Simulation

Tag Area: Time-Related Situation
TV Episode

Star Trek (s03e06)

Spectre of the Gun

After barging into the space of the reclusive Melkotians, Kirk and his crew find themselves facing the Earps and Doc Holliday in a second-rate simulation of the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral. —Michael Main
History has been changed in the fact that Billy Claiborne didn’t die, but Chekov is lying there dead.
A façade of a sheriff’s office stands on a set of tumbleweeds, barron trees, and a red sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

Star Trek (s03e22)

The Savage Curtain

The critics agree that this episode lives in the bottom ten of all Star Trek episodes, but we kinda liked seeing Lincoln and Surak, even if Spock concludes that they were mere sims. —Michael Main
Conjecture, Captain, rather than explanation: It would seem that we were held in the power of creatures able to control matter and to rearrange molecules in whatever fashion was desired, so they were able to create images of Sarak and Lincoln after scanning our minds and using their fellow creatures as source matter.
Nichelle Nichols [as Uhura] and Lee Bergere [as Lincoln] converse on the bridge of the Enterprise.
  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Sailing to Byzantium

Charles Phillips is a 20th-century New Yorker in a future world of immortal leisurites who reconstruct cities from the past. —Michael Main
He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them. That he knew. He knew that his name was Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities, not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg and Parks and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and Buenos Ares and a multitude of others, all at the same time.
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  • 1968 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e24)

We’ll Always Have Paris

Temporal distortions, such as time loops and mixed times, are rippling outward from an isolated planetoid where Dr. Manheim and Jenice Manheim, an old flame of Picard’s, built their time/gravity research lab. —Michael Main
Sensors show nothing, sir, But it appears a moment in time repeated itself exactly, for everyone.
Still shot from behind of Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean-Luc Picard) gazing at a future Eiffel Tower on the holo-deck.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: The Next Generation, s02e03

Elementary, Dear Data

Geordi and Pulaski’s annoyance at Data’s inability to create a worthy opponent in a Sherlock Holmes mystery on the holodeck results in a more realistic Moriarty than any of them anticipated. —Michael Main
Clancy: [to Geordi] Aye, sir. Where can I reach you?
Data: He can be reached at 221 Baker Street!
In a Sherlock Holmes get-up, Brent Spiner (as Data) examines something through a magnifying glass.
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Iterations

  • by William H. Keith, Jr.
  • in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001)
An accident near a black hole has seemingly doomed Kevyn Shalamarn along with her copilot and her AI, until they are pulled into a far future that could have been inspired by Frank Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology. The trip to the future seems to be in the domain of relativistic time dilation rather than time travel, and it’s unclear whether the trip back is actual time travel or some form of quantum physics mashed up with simulations. —Michael Main
The goal of this device is nothing less than complete knowledge, knowledge of everything that ever has been, that ever will be, that ever could be.
A warped gold pockewatch with Arabic numerals and a separate second hand on its own dial.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novel

Invictus

After Farway Gaius McCarthy fails his final examination at the Central Time Travelers Academy, he puts together a rogue time travel crew to swipe valuable artifacts from the past at moments when they won’t be missed. And it’s all roses until a mysterious girl sidetracks them on the Titanic and steers them into a multiverse of fading timelines.

As you might guess, we enjoyed Far and his friends, but the thing that sealed an Eloi Bronze Medal was the fact that when a particular timeline actually managed to branch (not an easy feat) and the traveler then jumped to the future, she found her another self—the her that was born on that timeline—waiting for her. Most branching timeline stories ignore this issue entirely. —Michael Main
“There’s nothing to return to.” Eliot’s knuckles bulged at the seams, but she didn’t yell. “When the Fade destroys a moment, it’s lost. Forever.”
An abstract design of thin purple lines and dots over out-of-focus grey objects.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Peripheral, Season 1

When Flynne Fisher’s ne’er-do-well brother lands a lucrative gig testing new VR tech, he drafts Flynne to do the heavy lifting, and she’s bowled over by the future world the VR has created—until she realizes it’s more than a sim. —Michael Main
If it were time travel, as you say, you’d be here physically. This is merely a matter of data transfer: quantum tunneling is the technical term for it. I understand your confusion.
Close-up of Chloë Grace Moretz (as Flynne Fisher) with her eyes obscured by a scene of rural North Carolina underneath an upside-down futuristic London.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Actor

Lomua, a prehistoric hunter, is bitten by a poisonous snake and must make a quick decision on how to best protect the rest of the tribe from a stampede of wildebeests. What in the world does that have to do with an actor in the far future? —Michael Main
Lomua opened his eyes in an immaculate room with pastel walls and warm lights, feeling fully refreshed.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena