THE WHOLE ITTDB   CONTACT   LINKS▼ 🔍 by Keywords▼ | by Media/Years▼ | Advanced
 
The Internet Time Travel Database

Fragile Timeline

Timeline Specifics

Jon’s World

by Philip K. Dick
First the Soviets and the Westerners fought. Then the Westerners brought Schonerman’s killer robots into the mix. Then the robots fought both human sides. You know all that from Dick’s earlier story, “Second Variety.” But now it’s long after the desolation, long enough that Caleb Ryan and his financial backer Kastner are willing to bring back the secret of Schonerman’s robots from the past to make their world a better place for surviving mankind, including Ryan’s visionary son Jon.
— Michael Main
And then the terminator’s claws began to manufacture their own varieties and attack Soviets and Westerners alike. The only humans that survived were those at the UN base on Luna.
“Jon’s World” by Philip K. Dick, in Time to Come: Science-Fiction Stories of Tomorrow, edited by August Derleth; Farrar (Strass and Young, April 1954).

Of All Possible Worlds

by William Tenn
Max Alben Mac Albin is genetically predisposed to survive time travel, so he’s the natural choice to go back in time and shift the course of a missile that shifted the course of history.
— Michael Main
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!
Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!
“Of All Possible Worlds” by William Tenn, Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1956.

Millennium

by John Varley, directed by Michael Anderson
Cheryl Ladd plays Louise Baltimore opposite Kris Kristopherson’s Bill Smith in this movie adaptation of Varley’s novel (1983), although on-screen credit is given only to his earlier short story “Air Raid” (1977).
— Michael Main
For one thing, paradoxes can occur. Say you build a time machine, go backwards in time and murder your father when he was ten years old. That means you were never born. And if you were never born, how did you build the time machine? Paradox! It's the possibility of wiping out your own existence that makes most people rule out time-travel. Still, why not? If you were careful, you could do it.
Millennium by John Varley, directed by Michael Anderson (at movie theaters, West Germany, 24 August 1989).

Back to the Future II

Back to the Future II

by Bob Gale, directed by Robert Zemeckis
Doc Brown takes Marty and Jennifer from 1985 to 2015 to save their children from a bad fate, but the consequences pile up when Biff also gets in on the time-travel action.
— Michael Main
The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe—women!
Back to the Future II by Bob Gale, directed by Robert Zemeckis (at movie theaters, USA, 22 November 1989).

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).

SpongeBob SquarePants [s7:e09A]

Back to the Past

by Casey Alexander, Zedus Cervas, and Dani Michaeli, directed by Casey Alexander et al.
SpongeBob, Patrick, and their two superhero friends head back to the days when the old superheroes were young. Can you guess who it was back in that past who ate all of Mermaid Man’s tartar sauce, unintentionally altering the future? Note: The old superheroes were voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway; their young counterparts were Adam West and Burt Ward.
— Michael Main
This device allows us to transport into the future or past, at a date or destination of our choosing. Unfortunately, the consequences of altering the order of history are so dangerous [thunder], we’ve chosen to leave it alone. So you mustn’t touch!
“Back to the Past” by Casey Alexander, Zedus Cervas, and Dani Michaeli, directed by Casey Alexander et al. (Nickelodeon (USA, 15 February 2010).

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance

by Anthony Q. Farrell, directed by Robbie Countryman
Superhero teens Phoebe and Max and their younger siblings have heard their parents tell a hometown hero legend once too often, so they “borrow” Cousin Blobbin’s time machine to find out the truth. But they manage to screw up the past and create a disaster in their own time, so they have to make a second round trip to sort it all out.

And just for fun . . . we get to see a flying pig three times! [Sadly, we have no Flying Pig tag. —the curator]

— Tandy Ringoringo
If we see ourselves in the past, the whole universe could close in on itself. Watch a movie, you bookworm!
The Thundermans (s04e15), “Save the Past Dance” by Anthony Q. Farrell, directed by Robbie Countryman (Nickelodeon, USA, 18 November 2017).

The Ottoman Secret

by Raymond Khoury
Secret police agent Kamal teams with his sister-in-law Nisreen, fleeing through time from pursuing gunmen who killed Nisreen’s family because toprotect the secret that their world was created by a violent temporal disruptor who altered history in favor of an autocratic Islam theocracy.
— Michael Main
Nisreen: I want to know how it is different and why he wanted to change it. Don’t you see? That’s how the world was supposed to be.

Ramazan: Assuming no one else had gone back and changed things before he did.

The Ottoman Secret by Raymond Khoury (Michael Joseph, May 2019).

The Speed of Time

by Russ Nickel and William J. Stribling, directed by William J. Stribling
Johnny Killfire of the year 2055 (the buff version) comes back to 2020 to stop his younger self from making a killer pizza-delivery app.
— Michael Main
You know that pizza app you’re working on to reduce delivery times? You designed it too well.
The Speed of Time by Russ Nickel and William J. Stribling, directed by William J. Stribling (Youtube: Dust Channel, 17 September 2020).

A Smell of Jet Fuel

by Andrew Dana Hudson
On the 107th floor of the South Tower on 9/11, time travel tour guide Brad Eckelson meets Sitra Velasco, a woman who couldn’t possibly be there.
— Michael Main
Well, she wasn’t a contemporary, that much was clear.
“A Smell of Jet Fuel” by Andrew Dana Hudson, in Lightspeed 134, July 2021.
as of 12:30 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
This page is still under construction.
Please bear with us as we continue to finalize our data over the coming years.