Oedipal Time Travel

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Flash Fiction

Un brillant sujet

Now that we’re in the enlightened 21st century, every self-respecting reader is intimately familiar with all the early time travel classics. Anno 7603, Paris avant les hommes,[/em] “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Clock That Went Backward,” El Anacronópete, The Time Machine, blah blah blah. But let’s be honest and call a Morlock a Morlock: All those old tales are tales of vacuous travelers through time, none of them giving a thought to contorted paradoxes, none wondering which lover they would get back (or get revenge on) if given the chance, none fretting about what might happen should they kill their younger self, and none having impure thoughts about sleeping with their mothers or the consequences of doing so. Yep, I’d always proudly boasted that it was my generation who discovered such sauciness.

And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago. —Michael Main
Divers incestes sont consommés. Palentête a quelques raisons de croire qu’il est son propre père.
translate Various incests are consummated. Skullhead has some reason to believe that he is his own father.
A yellowed title page from the 1922 publication of "Un brillant sujet."
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Comedy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann

Now that I know that one of the Monkees wrote this time-travel yarn of a dirtbiker riding his motorcycle through a time portal and into the Old West, the universe begins to make sense. —Michael Main
You shot it. What a bunch of dumb sons of bitches. You shot it—a machine, you butt-heads!
Three cowboys ride through a flat grid embedded in a silhouette of a modern-day motorcycle rider.
  • Science Fiction
  • Western
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future I

Back to the Future

Typical skateboarding teenager Marty McFly meets Doc Brown for the first test of his DeLorean time machine, but when Libyan terrorists strike, things go awry, Marty and the DeLorean end up in 1955 where his parents are teens, and the Doc of 1955 must now send Marty back to the future. —Michael Main
Next Saturday night, we’re sending you . . . back to the future!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty McFly) emerges from the open door of the DeLorean onto two flaming tire tracks.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1986 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (s0506)

Trials and Tribble-ations

Please, please, please set aside two hours to watch the original “The Trouble with Tribbles” (Star Trek [s2e15]) followed immediately by this episode of ST:DS9. You will laugh, you will cry, you will cheer with joy, as Sisko and the DS9 crew find themselves back with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Klingons, and tribbles at Deep Station K-7 on Stardate 4523.7. —Michael Main
Kirk: [pacing in front of a lineup of the crew] Who started the fight?
O’Brien: I don’t know, sir.
Captain Cisco and Dax trying to stay unnoticed behind Kirk and Spock in a corridor on the Enterprise.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur

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.
A T-Rex leaps out of the forest while four oblivious diners in formal attire lift a toast.
  • 1999 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Rocking My Dreamboat

Jameson is a jerk. He pretends to love his mother, with whom he shares a house. He discovers time travel via a Legoland Time Machine and uses it to destroy women who “dumped” him. Yep, this guy is a real “winner.” —Tandy Ringoringo
He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.
A Lego man sits at the controls of a Lego time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Predestination

I was so disappointed with this movie that I’m going to have to write a spoiler. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, please don't hover your mouse over the following:

Here’s the problem: Heinlein’s story “—All You Zombies—” was the last word on one specific kind of time travel story: The story is which there is but one timeline. If you travel to the past and do something, it is because you traveled to the past and did that thing. But the Spierig brothers completely missed this point by introducing an older version of the Unmarried Mother who has newspaper clippings of other timelines that he has changed. The nice closed sexual loop is still present in the movie, but that wasn’t enough to stop my disappointment at the drubbing that the central story idea took. I wasn’t so hot on the music either (except for “I’m My Own Grandpa”), but the relationship between the Barkeep and the Unmarried Mother was spot on as was the depiction of time travel and the foreshadowing. —Michael Main
Unmarried Mother: So I can do this, I can change my past?
Barkeep: Yes, you can.
U.M.: Have you ever thought about changing yours?
BK: I never deviate from the mission.
U.M.: Never?
BK: Never. . . . Look, I’ll pick you up when you’re done, all right?
U.M.: No, whoa, where are you going?
BK: Don’t worry. I’ll be around, trust me.
U.M.: Do I? . . . Do I have a choice?
BK: Of course. You always have a choice.
A man in a trenchcoat and fedora hat walks into a time portal superimposed on gun-toting Ethan Hawke (as the Barkeep).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel