Minotaurs, Centaurs, and Other Mash-Ups

Tag Area: Fictional Collective
Novel

The Worm Ouroboros

For the most part, the story is a high fantasy in which three chiefs of Demonland—Lord Juss, Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha—embark on a heroic quest to rescue the fourth lord from his imprisonment in the mountains of Impland. However, at the end, Queen Sophonisba undertakes a resolution to the final problem that could well involve time travel. —Michael Main
Lord, it is an Ambassador from Witchland and his train. He craveth present audience."
A black-and-white, diamond-speckled snake with hands and teeth winds around itself several times and eats its own tail.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novelette

The Voyages of Ijon Tichy 20

Podróż dwudziesta

  • Journey twenty
  • The Twentieth Voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Dzienniki gwiazdowe, expanded third edition, by Stanisław Lem, (Czytelnik, 1971)
After the time mish-mash of Ijon Tichy’s seventh voyage, it wasn’t clear whether Ijon would ever ply the channels of time again, but here he is, traveling back in time to persuade himself to go forward in time and take up the helm of THEOHIPPIP—a.k.a. Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyoerputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. It takes a few attempts for older Ijon to convince younger Ijon to head to the future on a one-man chronocykl, but when he does, the younger Ijon begins the unexpectedly hard task of righting history’s wrongs. As a sophisticated time traveler yourself, you’ll spot what’s happening early on, while you also get a tour of history from the formamtion of the Solar System to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. You’ll also recognize the fun Lem has at the expense of the bureaucracies of mid-20th-century Poland. —Michael Main
Zresztą Bosch nie powstrzymał się od niedyskrecji. W „Ogrodzie uciech ziemskich,” w „piekle muzycznym” (prawe skrzydło tryptyku) stoi w samym środku dwunastoosobowy chronobus. I co miałem z tym robić?
translate Even so, Bosch couldn’t refrain from certain indiscretions. In the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” in the very center of the “Musical Hell” (the right wing of the triptych), stands a twelve-seat chronobus. Not a thing I could do about it.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a broomstick time machine with a bicycle saddle and handle bars, a.k.a. the chronocycle.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Bandits

A boy’s bedroom is invaded by six dwarves who have stolen The Supreme Being’s map, which naturally leads both boy and dwarves on adventures through time. —Michael Main
Is it all ready? Right. Come on then. Back to creation. We mustn’t waste any more time. They’ll think I’ve lost control again and put it all down to evolution.
Head shots of the film
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Sailing to Byzantium

Charles Phillips is a 20th-century New Yorker in a future world of immortal leisurites who reconstruct cities from the past. —Michael Main
He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them. That he knew. He knew that his name was Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities, not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg and Parks and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and Buenos Ares and a multitude of others, all at the same time.
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  • 1968 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Early Chapter Book

The Magic Tree House 16

Hour of the Olympics

Jack and Annie meet Plato and learn about the treatment of women in ancient Greece, while also rescuing a fourth lost book from history for Morgan’s library —Michael Main
At that moment, Plato returned. With him was a young woman dressed in a long tunic with a colored border. She was holding a scroll.
Dressed in ancient Greek garb, young Jack and Annie drive a horse and chariot down a dusy street.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Harry Potter 3

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Compared to the books, I find the Harry Potter movies drawn-out and boring, but I rewatched this one during the pandemic and found that I enjoyed all three thirteen-year-olds as well as Hagrid, Sirius, Snape, Lupin, and—most of all—the fact that the filmmakers didn’t blithely destroy the single static timeline out of a misplaced sense that time travelers are meant to change the timeline willy-nilly. —Michael Main
Hang on! That’s not possible. Ancient Runes is at the same time as Divination. You’d have to be in two classes at once.
Daniel Radcliffe (as Harry Potter), Emma Watson (as Hermione Granger), and Rupurt Grint (as Ron Weasley) are watching something that spooks Harry, fascinates Hermione, and terrifies Ron.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Artemis Fowl, Book #6

Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox

  • by Eoin Colfer
  • (Hyperion Books for Children, July 2008)
When fourteen-year-old genius Artemis Fowl realizes that the only cure for his mother’s case of Spelltropy lies in a species of lemur that Artemis made extinct eight years ago, there is only one solution: Grab your 80-year-old, elfin-police-captain-friend Holly Short and trick her into traveling back in time to stop your formerly evil, ten-year-old self from killing off the last of the all-cure lemurs.

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. —Michael Main
Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.
A boy clutching a lemur and followed by a smaller version of himself is blown out of the page by a yellow explosion.
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
Animated Feature Film

Monster High, Movie #10

Monster High: Freaky Fusion

The animated gang of teen monsters travel centuries into the past to the first day ever at Monster High, but when they return they have each merged with another in the group creating freaky hybrid monsters all around. I’m not sure, but I’m betting that Mattel used this DVD release as an opportunity to also sell freaky hybrid fashion dolls. —Michael Main
It’s 1814: They’ve never seen fashion styles like ours before.
Green-skinned Frankie Stein and two of her fellow-students pose in front of a time portal.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel