Language Difficulties

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Novelette

The Man Who Awoke 2

Master of the Brain


After a second long sleep, Norman Winters wakes around AD 10,000. The world is dominated by the Brain, an inexorable super computer that knows all, sees all, and feels nothing. Thanks to its cradle-to-grave supervision, human life is easy and comfortable, but what will happen when the Brain realizes people are superfluous? —based on Wikipedia
Certainly. . . . the Great Brain is infallible. Who would want to act contrary to reason?
Pen-and-ink drawing of a futuristic domed building with flying ships in the sky
                and frantic people running around on the ground.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

Master Gerald of Cambray


Unassuming Gerald Cambray, a professor of Latin at Harvard in 1939, has a dizzy spell and wakes in Paris of AD 1263 where his accent in speaking Latin is considered odd and his makeshift plan to earn a living by teaching astronomy brings dangers that even his brazen, swashbuckling young student, Guy of Salisbury, might be unable to forestall. —Michael Main
“My subject,” he began, “is the science of astronomy. I am going to be frank. In my land and time . . . uh . . . that is—” Guy frowned. He had warned him against any mention of that insane delusion of his about having been catapulted back from a future age. But Cambray recovered himself. “What I meant is that there are far greater masters of this science where I come from. I am familiar only with the skirts of this knowledge. Yet what I have to say will be novel to you, and will doubtless upset many of your present concepts.”
Pen-and-ink drawing of a balding modern man leaping into a sword melay among
                medieval men.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Band Played On


When Mac hits a high one on his trombone, he first slips into a fantasy world filled with duck people (where he’d rather not be because, well, ducks); then he slips into the far future where he meets Ann, “a lovely little number of about twenty (where he doesn’t mind being because, well, Ann). —Michael Main
Well, I close my eyes and I am shaking so that I hardly notice the vibrations of the horn begin, but when I reach the E in the third measure, I know I am feeling what I felt in Benny’s.
A man holding a trombone confronts a large, two-armed duck.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 1

Time Patrol


In the first of a long series of hallowed stories, former military engineer (and noncomformist) Manse Everard is recruited by the Time Patrol to prevent time travelers from making major changes to history. (Don’t worry, history bounces back from the small stuff.) —Michael Main
If you went back to, I would guess, 1946, and worked to prevent your parents’ marriage in 1947, you would still have existed in that year; you would not go out of existence just because you had influenced events. The same would apply even if you had only been in 1946 one microsecond before shooting the man who would otherwise have become your father.
A man climbs a spiraling ramp up the side of a rocket while holding a blaster
                on two men below.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 2

Delenda Est


Curse those rogue time travelers! Who do they think they are? And what gives them the right to make Hannibal victorious in that classic Punic conflict? And what can Patrolman Manse Everard and his Venusian partner Van Sarawak do in an altered 20th-century world to make it right again? —Michael Main
Events are the result of a complex. There are no single causes. That’s why it’s so hard to change history. If I went back to, say, the Middle Ages, and shot one of FDR’s Dutch forebears, he’ll still be born in the late nineteenth century—because he and his genes resulted fom the entire world of his ancestors, and there’d have been compensation. But evey so often, a really key event does occur. Some one happening is a nexus of so many world lines that its outcome is decisive for the whole future.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

MUgwump Four


Oh, dear! Albert Miller has dialed a wrong number on the Mugwump-4 exchange, and the mutants who answered have decided that the only solution is to catapult him into the future where he won’t be able to upset their plans for World Domination. —Michael Main
At this stage in our campaign, we can take no risks. You’ll have to go. Prepare the temporal centrifuge, Mordecai.
A cartoonish pen-and-ink drawing of a tall, sad sack kind of man and a short,
                fat, bald businessman.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 4

The Only Game in Town


While on a two-man mission to stop a Mongol party from exploring North America in AD 1280, Patrolman John Sandoval gets a cracked skull, which leaves Manse Everard to figure out a way to save John and the mission while waxing philosophical about time travel and the Time Patrol. —Michael Main
Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 4

The Only Game in Town


While on a two-man mission to stop a Mongol party from exploring North America in AD 1280, Patrolman John Sandoval gets a cracked skull, which leaves Manse Everard to figure out a way to save John and the mission while waxing philosophical about time travel and the Time Patrol. —Michael Main
Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

Time Patrol 6

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks


Everard Manse appears to be the sole Patrolman standing between the evil Exaltationists and the fall of ancient Tyre—or possibly the fall of all civilization. Ah, but wait! The loyal street urchin Pum will also stand by his side! —Michael Main
If Tyre explodes, why, here we’ll be, but our ancestors, your kids, everything we knew, they won’t. It’ll be a whole different history. Whether whatever is left of the Patrol can restore it—somehow head off the disaster—that’s problematical. I’d call it unlikely.
No image currently available.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Oxford Historians 1

Doomsday Book


We may never know just how young Kivrin Engle wrangled her academic advisor and the powers-that-be at the University of Oxford into sending her to previously off-limits, 14th-century England, but her timing was not ideal given that she’dd just been exposed to a recently re-emerged influenza virus. Oh, and the inexperience tech who also got hit with the virus with the virus after the drop may have sent Kivrin to the wrong year. —Ruthie Mariner
You know what he said when I told him he should run at least one unmanned? He said, “If something unfortunate does happen, we can go back in time and pull Miss Engle out before it happens, can’t we?” The man has no notion of how the net works, no notion of the paradoxes, no notion that Kivrin is there, and what happens to her is real and irrevocable.
No image currently available.
  • 1993 Hugo
  • 1993 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Oxford Historians 2

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last


No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite 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
Novel

Infinity Ring 1

A Mutiny in Time


This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic). —Michael Main
Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.
An eight-pointed gold compass, marked in twenty-degree intervals around the
                edge.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Time Bandits, s01e01

Kevin Haddock


After stealing the Map of the Universe from the Supreme Being, a band of dissatisfied new bandits pops through the time portal in Kevin’s bedroom—and the adventures begin! —Michael Main
Dad was right. It is just a pile of stones with a gift shop.
A pirate ship, bits of earth torn from the ground, and the cast of Time Bandits
                float in front of colorful clouds.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Time Bandits, s01e03

Medieval


With the aid of a triceritops skull that Kevin nabbed in the Cretaceous, the gang tries to pass itself off as dragon slayers in medieval Nottingham. And then, just when you’re starting to think this story might be too slim for an entire series, we get sister Saffron coming after Kevin. —Michael Main
We don’t know if we can change time or effect it at all.”
Lisa Kudrow (as Penelope) sits on a log in a forest, addressing a group of
                people offscreen.
  • Undetermined
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel