Frozen Time

Tag Area: Time-Related Situation
Short Story

The Time Professor

Professor Waning Glory takes his new friend Tubby on a trip in a boat that stays always at 9 p.m. in a lofty time-river of some sort, starting at Coney Island, then Chicago, then Denver, and farther west. The professor is able to briefly stop the boat above Chicago, where time for those below stays frozen at 9 p.m., and when their boat crosses the 180° meridian, they travel back a day. Eventually, they arrive back at their starting point on Coney Island, where it is still 9 p.m. —Michael Main
Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
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  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #9–10

Zadixx from Dimension X!

Professor Wilbur Thompson is the only human still outside of frozen time[/d]. Oh, yes: He’s also the only human who can save humanity from the Zadixx. —Michael Main
But I’ll restore mankind somehow! I’ll find a way! I swear it!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #27

The Man Who Stopped Time!

After George Applby’s proposal is rejected by his fiancée, George stumbles across a stopwatch that freezes time for other people in the vicinity, so naturally he hatches a scheme to use the watch to break up Nancy and her new boyfriend. —Michael Main
I don’t want some other girl! I want Nancy! If only I could stop time!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Czarna komnata profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga's black room
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) the year before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]
Professor Tarantoga saves human civilization! After using his chronopad to investigate the leading scientists and artists in history, Tarantoga concludes that without exception they are lazy drunkards. So naturally, he sends smart young people into various eras to invent differential calculus, to paint the Mona Lisa, etc.—all while a pair of police inspectors have their eye on him. —based on Wikipedia
A pencil sketch of an odd bird standing on the head of a dog-like robot with a full moon in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Starcrash

Smugglers Stella Star and Akton are sprung from prison by the Galactic Emperor (Christopher Plummer!) to rescue the Galactic Prince (the Hoff!) and save the universe (using kickboxing and an occasional lightsaber!) from the Evil Count Zarth Arn (“Evil” appears to be his first name). At various points, the murky plot has brief stints with suspended animation (Stella), precognition (Arkon), and the freezing time (the Emperor), none of which rises to actual time travel. On the other hand, in the words of reviewer Kurt Dahike, “the budget special effects transcend into the realm of real art.” —Michael Main
Stella: So you can see into the future? All these years you never told me. Think of all the trouble I might have avoided.

Akton: You would have tried to change the future, which is against the law.
One bikini-clad, raygun-toting space warrior, and another spandex-wearing, laser-saber-toting warrior by a spaceship and a Vader-type guy.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novella

The Hemingway Hoax

Literature professor John Baird and conman Sylvester Castlemaine hatch a plan to get rich forging Hemingway’s lost stories, but before long, Baird is confronted by an apparent guardian of the many timelines in the form of Hemingway himself. —Michael Main
I’m from the future and the past and other temporalities that you can’t comprehend. But all you need to know is that yiou must not write this Hemingway story. If you do, I or someone like me will have to kill you.
A Hemingway-esqu man has various heads and appendages coming out of his head.
  • 1991 Hugo
  • 1991 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Horror
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Clockstoppers

According to the book’s preface, the novel was written by brothers Rob and Andy Hedden based on an idea from Rob’s son Ryan. The story was turned into a movie of the same name in 2002, and the book appear at roughly the same time. We’re listing the book as a novelization of the movie (rather than the movie being an adaptation of the novel) because that’s how it’s described on the book’s cover. —Michael Main
The large clock appeared to be broken, its second hand stopped at thirteen seconds past the hour.
Garikayi Mutambirwa (as Meeker), Jesse Bradford (as Zak Gibbs), and Paula Garcés (as Francesca) pose in front of a giant, yellow and orange watch dial.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Clockstoppers

Teenager Zak Gibbs and his pals must protect a metabolism-speeding device from falling into the wrong hands and rescue Zak’s dad as well. —based on Wikipedia
Zak: My dad consults on these super-secret projects, and I think this is one of them.
Francesca: So your watch stops time?
Garikayi Mutambirwa (as Meeker), Jesse Bradford (as Zak Gibbs), and Paula Garcés (as Francesca) pose in front of a giant, neon-green watch dial.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

R.I.P.D.

Note to self: When you’re a detective having second thoughts about stealing that gold from a drug bust, don’t express your thoughts to your partner who might give you a shotgun blast to the face, whereupon time will momentarily freeze and you will be recruited to an understaffed supernatural police department. Apart from time freezing, there are no time phenomena in this adaptation of the earlier comic book miniseries. —Michael Main
Proctor: You’re lucky, Nick. You have skills that we want, so we’re giving you a choice: You can take your chances with judgement, or . . . [fishes undeader gun from a drawer and places it on the desk]/actor] you can join the R.I.P.D.
Jeff Bridges (as Roy Pulsipher) and Ryan Reynolds (as Nick Walker) march down a Boston street, guns blazing, underneath an electrified vortex.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Time Phenomena
Flash Fiction

Tock

Jake lies shivering iin bed while someone—it’a hard to say who—falls endlessly down the stairs. —Michael Main
He clutched his blankets, waiting for the inevitable.
translate The dusty mantle clock hadn’t peeped since Aunt Beryl . . .
No image currently available.
  • Horror
  • Time Phenomena
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
Short Story

The Dust of Giant Radioactive Lizards

Forty years after NASA explorer Tessa Raij attempted to step through a dimensional portal and was instead relegated to an inexplicable state of isolation in a radioactivce crater, a dead girl—resembling her grandmother as a teen—shows up at her feet. —Michael Main
Anything entering her horizon no longer experienced the passage of time.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Flash Fiction

The Alchemies of Time

A king who fears only the passage of time takes one drastic step after another to try to stop time altogether. —Michael Main
Time will take us away from what we love, who we love, and Time will take us, finally, from ourselves.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for Daily Science Fiction.
  • Fantasy
  • Time Phenomena