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Long Life

Time-Related Situations

The Worm Ouroboros

by E. R. Eddison
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."
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (Jonathan Cape, 1922).

Wanderer of Infinity

by Harl Vincent
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.”
“Wanderer of Infinity” by Harl Vincent, in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1933.

The Man Who Awoke 5

The Elixir

by Laurence Manning
One last sleep takes Norman Winters to about AD 25,000 where scientists have discovered to secret of immortality. But is Mankind ready for it? Immortality is frightfully boring without a purpose. Humanity scatters to the far corners of the cosmos seeking knowledge and experience, leading to a quest toward the meaning of it all.
— based on Wikipedia
We must make him young again—what a chance to try out the full cell-cycle!
“The Elixir” by Laurence Manning, Wonder Stories,[/em] August 1933.

Sands of Time 2

Coils of Time

by P. Schuyler Miller
You’ll need some patience with “Coils of Time," seeing as how it takes the hero, Rutherford Bohr Adams, twenty-some pages before you’ll realize that the story is a sequel to “The Sands of Time,” and it’s going to fall to space pilot Adams to travel through the 60-million-year coils of times into the future and the past, saving Earth from the evil Martians and their zombies, while also saving his own boss’s beautiful daughter from a fate worth than death.
— Michael Main
It’s another form of the space-time field that I use in the Egg to bridge the gap between the coils of time.
“Coils of Time” by P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1939.

The Search

by A. E. van Vogt
When salesman Ralph Carson Drake tries to recover his missing memory of the past two weeks, he discovers he had interactions with three people: a woman named Selanie Johns who sold remarkable futuristic devices for one dollar, her father, and an old gray-eyed man who is feared by Selanie and her father.

Van Vogt combined this with two other stories and a little fix-up material for his 1970 publication of Quest for the Future.

— Michael Main
The Palace of Immortality was built in an eddy of time, the only known Reverse, or Immortality, Drift in the Earth Time Stream
“The Search” by A. E. van Vogt, Astounding, January 1943.

The Man Who Never Grew Young

by Fritz Leiber
Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disinterred, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.

It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.
“The Man Who Never Grew Young” by Fritz Leiber, in Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947).

Star Trek (s03e19)

Requiem for Methuselah

by Jerome Bixby, directed by Murray Golden
The seemingly all-powerful Flint lives with the brilliant young Raina, hangs unknown [tag-3791 | da Vinci[/ex] paintings on his walls, and provides Mr. Spock with a modern-day Brahms waltz. Could his riches be ill-got via time travel or is there a mundane explanation?
— Michael Main
Your collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces, Mr. Flint—they appear to have been recently painted.
Star Trek (s03e19), Requiem for Methuselah by Jerome Bixby, directed by Murray Golden (NBC-TV, 14 February 1969).

Time Patrol 3

Gibraltar Falls

by Poul Anderson
As part of an crew assigned to crew to observe the filling of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic in the late Micene, Patrolman Tom Nomura breaks the rules to use time travel to rescue Feliz a Rach when she’s swept over the falls.
— Michael Main
The Mediterranean floor lay ten thousand feet below sea level. The inflow took most of that drop within a fifty-mile strait. Its volume amounted to ten thousand cubic miles a year, a hundred Victoria Falls or a thousand Niagaras.
“Gibraltar Falls” by Poul Anderson, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1975.

The Hemingway Hoax

by Joe Haldeman
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.
“The Hemingway Hoax” by Joe Haldeman, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, April 1990.

The Santa Clause 3

The Escape Clause

by Ed Decter and John J. Strauss, directed by Michael Lembeck
Now that Santa and Mrs. Claus have the North Pole running smoothly, the Counsel of Legendary Figures has called an emergency meeting on Christmas Eve! The evil Jack Frost has been making trouble, looking to take over the holiday! So he launches a plan to sabotage the toy factory and compel Scott to invoke the little-known Escape Clause and wish he'd never become Santa.
— from publicity material
This is the part where I’m transported through time and everything goes back to the way it was, like I’d never become Santa at all.
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause by Ed Decter and John J. Strauss, directed by Michael Lembeck (at movie theaters, Germany, 2 November 2006).

The Last Musketeer 1

The Last Musketeer

by Stuart Gibbs
While chasing the cad who stole his family’s prized black crystal, young Greg Rich ends up back in AD 1615 where he and three future Musketeers must save Greg’s parents from Dominic Richelieu (the cardinal’s evil brother) and the deadly prison known as La Mort.
— Michael Main
When joined as a whole, the Devil’s Stone was rumored to perform many miracles: strike people dead in an instant, turn lead into gold, even open portals in time.
The Last Musketeer by Stuart Gibbs (HarperCollins, September 2011) [print · e-book].

Immortal Descendants: Original Series #1

Marking Time

by April White
Seventeen year-old Saira Elian’s mother has disappeared, as she does for a few days every couple of years. But this time, Saira ends up searching for her—in time. Along the way she makes friends for the first time in her nomadic life, and she learns that Vampires, Seers, and Shifters are real. But she also makes enemies, including Jack the Ripper.
— Tandy Ringoringo
I was tracing a design that was etched into the wall, and it started glowing and humming. And then my whole body was being stretched and pulled, like I was a giant rubber band. And there was a sound that vibrated through my skin and into my stomach, which is probably what made me want to puke—er, vomit.
Marking Time by April White (Corazon Entertainment, October 2012).

R.I.P.D.

by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, directed by Robert Schwentke
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.
R.I.P.D. by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, directed by Robert Schwentke (at movie theaters, Iceland, 17 July 2013).

Witchcraft Mysteries 6

A Vision in Velvet

by Juliet Blackwell
To save her pet pig/gargoyle/familiar, shopkeeper and fabric whisperer Lily Ivory must solve a mystery using clues picked up via a traveling cloak that spirits her off to the Salem witch trials.
— Inmate Jan
The cape was in the trunk. When I put it on . . . It’s hard to explain, but it was as though I had been transported to another time and place.
A Vision in Velvet by Juliet Blackwell (Obsidian Mystery, July 2014) [print · e-book].

The Age of Adaline

by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, directed by Lee Toland Krieger
Adaline lives most of the 20th century and into the 21st, all at age 29 with no actual time travel.
— Michael Main
Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go.
The Age of Adaline by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, directed by Lee Toland Krieger (at movie theaters, Belgium, 8 April 2015).

How to Stop Time

by Matt Haig
As a 400-something-year-old member of the Albatross Society, Tom Hazard ages less than a month for each year of life. But now, after falling in the 21st-century and butting heads with the Society, he seems to be on a mental trip that covers his entire life (but not an actual time traveling trip).
— Michael Main
But as time goes by, at birthdays or other annual markers, people begin to notice you aren’t getting any older.
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (Canongate Books, July 2017).

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).

Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen
When time travel agent Kin Stewart finds himself rapidly losing his memory and stranded in 1996, he writes a journal of his life in the future and proceeds to break every rule in the book by creating a new life and family in his new present . . . until a retriever shows up in 2014.
— Michael Main
Science fiction. She thought the journal was filled with tales, like her Doctor Who or Heather’s Star Trek shows.
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen (Mira, January 2019).

The Umbrella Academy, Season 1

by multiple writers and directors
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 Umbrella Academy, Season 1 by multiple writers and directors, 10 episodes (Netflix, USA, 15 February 2019).

Hello Now

by Jenny Valentine
Teenager Jude enjoys thinking in similes and metaphors, so much so that perhaps Jude’s whole story—being uprooted, meeting an odd man, and meeting an otherworldly boy who sees no difference between space and time—is itself a metaphor for first love. The odd boy, Novo, has equally odd conversations with Jude—I’m unsure whether the conversations are deep or metaphors or both or neither—while he manipulates time, space and memories.
— Michael Main
You are the place I return to, in between times. My fulcrum, the point at my center, around which all of me turns. You are my chance at stillness. The rock in my water. I know you.
Hello Now by Jenny Valentine (Philomel Books, March 2020).

Immortal Descendants: Baltimore Mysteries #1

Death’s Door

by April White
Ren (Alexandra Reynolds) owns a neighborhood bar in Baltimore. One evening, Edgar Allan Poe stumbles in—not an early Halloween reveler in costume, but the real thing. In the course of their acquaintance, both Ren and Poe learn more about themselves. Did I mention that Ren is descended from a freed slave mother and a white slave-owning father? And that Poe was an anti-abolitionist?
— Tandy Ringoringo
The notepaper was faded with age, and although I’d never seen it before, I knew he’d hidden it there the night I met him again, so many, many years before.
“Death’s Door” by April White (Corazon Entertainment, May 2020).

The Umbrella Academy, Season 2

by multiple writers and directors
Five’s plan for the Umbrella siblings to escape the apocalypse by going into the past ends up scattering them throughout different years of Dallas in the 1960s. They manage okay on their own until shortly after 11/22/63, when secondary effects from changes to the timeline cause a nuclear holocaust that can be averted only by recently arrived Five jumping back to 11/15/63 to exert his unique charm into getting the gang to work together.
— Michael Main
Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”
The Umbrella Academy, Season 2 by multiple writers and directors, ten episodes (Netflix, USA, 31 July 2020).

Providence Falls Trilogy

by Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets
After more than a century in limbo, Irish ruffian Liam O’Connor is dropped into an adult life in 21st-century Providence Falls where, in order to save his soul, he must convince his reincarnated true love, Cora, to marry someone other than himself. It appears that Liam had a long sleep, and Cora was reincarnated, but neither had real time travel.
— Michael Main
“Cora is on earth again in this twenty-first century,” Samuel said. “You must make sure she fulfills her true destiny in this life.”
The Providence Falls Novels, 2 vols. by Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets (Mira, September 2020 to October 2022) [print · e-book].

What If . . . ? [s1e04]

What If . . . Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

by A. C. Bradley, directed by Bryan Andrews
As we all know, when the world’s formost surgeon, Doctor Strange, lost the use of his hands in a car wreck, it prompted him to search out mystic treatments and eventually become the Master of the Mystic Arts. But what if he had lost something else in that wreck?
— Michael Main
The Ancient One: Her death is an Absolute Point in time.
Dr. Strange: Absolute?
A.O.: Unchangable. Unmovable. Without her death, you would never have defeated Dormamu and become the Sorcerer Supreme—and the guardian of the Eye of Agamotto. If you erase her death, you never start your journey.
“What If . . . Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” by A. C. Bradley, directed by Bryan Andrews, What If . . . ? [s01e04] (Disney+, worldwide, 1 September 2021).

Star Trek: Picard, Season 2

by multiple writers and directors
After a catastrophic start to Season 2, Q steps in to pluck Picard’s crew and the Borg Queen from certain death only to insert them into a dystopian timeline that Q himself had created via a small change in 2024.
— Michael Main
Time? Of course, that’s how he did it. This is not another reality—this is our reality. He went back in time and changed the present.
Star Trek: Picard, Season 2 by multiple writers and directors (Paramount+, 3 March 2022 to 5 May 2022).

The Umbrella Academy, Season 3

After stopping the JFK-induced apocalypse in Season 2, the six Umbrella siblings return to 2019 where they no longer exist and their still-living father has founded The Sparrow Academy in their stead.
— Michael Main
Well, someone killed our mothers, so we shouldn’t exist, but clearly we do exist, and the universe can’t handle it, which is a problem.
The Umbrella Academy, Season 3 (Netflix, 22 June 2022).
as of 9:35 p.m. MDT, 5 May 2024
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