This 28-minute photo montage with about 1,200 words of narration has a nice seed of an idea, but I find it insulting to other talented filmmakers that Time magazine ranked this sketch of a film as #1 in their 2010 list of best time travel movies.
The film draws in at least four important additional time travel tropes: suspended animation, a single nonbranching, static timeline (with the corresponding inability to go back and change it), experiencing the passage of time at different rates, and a trip to the far future. And according to the SF Encyclopedia, the film was originally conceived as a sequel to the 1960 film of The Time Machine.
“Dragonrider,” which was first released as a two-part Analog serial (December 1967 and January 1968), was the second Pern story, appearing after the shorter novella “Weyr Search” (October 1967). Together, the two stories formed the first Pern novel, Dragonflight (1968). When the online version of the ITTDB was in a nascent stage, my friend Allison Thompson-Brown reminded me that the dragons can travel to a new when as well as a new where, and that time travel first appeared near the end of “Dragonrider.” Time travel on Pern occurs in a single, static timeline, so the dragons and their riders can never change anything known to be certain in the past.
Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.
“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”
Allison Thompson-Brown reminded me that dragons can go when as well as where, and the travel through time always results in a stable time loop, so that dragon travel can never change anything known to be certain in the past. The actual whening part (or going between time, as it’s called) didn’t come until the third installment (Part 2 of “Dragonrider” in the Jan 1968 Analog), but I’ll date the concept back to the slightly earlier appearance of the first story (“Weyr Search” in Oct 1967). The two stories were fixed up into the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, in July of 1968, but it was another ten years before I discovered it.
Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.
“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”
I saw this in the theater with Deb Baker and Jon Shultis during a winter trip to Pittsburgh for a small computer science education conference.
Note: A dissertation by [ex=bare]Гулиус Наталья Сергеевна | Gulius Natalya Sergeevna[/ex] notes that this story is part of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consisted of a series of avant-garde stories purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named [ex=bare]Э. Тайрд-Боффин | A. Tired-Boffin[/ex] and loosely translated to Russian by Bitov. The English version of “Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)” was said to have been called “Shakespeare’s Photograph” (or possibly “Stern’s Laughter” or “Swift’s Pill”), and presumably it was about Shakespeare rather than Pushkin.
Sergeevna explains that all this artistic mystification was part of an extensive footnote to “Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099),” but up in the ITTDB Citadel, we’ve yet to track down the footnote. Perhaps it was part of the 1987 publication in [ex=bare]Знамя || Znamia[/ex], or maybe it did not appear until the story was published along with the rest of the cycle in Bitov’s 1988 collection, [ex=bare]Человек в пейзаже | Man in the landscape | Chelovek v peyzazhe[/ex]. It is not listed in the table of contents of [ex=bare]Преподаватель симметрии ] | | Prepodavatelʹ simmetrii[/ex](2008), which was translated to English as Symmetry Teacher (2014).
Jack studied the picture of the odd-looking creature soaring through the sky.
“Ahhh!” screamed Annie.
“What?” said Jack.
“A monster!” Annie cried. She pointed out the tree house window.
This is the first tree house story where the kids’ desitination might be in the present time, although there is still some time travel since the tree house always returns to the same time that it left, presumably so The Parents don’t worry. In any case. we’ve decided to mark this type of possibly-present-day story as having debatable time travel to distinguish this kind of destination from those in the past or future.
Mrs. Streichman twisted into the space next to her. “That was just a rehearsal. The reviews are incredible. And you wouldn’t believe the waiting list. Years. Centuries! I’ll never have tickets again.” She took a deep, calming breath. “At least you’re here, dear. That’s something I couldn’t have expected. That makes it very real. [. . .]”
Despite the characters’ belief that they can change history, up in the ITTDB Citadel we all agreed that the characters are an unreliable source and this story actually lives in a carefully crafted single static timeline along with a nice bootstrap paradox.
As with several of the Magic Tree House stories, the kids’ destination in this one might be in the present time.
“No,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m sorry.”
His uncle hadn’t finished. “Henry’s parents mourned him, just as they mourned poor little Daphne. James was their only child and, as a result, he was probably spoiled. His father died in the war and his mother left everything to him, including her lovely cottage by the sea. You can’t change that, can you?”
Author Eoin Colfer does a masterful job presenting a single nonbranching, static timeline, complete with three consistent causal loops (further described in our tag notes for this story). But really, Eoin, you missed the shuttle on “the kiss”! With the help of N°1, Artemis can time travel, so if you're intent on his first romantic kiss coming from Holly Short, couldn’t N°1 have brought Holly’s actual fourteen-year-old self into the story? Might have even presented an opportunity for a fourth causal loop: Fourteen-year-old Holly kissees fourteen-year-old Artemis, but only because fifteen-year-old Artemis had already told thirteen-year-old Holly that they would enjoy it.
By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.
P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow).
—from “Splinter” [s01e01]
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).
* The other, of course, is Paul J. Nahin’s Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction, Second Edition.
(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.
Suffice it to say that when all the Librarians up in the Citadel woke from their sleeps and returned from their treks, we had a celebration that was strident enough to raise Lazurus Long himself from the dead (if he is dead, that is).