Apparent Time Phenomenon Is Not What It Seems

Tag Area: Time-Related Situation
Novelette

Mystery of the Mind Machine

The mind machine converts past memories to projected images, and the story’s tagline suggests that it can also see the future, but that is just misdirection. No actual time travel, no reading the future. —Michael Main
Not only could this machine read minds—it could read the future!
Pen-and-ink drawing of a man in a suit operating an apparent movie projector.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

The Silver Highway

Most likely, Lucy from 1905 is an ordinary ghost rather than a time traveling ghost, but she is confused by the forty years since her death in a brand new Pope-Hartford runabout, so who really knows? So, we’re calling it Debatable Time Travel™. —Michael Main
She was dressed in a long linen duster and a linen hat, bound round with an emerald veil tied in a bow under her chin. Modish clothing for motoring—in 1905.
Pen-and-ink drawing of an elderly man at the side of the road as a young couple drive by in a 1905 horseless carriage.
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #40

The Swirling Mist!

Reporter Jeff Coates is working on a series of articles about the old Mississippi river mansions when he spots a riverboat near the old, dilapidated Waverly plantation. —Michael Main
Peculiar things go on ’round that old mansion!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

The Toynbee Convector

You’ll enjoy this story, but I’ll give away no more beyond the quote below. By the way, if you get the original publication, you’ll also see Kurt Vonnegut and Marilyn Monroe. —Michael Main
What can I do to save us from ourselves? How to save my friends, my city, my state, my country, the entire world from this obsession with doom? Well, it was in my library late one night that my hand, searching along shelves, touched at last on an old and beloved book by H. G. Wells. His time device called, ghostlike, down the years. I heard! I understood. I truly listened. Then I blueprinted. I built. I traveled [. . .]
Futuristic white buildings with rounded corners, tall spires, and black stripes sit beside an hourglass on a pedestal.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novel

Star Trek: The Original Series Books

Timetrap

Determined to discover what the Klingons are doing in Federation space, Captain Kirk beams aboard their ship with a security team, just as the stormflares to its highest intensity. As the bridge crew watches in horror, Mauler vanishes from the Enterprise’s viewscrreen. And James T. Kirk awakens . . . one hundred years in the future. —from publicity material
His age, his century, his civilization—they were all gone. This was now his universe. The fact was irreversible. So be it. I will adjust.
A defiant woman and man stand side-by-side in green with green lights and fog behind them.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e08)

The Toynbee Convector

At the end of Bradbury’s adaptation of his own earlier story, he adds a holo-twist that viewers of The Ray Bradbury Theater may have enjoyed. —Michael Main
Stiles: For years I brooded on it. I was in complete despair, and then one night, I was rereading H. G. Wells and his wonderful time machine, and then it struck me. “Eureka!” I cried, “I’ve found it. This [pounds book in hand] is my blueprint.”
James Whitmore (as one-hundred-thirty-five-year-old Craig Bennett Stiles) sits in his Wellsian time machine with bright bluish light streaming through the high windows behind him.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Horrid Henry stories 13.2

Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine

  • by Francesca Simon
  • in Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine [four stories] (Orion Children’s Books, 2005)
Henry builds a time machine out of the box that the washing machine arrived in, and he’s his usual horrid self in bringing with his little brother Peter up to speed about the whole thing. —Michael Main
“I’m going to the future and you can’t stop me,” said Peter.
Drawing of a scowling boy strapped into a chair at a panel with multiple clocks, switches, and other controls.
  • Mainstream
  • Audience: Children
  • Time Phenomena
Cartoon

Horrid Henry [s01e16]

Horrid Henry’s Time Machine

In the cartoon version of the short story, Henry imagines that his time machine is an elaborate time ship, at least until his perfect little brother brings him out of his daydream and back to the real world of cardboard. —Michael Main
Peter: “I'm going to the future. I want to see it for myself!”
  • Mainstream
  • Audience: Children
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Ugo

At age six, Ugo began leaping into other parts of his life: sometimes into an older Ugo, sometimes younger, sometimes in control of his body, sometimes just observing. The whole leaping business isn’t entirely clear except fo his connection with his future wife Cynthia—or sometimes Ciznia—and his insistence that nothing he sees can ever be changed. —Michael Main
Later on, Ugo developed a theory about it. He said that in reality everybody Leaps all the time. The proof? Déjà vu. The feeling of having already experienced what is in fact happening for the first time was for him the ultimate, definitive evidence of Leaping. The only difference between Ugo and everyone else was that he remembered, while we don’t.
An old woman in I red robe stands among waves and flying fish.
  • Fantasy
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

The Fare

Taxi driver Harris and his fare, Penny, are trapped in a time loop, repeating the first few minutes of their ride on desolate night roads. —Michael Main
Harris: Wait, wait, don’t tell me. Literature, art: History of DC comics with a focus on the Jack Kirby Years.
Penny: Is that a real thing?
H: It was a blow-off course seniors could take at my high school.
P: Wait—I thought Kirby worked for Marvel.
Brinna Kelly (as Penny) and Gino Anthony Pesi (as Harris) kiss above an image of a taxi on a desolate road.
  • Fantasy
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Blacklist (s09e19)

The Bear Mask

Under severe stress, Agent Aram Mojtabai decides to try psychedelic therapy. Not realizing that he’s tripping, he finds himself repeating a violent time loop. —Tandy Ringoringo
Aram: You know, when I first heard about psychedelic therapy, I imagined something a bit more—
Dr. Idigbe: —tie-dye and trance music?
In dark red light, James Spader (as "Red") in a black fedora and trenchcoat looks seriously to the side.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Time Phenomena