Travelers Must Account for Earth's Movment

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
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
Novel

The End of Eternity

Andrew Harlan, Technician in the everwhen of Eternity, falls in love and starts a chain of events that could lead to the end of everything. —Michael Main
He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned to him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century.
A black-and-white drawing of an elderly man standing at an electronic control board with a futuristic sphere in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Man Who Walked Home

After an accident at a temporal research facility in Idaho, a manlike monster known as John Delgano shows up for half a seoncd once a year at the same time and place.

As early as the 1930s, stories have addressed the issue of the Earth moving to a different position when a time traveler moves through time. This story addresses the issue by saying that the time traveler appears only once per year, but that doesn't really solve the problem for so many reasons, starting with the fact that a given position on the surface of the Earth will not be at “the same” position in the subsequent year. —Michael Main
Then that winter they came down for Christmas and John said they had something new. He was really excited. A temporal displacement, he called it; some kind of time effect.
Magazine cover: A stylized pop-art woman
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Infinity Ring 1

A Mutiny in Time

This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic). —Michael Main
Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.
An eight-pointed gold compass, marked in twenty-degree intervals around the edge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Audio Play Series

3 seasons

ars Paradoxica

—pending
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Indiana Jones and his goddaughter set out to find the missing half of Archimedes’s “clock” (or Antikythera Mechanism). With all the usual hair-raising chases, stunts, Nazis (or former Nazis), and the added twist of some actual time travel near the end. —Tandy Ringoringo
Helena: Well, for starters, you’d have changed the course of history.
Indy: That supposed to be a bad thing?
No image currently available.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel