Time Fliers

Tag Area: Time Machine
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #4

The Bewitched Bike!


When small-time crook Spider steals a time-traveling bike, all he can think to make a profit from it is to rob, murder, and escape to the future. No wonder he’s small-time! —Michael Main
I can be the biggest! I can rob, murder . . . do anything! Then all I have to do is jump on my bike an’ presto, I’m 40 years in the future.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • 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

Time Patrol 3

Brave to Be a King


Patrolman Keith Denison uses some sketchy tactics (sketchy to the Patrol, that is) to track down his partner Keith Denison, who’s disappeared in the time of the Persian King Cyrus the Great, —Michael Main
In the case of a missing man, you were not required to search for him just because a record somewhere said you had done so. But how else would you stand a chance of finding him? You might possibly go back and thereby change events so that you did find him after all—in which case the report you filed would “always” have recorded your success, and you alone would know the “former” truth.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #29

Where Does It Go?


J. L . Standish finds himself unexpectedly on a flying bus to the future where the automata have a job for him. —Michael Main
But what would I do? If your automated processes are as efficient as I believe, a mere mortal cannot be important to you!
A purple city bus flies above startled onlookers.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

The Voyages of Ijon Tichy 20

Podróż dwudziesta

  • Journey twenty
  • The Twentieth Voyage
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Dzienniki gwiazdowe, expanded third edition, by Stanisław Lem, (Czytelnik, 1971)

After the time mish-mash of Ijon Tichy’s seventh voyage, it wasn’t clear whether Ijon would ever ply the channels of time again, but here he is, traveling back in time to persuade himself to go forward in time and take up the helm of THEOHIPPIP—a.k.a. Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyoerputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. It takes a few attempts for older Ijon to convince younger Ijon to head to the future on a one-man chronocykl, but when he does, the younger Ijon begins the unexpectedly hard task of righting history’s wrongs. As a sophisticated time traveler yourself, you’ll spot what’s happening early on, while you also get a tour of history from the formamtion of the Solar System to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. You’ll also recognize the fun Lem has at the expense of the bureaucracies of mid-20th-century Poland. —Michael Main
Zresztą Bosch nie powstrzymał się od niedyskrecji. W „Ogrodzie uciech ziemskich,” w „piekle muzycznym” (prawe skrzydło tryptyku) stoi w samym środku dwunastoosobowy chronobus. I co miałem z tym robić?
translate Even so, Bosch couldn’t refrain from certain indiscretions. In the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” in the very center of the “Musical Hell” (the right wing of the triptych), stands a twelve-seat chronobus. Not a thing I could do about it.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a broomstick time machine with a bicycle saddle and
                handle bars, a.k.a. the chronocycle.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time Patrol 5

Gibraltar Falls

  • by Poul Anderson
  • in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1975

As part of an crew assigned to crew to observe the filling of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic in the late Micene, Patrolman Tom Nomura breaks the rules to use time travel to rescue Feliz a Rach when she’s swept over the falls. —Michael Main
The Mediterranean floor lay ten thousand feet below sea level. The inflow took most of that drop within a fifty-mile strait. Its volume amounted to ten thousand cubic miles a year, a hundred Victoria Falls or a thousand Niagaras.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Feature Film

Back to the Future I

Back to the Future


Typical skateboarding teenager Marty McFly meets Doc Brown for the first test of his DeLorean time machine, but when Libyan terrorists strike, things go awry, Marty and the DeLorean end up in 1955 where his parents are teens, and the Doc of 1955 must now send Marty back to the future. —Michael Main
Next Saturday night, we’re sending you . . . back to the future!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty McFly) emerges from the open door of the DeLorean onto
                two flaming tire tracks.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1986 Hugo
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future II

Back to the Future II


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!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty) and Christopher Lloyd (as Doc) check their watches
                beside the DeLorean in a lightning storm.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future III

Back to the Future III


Marty and 1955-Doc travel back to the Old West where 1985-Doc is trapped along with various Biff ancestors and a possible love interest for Doc. —Michael Main
Doc: [blowing train whistle] I’ve wanted to do that my whole life!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty), Christopher Lloyd (as Doc), and Mary Steenburger (as
                Clara) in Western garb beside the DeLorean and a flaming train track.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Time Log


Two unexpected time machine inventors, Thak and Gork, not to be confused with Grog (inventor of wheel) and Thag (maker of fire) from the slightly later cartoon of 3 June 1991.
—Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Time-Travel Trouble!

  • by Billy Wrecks
  • (Random House Children’s Books, July 2014)

A short picture book of the 2014 Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie. The images are all from the movie’s CGI (or at least generated by the same process). —Michael Main
Sheman was supposed to keep the time machine secret, but he broke the rules. He took his friend Penny back in time to ancient Egypt.
Animated characters Sherman and Mr. Peabody peek out of a door frame.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Adam Project


In 2050, time jet pilot Adam Reed steals a jet and heads back to 2018 to save his stranded wife, but he gets waylaid in 2022 where his 12-year-old self is the only hope to save the mission. —Michael Main
Young Adam: I mean if this is happening to me, that means that it already happened to you—right?—unless it works more like a multiverse where each ripple creates an alternate timeline—
Middle-Age Adam: It isn’t a multiverse! My god, we watch too many movies.
Ryan Reynolds and Walker Scobell (as the two Adams) pose in superimposed
                pictures along with three other cast members of The Adam Project and a timejet.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel