Time Runs in Reverse for Some Beings

Tag Area: Timeline Model
Short Story

The Man Who Never Lived

Strange Nicholas van Allensteen joins with a universal mind to journey back before the start of time. —Michael Main
“[. . .] This is an experiment in mental monism, you know, along the time-space continuum that forms material totality.”
I looked at Nicholas and, despite all my conversatons with him, I did not comprehend.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Man Who Never Grew Young

  • by Fritz Leiber
  • in Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947)
Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disinterred, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.
It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.
A stylized pen-and-ink drawing of a cloaked man on a horse with a silhouette of Saturn in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

The Hemingway Hoax

Literature professor John Baird and conman Sylvester Castlemaine hatch a plan to get rich forging Hemingway’s lost stories, but before long, Baird is confronted by an apparent guardian of the many timelines in the form of Hemingway himself. —Michael Main
I’m from the future and the past and other temporalities that you can’t comprehend. But all you need to know is that yiou must not write this Hemingway story. If you do, I or someone like me will have to kill you.
A Hemingway-esqu man has various heads and appendages coming out of his head.
  • 1991 Hugo
  • 1991 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Horror
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Happy Ending

High school teacher Bob Wells: Is this the story of him living backward through time? Or is the story merely being told in reverse? Or is something else going on with Bob's student Karl Downs? —Michael Main
The doors opened and students backed in, pointedly not looking at Bob as they took their seats.
Wispy images of three people emerge from an hour glass.
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Mainstream
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Film

The Palindrome Paradox

  • written and directed by Henry Burroughs
  • (Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival, Schull, Ireland, 23 May 2013)
Story checks out. We played the film backward and it’s identical to running it forward. And a form of time travel where one of the characters experiences time running backward. We won’t spoil things by telling you which character. —Michael Main
Inim-nordah redilloc eht dehsinif ev’uoy. Wow!
Mark Logan-Benn in a deerstalker hat faces a mussy-haired Mike Varty over a minature Hadron Collider on the kitchen table.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Marvel Cinematic Universe 14

Doctor Strange

After his career is destroyed, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under her wing and trains him to defend the world against evil. —from publicity material
Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.
Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange) casts a spell with two outstretched, transparent fingers.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Marvel Cinematic Universe 19

Avengers: Infinity War

Given that the Time Stone is a key element to Thanos’s master plan, you’d think that time travel would play a major part in this movie, but not so. Doc Strange does use the stone to view a slew of possible futures, but we know that’s not actually time travel. So where does the time travel come into play? Pay close attention to the final thirteen minutes of the film, after Strange announces “We’re in the end game now,” and you’ll spot one definite time travel moment and a second possible moment. —Michael Main
Tony, there was no other way.
A giant Josh Brolin (as Thanos) stands proudly behind a determined Robert Downey Junior (as Iron Man) and the rest of the Avengers.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • ten episodes (Netflix, USA, 31 July 2020)
Five’s plan for the Umbrella siblings to escape the apocalypse by going into the past ends up scattering them throughout different years of Dallas in the 1960s. They manage okay on their own until shortly after 11/22/63, when secondary effects from changes to the timeline cause a nuclear holocaust that can be averted only by recently arrived Five jumping back to 11/15/63 to exert his unique charm into getting the gang to work together. —Michael Main
Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”
All seven siblings of the Umbrella Academy walk in a straight line in their blue uniforms over a background of 1960s psychedelic black lines.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Backwards

A short-lived species has memories of both the past and the future. —Michael Main
For progeny and ancestors of the Retromens had communicated with their caretaker, studying him as he studied them, generation for generation.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena