Moments Surrounding Death

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Novel

Not in Our Stars

After a meteor strike and some scientific mumbo-jumbo, Felix Menzies wakes up in a jail cell on the day before his execution for murdering the man he wrongly thought was his wife’s lover—an act he doesn’t remember—, and then he starts waking up on each previous morning, whereupon he begins to think he can cheat Destiny by not murdering the guy in the first place. —Michael Main
If he did meet Savile, he was prepared to shake hands with him in the old way, and to realize what a neurotic fool he had been: also that Destiny had made an idiot of itself with the careless blundering born of the knowledge that nobody would ever know, nobody, that is, except himself; and, of course, Destiny safely relied on the assumption that nobody would believe him.
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Lake

In this tragic tale, Doug returns to the lakeshore where a decade before, at age twelve, he built sandcastles with Tally, his first love. —Michael Main
Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a colony of gulls circling around a half-bulit sandcastle on a lake shore.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e30)

A Stop at Willoughby

On a snowy November evening during his train commute home from New York City, John Daly falls asleep and, perhaps in a dream, sees a simpler life with bands playing in the bandstand, people riding penny farthings through the park, and kids fishin’ at their fishin’ holes the 1888 summertime of idyllic Willoughby. —Michael Main
Willoughby, sir? That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby, July, summer. It’s 1888—really a lovely little village. You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his live full-measure.
A man cycles on a penny farthing in an idyllic city park beside James Daly (as 38-year-old New York City executive Gart Williams).
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e03)

The Lake

The TV adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Lake” focuses more on the adult man, who’s now thirty-something Doug, but the story structure and pathos of his lost childhood love remain intact. —Michael Main
If I finish it, will you come?
Exactly half of a large sand castle with a trail of footprints looping around it.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

R.I.P.D.

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.
Jeff Bridges (as Roy Pulsipher) and Ryan Reynolds (as Nick Walker) march down a Boston street, guns blazing, underneath an electrified vortex.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Time Phenomena
Novel

The Midnight Library

  • by Matt Haig
  • (Canongate Books, August 2020)
After thirty-something Nora Seed kills herself, she arrives as a possibly metaphorical library with an infinite number of books containing her possible lives, each one of which she may try out, always starting on the night of her suicide.

For me, the depiction of Nora’s suicidal ideation and eventual killing of herself were dismissive of those who face depression every day, and the outcome was fictionally romanticized in a way that may induce suicide rather than showing understanding and encouragement to seek out help when life is dark. I don’t see this as intentional by the author. —Michael Main
“Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living.”
A stylized, four-story, white library with a silhouette of a cat and text to the side stating, "One library. Infinite lives."
  • Fantasy
  • Debatable Time Travel