Mad Scientists

Tag Area: Fictional Collective
Novel

El Anacronópete

  • He who flies backwards in time
  • The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey
  • by Enrique Gaspar
  • in Novelas (Daniel Cortezo, 1887)

Mad scientist Don Sindulfo and his best friend Benjamin head to the past in Sindulfo’s flying time machine along with Sindulfo’s niece, her maid, a troop of Spanish soldiers, and a bordelloful of French strumpets for madcap adventures at the 1860 Battle of Téouan, Queen Isabella’s Spain, nondescript locales in the eleventh and seventh centuries, 3rd-century China, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and a biblical time shortly after the flood.

After taking a year of Spanish at the University of Colorado, I undertook a three-year project of translating Gaspar’s novel to English, which is available in a pdf file for your reading pleasure. Even with the unpleasant twist at the end, it was still a fine, farcical romp through history. —Michael Main
—Poco á poco—argumentaba un sensato.—Si el Anacronópete conduce á deshacer lo hecho, á mi me pasrece que debemos felicitarnos porque eso no permite reparar nuestras faltas.

—Tiene usted razón—clamaba empotrado en un testero del coche un marido cansado de su mujer.—En cuanto se abra la línea al público, tomo yo un billete para la vispera de mi boda.
translate “One step at a time,” argued a sensible voice. “If el Anacronópete aims to undo history, it seems to me that we must be congratulated as it allows us to amend our failures.”

“Quite right,” called a married man jammed into the front of the bus, thinking of his tiresome wife. “As soon as the ticket office opens to the public, I’m booking passage to the eve of my wedding.”
A flower plant in a vase and a Chinese woman holding a large shpere
                containing the flying time machine, El Anacronópete.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novella

The Atom-Smasher


We've got the evil Professor Tode (who modifies an atom-smasher into a time machine that travels to the Palaeolithic and to Atlantis), a fatherly older professor, his beautiful young daughter (menaced by evil Tode), casually written racist pronouncements (by Rousseau), and our hero scientist, the dashing Jim Dent. But my favorite sentence was the brief description of quantum mechanics, which I didn’t expect in a 1930 science fiction tale. —Michael Main
The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door.
Black and white drawing of a young man, a young woman, and an old man staring
                into a brightly lit crevice.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Silver Dome

  • by Harl Vincent
  • in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930

In an underground city, Queen Phaestra uses a past-viewing machine of vague nature to show the destruction of Atlantis to two good-hearted men. But Atlantis itself is not visited, and there are no time phenomena apart from the viewing. —Michael Main
This is accomplished by means of extremely complex vibrations penetrating earth, metals, buildings, space itself, and returning to our viewing and sound reproducing spheres to reveal the desired past or present occurrences at the point at which the rays of vibrations are directed.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a guide, dressed only in a short skirt, shows two modern
                men the view of a city of four-storey hexagonal buildings.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

A Connecticut Yankee


This version of Twain’s story borrows some sf tropes from Shelley’s Frankenstein (a mad scientist) and Kipling’s “Wireless” (recovering sound from the past), although all that is small potatoes next to Will Rogers’ folksy wit. His character—Hank “Martin—is tossed back to Camelot when a bolt of lightning and a suit of armor knock him over at the mad scientist’s lab, and at the end, he returns via a similar timeslip. In between, we get one-liners, tommy guns, tanks, cars, characters that are eerily familiar from Martin’s present-day life—and a lot of time to debate whether this version has a real timeslip or is just a dream. —Michael Main
Think! Think of hearing Lincoln’s own voice delivering the Gettysburg address!
A big-headed Will Rogers, in a suit of armor, rides a 1930s car past a princess
                and a castle.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novelette

Wanderer of Infinity

  • by Harl Vincent
  • in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1933

When Joan Carmody sends a plea to her ex-boyfriend Bert Redmond, he barrels from Indiana to upstate New York in a trice, only to see Joan and her borderline-mad brother Tom kidnapped by metal monsters from another dimension. Fortunately, a mourning, immortal wanderer through time and space also sees the abduction and fills in Bert with all the salient details and some unsalient ones, too. —Michael Main
“We are here only as onlookers,” the Wanderer explained sadly, “and can have no material existence here. We can not enter this plane, for there is no gateway. Would that there were.”
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Race through Time 1

A Race through Time


Evil Daniel kidnaps Ellen and takes her to the year 1,000,000 A.D. via metabolic speed-up! Not to worry. Good and compassionate Webster follows via relativistic time dilation! —Michael Main
What I’ve done is to build a time-space traveler, working by atomic energy. Even as long ago as 1913, you know, Rutherford succeeded in partly breaking down the hydrogen atom. By 1933, others succeeded in partially breaking down atoms with high voltages of electricity. But they used up far more energy than they got back, or released. I’ve simply perfected the method to a point where, with an initial bombardment of fifty volts, I can break down one atom and get back thousands of times the energy I put in. There’s nothing strange or wonderful or miraculous about it. I don’t create energy of power from nothing. I simply liberate energy that already exists. Part of the power I use to break down another atom, and so on, while the rest is diverted to propel the torpedo by discharging through tubes—like a rocket. I’ve made one short experimental trip.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

The Circle of Zero


In Professor Aurora de Néant’s odd logic, everything that’s occurring now has already happened many times before in the endless eternity of the past. So, if you want to know the future, all you need to do is call up your memories of the past. A crazy idea, perhaps, but shortly after the crash of ’29, de Néant, his daughter Yvonne, and his former student Jack Anders have nothing to lose in trying to predict their future. —Michael Main
In eternity, the Law of Chance functions perfectly. In eternity, sooner or later, every possible combinaton of things and events must happen. Must happen, if it’s a possible combination. I say, therefore, that in eterminty, whatever can happen will happen!
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Weird Fantasy #15 (1950)

I Died Tomorrow!


When a mad scientist with a time machine gets together with a power-crazed university president, the result is deadly (and time travel aspects of the plot makes little sense). —Michael Main
I licked my lips greedily! I had to have that time-machine!
Three men sit at an elaborate control panel in front of a giant screen of a
                cratered moon.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #63

I Took a Journey into Fear!


Otto Bruger’s colleagues try to warn him that traveling through time is courting disaster. —Michael Main
I’ve won, you fools!! Ha, ha . . . I’ve won!!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Ijon Tichy

Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego, pt. 4

  • From remembrances of Ijon Tichy, pt. 4
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Księga robotów (Iskry, 1961) [No title for this story other than the Roman numeral IV, which is the fourth of five numbered parts out of nine total parts.]

Ijon is unphased when Physicist Molteris lugs his time machine into Ijon’s sitting room, promising Ijon will be repaid for the colossal amount of electricity that will be consumed by the first trip. —Michael Main
Zamierzałem, ale . . . widzi pan . . . ja . . . mój gospodarz wyłączył mi elektrycznoćś . . . w niedzielę.
translate I planned to, but, you see, I—my landlord turned off the electricity on Sunday.
Pencil drawing of a middle-aged man riding on the back of a large robot.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #85

Filbert’s Frightful Future


Mad scientist Filbert Phelps wants to use his time machine to become the richest man in the world, —Michael Main
Yes, I am a genius . . . and that’s why I’m about to become fabuously rich! Just as soon as I finish my greatest invention . . .
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #86

On the Trail of the Tomorrow Man


Zarrko, a mad time-machine-building scientist from 2262, believes that our nuclear weapons will enable him to take over the world of his time. He comes back to 1962 to steal one, and the Mighty Thor pursues him back to 2262.

The plot suffers from Alpha Centauri syndrome, where the time traveler might as well be from Alpha Centauri as from the future, but seeing the emergence of Kirby’s high-perspective artwork gives this issue a boost. In addition, the story provides a powerful image of the pre-Vietnam cold war era and its prevailing assumptions about the roles of women in society. —Michael Main
Ahhh—an ancient explosion of a nuclear bomb! The perfect device with which to conquer the twenty-third century!
The Mighty Thor flies through a fading time machine with the Tomorrow Man
                inside.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #103

To Live Forever!


Luther Gorr realizes that others have been barking up the wrong tree when it comes to trying to use redwood sap for eternal life. But will his solution be any better than in the previous stories told by Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, and others? —Michael Main
This bark is from a redwood that’s stood for five thousand years! But no matter what tests I subject it to, I’m unable to unearth its longevity factor!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Journey to the Center of Time

  • written and directed by David L. Hewitt
  • (at movie theaters, USA, a forgettable day in 1967)

The writer, David L. Hewitt, took chunks of plot and script from The Time Travelers (1964), swapped the blonde for a brunette, swapped the accidental time gate for an accidental time rift that drags the whole lab through time as if it were a time ship, added a anachronistic dinosaur, and ended up with an unwatchable movie.

Like the 1964 version, this version has a brief mention that it’s impossible to change events that have already happened, but unlike the original, the montage at the end of the film is mere chaos that no longer reinforces the idea of a single deterministic, nonbranching timeline. Despite that, I enjoyed the consequences of the villainous character running into himself, but at the same time, I dismayed at the discussion of how meeting yourself could instantly cause a disastrous explosion or implosion or maybe something-or-other (the audio was unintelligible at 1:12) would cease to exist. (I pray that the space-time continuum wasn’t in peril). —Michael Main
Well, isn’t it obvious, Manning? The war did happen. We didn’t get back with our warning.
Alien death rays, a T-rex, and multiple copies of Scott Brady and Gigi Perreau
                () hugging.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
TV Season

12 Monkeys, Season 1


Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

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). —Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]
A man
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

2nd Door

  • written and directed by Umesh Verma
  • (Youtube: 2nd Door Channel, 8 December 2017)

Two men—a garage shop owner and a mad scientist—loop through 13 days, meeting and shooting each other and themselves, but not so that we could understand much (beyond that there was a time portal made of hubcaps and blue electricity). —Michael Main
This freak made a mess of our garage.
A man in an auto shop, dressed in clean clothes and suspenders, faces a large
                round portal made of hubcaps and other auto parts.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Backwards


A short-lived species has memories of both the past and the future. —Michael Main
For progeny and ancestors of the Retromens had communicated with their caretaker, studying him as he studied them, generation for generation.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena