The Collapse of Homo Sapiens

by P. Anderson Graham

The narrator longs to see history develop over centuries, so when an immensely evolved Being offers to take him into the future, he agrees and is taken to a dystopian world of 2120 A.D. when mankind is on the verge of extinction.

— Michael Main

After wading through years of fruitless research and encountering failures enough to make the heart sick, I accidentally got into communication with an intelligence whose home was no single sphere but the universe, one to whom human time was nought, as were also human fears, joys, sorrows and emotions. The fortunes of mankind meant no more to him that thosee of a tribe of insects, one year swarming over the earth, the next swept out of existence.

He would not let me address him in the language intercession. “I am like you,” he said, “but of a different sphere and a different power. I am not immortal; nothing is immortal. Neither the Earth, the Sun, nor the God who made them. Everything is passing away, or rather, dissolving, to be re-fashioned into other forms.”

The Collapse of Homo Sapiens by P. Anderson Graham (G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1923).

All the Time in the World

by Arthur C. Clarke

Robert Ashton is offered a huge amount of money to carry out a foolproof plan of robbing the British Museum of its most valuable holdings.

— Michael Main

Your time scale has been altered. A minute in the outer world would be a year in this room.

“All the Time in the World” by Arthur C. Clarke, Startling Stories, July 1952.

Lem’s Star Diaries

Wyprawa profesora Tarantogi

Literal: Professor Tarantoga’s voyage

by Stanisław Lem

Oh, tensor! Oh, turbulent perturbation! Some time before Professor Tarantoga invented a time machine and met a schizophrenic man from the fourth millennium, he apparently invented a transporter that took him and his new assistant Chybek to a series of progressively more advanced civilizations, the last of which included a barefaced cook who had an embarrasing accident in the cosmic kitchen, resulting in mankind (and indirectly resulting in time travel for the professor and Chybek).

— Michael Main

I znów mi się przypaliło—jedno spiralne ramie, od spodu, na trzysta parseków—i znowu wybiegła mi słonecznica, i ścięło się, i będzie zgęstek, i powstanie białko, przeklęte białko! I znowu będzie ewolucja, i ludzkość, i cywilizacja, i będę się musiał tłumaczyć, usprawiedliwiać, składać we dwoje, przepraszać, że to niechcący, że przez przypadek . . . Ale to wy, nie ja!

And I got burned again—one spiral arm, underneath, three hundred parsecs—and again a sunflower came out of me and it was choked and there will be a bundle of white, cursed protein! And there will be evolution again, and humanity and civilization, and I will have to justify, justify, put together, apologize that it’s accidentally, that by accident . . .

English

[ex=bare]Wyprawa profesora Tarantogi: Widowisko w sześciu częściach | Professor Tarantoga’s voyage: A television show in six parts[/ex] by Stanisław Lem, in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963).

The Day Time Ended

by Wayne Schmidt, J. Larry Carroll, and David Schmoeller, directed by John “Bud” Cardos

After an hour or so of mundane conversation and weird happenings—a triple supernova, a UFO, a tiny mannequin/alien, and creepy lights, and alien monsters transporting in and out—the Williams family and their horses are transported through a time-space warp to an unknown time for the other twenty minutes of the movie. (The creepy lights stick around, too.) It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think they’re going to live out their lives amongst the weird lights and crystal structures of this new time.

— Michael Main

Steve, you know what this is, don’t cha? It’s a time-space warp.

The Day Time Ended by Wayne Schmidt, J. Larry Carroll, and David Schmoeller, directed by John “Bud” Cardos (Paris Festival of Fantastic Films, circa March 1979).

My Science Project

written and directed by Jonathan R. Betuel

Not even the support of a young Fisher Stevens (Gary’s friend Chuck from Early Edition) could rescue this story of a high school motorhead who steals a power-sucking, space-time transforming orb from a military base for his science project.

— Michael Main

Now that sounds like we’re dealing with a time-space warp.

My Science Project written and directed by Jonathan R. Betuel (at movie theaters, USA, 9 August 1985).

Flight of the Navigator

by Michael Burton and Matt MacManus, directed by Randal Kleiser

Twelve-year-old David Freeman stumbles down a ravine and wakes up eight years later without having aged. The explanation is that David was taken on a quick trip to the planet Phaelon, taking 2.2 hours for him while eight years passed on Earth. Relativistic time dilation, right? That’s the explanation, but it doesn’t scan because Phaelon is a full 560 light years from Earth, so at least 1120 years would have passed on Earth unless the aliens truly did have some form of time travel. The clincher comes at the end when David explicitly travels through time. Conclusion: alien time travel technology.

— Michael Main

This is totally rad. You’re like my big little brother.

Flight of the Navigator by Michael Burton and Matt MacManus, directed by Randal Kleiser (at movie theaters, USA, 1 August 1986).

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e01-02)

Encounter at Farpoint

by D. C. Fontana

As the new captain of the Enterprise and other new members of his crew become acquainted with their galaxy class starship and its capabilities, they travel to a curious city on Deneb IV and also encounter a powerful being from the Q who, among other things, exhibits a possible power over time itself.

— Michael Main

Troi: Captain, sir, this is not an illusion of a dream.
Picard: But these courts belong in the past.
Troi:I don’t understand either, but this is real.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e01-02), “Encounter at Farpoint” by D. C. Fontana (Paramount Domestic Television, USA, 28 September 1987) [syndicated].

Invaders

by John Kessel

The story tells us of two sets of invaders—the 16th-century Spaniard Pizarro, who violently invaded the Incan Empire, and the Krel, who economically and culturally invaded 21st-century Earth—and we briefly hear of one man’s use of Krel tech to travel from the 21st century to the 16th.

— Michael Main

Sf is full of this sort of thing, from the power fantasy of the alienated child to the alternate history where Hitler is strangled in his cradle and the Library of Alexandria is saved from the torch.

“Invaders” by John Kessel, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1990.

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur

by Michael Swanwick

The director of Hilltop Research Station extinguishes various fires while hosting a donor dinner in the Cretaceous and planning predatory behavior of his own to keep the donor funds flowing, all while ensuring that the mysterious beings known only as the Unchanging remain in the dark about a quagmire of time travel violations.

— Michael Main

It would bring our sponsors down upon us like so many angry hornets. The Unchanging would yank time travel out of human hands—retroactively.

“Scherzo with Tyrannosaur” by Michael Swanwick, Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 1999.

Iterations

by William H. Keith, Jr.

An accident near a black hole has seemingly doomed Kevyn Shalamarn along with her copilot and her AI, until they are pulled into a far future that could have been inspired by Frank Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology. The trip to the future seems to be in the domain of relativistic time dilation rather than time travel, and it’s unclear whether the trip back is actual time travel or some form of quantum physics mashed up with simulations.

— Michael Main

The goal of this device is nothing less than complete knowledge, knowledge of everything that ever has been, that ever will be, that ever could be.

“Iterations” by William H. Keith, Jr., in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001).

A Time Odyssey 1

Time’s Eye

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

And she was continually amazed at how easily everyone else accepted their situation, the blunt, apparently undeniable reality of the time slips, across a hundred and fifty years in her case, perhaps a million years or more for the wretched pithecine and her infant in their net cage.

Time’s Eye by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, January 2004).

A Time Odyssey 2

Sunstorm

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, March 2005).

A Time Odyssey 3

Firstborn

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Firstborn by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, January 2008).

Finalizing History

by Richard K. Lyon

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.

“Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyon, in Analog, June 2008.

Effect and Cause

by Ken Liu

A pilot on a one-man ship in a space battle repeatedly lives backward through fifteen seconds and then forward again with the chance to do things differently each time.

— Michael Main

Ignoring this, I sit down at the table to pick up a cup and spit calding hot coffee into it. Then I proceed to vomit food onto my plate so I can sculpt it with a knife and fork into peas, carrots, and omelette.

“Effect and Cause” by Ken Liu, in Galaxy’s Edge #2, May 2013 [print · e-zine · webzine].

Absolutely Anything

by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott, directed by Terry Jones

As a test to determine whether humanity should be destroyed, four slimey aliens grant schoolteacher Neil Clarke the power to do absolutely anything. I kinda think that if I had that power, and I made as many mistakes as Neil, I'd be using my power to rewind time more often than he did.

Writer and director Terry Jones acknowledges H. G. Wells’ “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” as inspiration for the story.

— Michael Main

Neil [wavinghand]: Let the explosion never to have happened.

Absolutely Anything by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott, directed by Terry Jones (at movie theaters, Philippines and elsewhere, 12 August 2015).

Out of Time

written and directed by Matt Handy

A government agent from 1951 follows three alien invaders through a time portal to 21st-century Lost Angeles where he teams up with a local cop to track the trio down before they can signal their cohorts.

— Michael Main

Sir: [pointing at a billborad of the Space Shuttle] That is why we leapt into the future. We fly that back to the armada and show them where this planet is.

Out of Time written and directed by Matt Handy (unknown release details, 2019).