school, Cassie . At the start of their new relationship, it’s not apparent that their interactions are going anywhere, but as the other main characters weave their way into the plot, Zelda learns about time travel on a single, static timeline, and the pieces lock nicely into place.

Oh, and Dave’s grandfather had a plot to go back and kill Hitler, but that’s not really relevant to Zelda (and Cassie and Walter and John and Charlie). —Michael Main
If you do travel back in time, even though it’s in your subjective future, it’s in the objective past. So if you could travel back in time and if you were determined to change the past, when it came down to it, you’d either decide not to, or you’d fail.
Head shots of April Grace Lowe (as Zelda) and Angela Rysk (as Cassie) beside a smoking alarm clock.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Future ’38

  • written and directed by Jamie Greenberg
  • (Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 24 January 2017)
In this “lost” film from 1938, fascist powers are rising in Europe, so Mr. Essex is sent forward to 2018 to retrieve a piece of formica that’s been put into a vault where, over the decades, it will have matured into superbomb material. I don’t know whether the bomb ever worked, but surprisingly, the campy film did work—at least toward the end when the full contents of the vault are revealed. —Michael Main
If I kill you now, you will never go back in time, there is no formica bomb, and Adolf Hilter takes over the world . . . with me as his heir.
Startled Nick Westrate (as Essex) and Betty Gilpin (as Banky) walk through a spect-a-color futuristic city.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel