Neanderthals and Other Cavemen

Tag Area: Real-World Collective
Novella

The Atom-Smasher


We've got the evil Professor Tode (who modifies an atom-smasher into a time machine that travels to the Palaeolithic and to Atlantis), a fatherly older professor, his beautiful young daughter (menaced by evil Tode), casually written racist pronouncements (by Rousseau), and our hero scientist, the dashing Jim Dent. But my favorite sentence was the brief description of quantum mechanics, which I didn’t expect in a 1930 science fiction tale. —Michael Main
The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door.
Black and white drawing of a young man, a young woman, and an old man staring
                into a brightly lit crevice.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
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
Novella

He Never Slept


The famous Dr. Jason Veldor has made a potion that eliminates the need for sleep. The only trouble is, it’s devastatingly addictive, and for better or worse, it takes Veldor’s mind into the lives in other times and other dimensions. —Michael Main
To come to my point, Richard, I have for many years been very disgusted with the fact that all the human race—indeed every living organism—must waste a third of its life in sleep. Think what a race we’d be if we never slept!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novelette

The Land Where Time Stood Still


Twentieth-century American Ronald Stratton and Arthurian damsel Elaise find themselves in a land with people from all ages as well as predators from the 400th century.

This may be the earliest use of something akin to a “wheel of time.” —Michael Main
Time’s all mixed up. It’s as if the universe were the rim of a great wheel, whirling through Time. As if, somehow, we have left that rim, shot inward along different spokes whose outer ends are different years, far apart, and reached the wheel’s axis where all the year-spokes join. The center point of the hub, that doesn’t move at all through Time, because it is the center. Where there is no Time. Where the past and the present and the future are all one. A land, in some weird other dimension, where Time stands still.
A red, bug-eyed future man and a modern-day man with ray guns hold off a
                Neanderthal, a Roman Centurion, and others.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Professor Feldman’s Shock


Time travel can induce various kinds of shock. —Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete
                Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • 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
Novel

A Time Odyssey 1

Time’s Eye


And she was continually amazed at how easily everyone else accepted their situation, the blunt, apparently undeniable reality of the time slips, across a hundred and fifty years in her case, perhaps a million years or more for the wretched pithecine and her infant in their net cage.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

My Wife Hates Time Travel


When a not-so-brilliant man and his similarly equipped wife find out that one of them is destined to invent time travel, they end up continuously fighting, not the least cause of which is their future selves popping in all the time, intent on informing them that they should do this and not that. —Michael Main
Being the future inventors of time travel wasn’t all bad, of course. It was great to know that we’d never lose anything, never go to a movie that turned out to be a stinker, never buy a book we wouldn’t want to finish, never go out to a restaurant where the service was lousy, and never get stuck in a traffic jam, because we’d always be warned away, beforehand. It was terrific to have some future version of myself pop in just as I was about to irritate my wife with some inconsiderate comment and tell me, “It would be a really bad idea to say that.”
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  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 1

Pancakes and Poison

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, October 2018) [e-book]

Ella is in Oregon in the early 2000s, driving back from Thanksgiving at her parents’ house, when suddenly a flash of blinding light startles her. Within a couple of minutes, her Jeep hits a patch of ice, skids, and ends up in a snowdrift. When it won't restart, she hikes to the nearest town, past a welcoming sign stating “Visitors, turn back. Leave now.” With no other options, she continues walking and gets a room at the Keystone Inn. The next day, she discovers that Keystone is a bit strange. Ultimately she learns that it was plucked out of Colorado in 1951. The light flash occurs every few days, and the town jumps to another location and time—sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. —Tandy Ringoringo
Since she couldn’t recall having passed any cabins within the last several miles, she decided to plunge ahead into the strange, foreign landscape glittering in the cold. Because, when in doubt, go towards the creepy Twilight Zone landscape.
A skillet of pancakes and a bottle of poison with small-town storefronts in the
                background.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Traveling Town Mysteries 7

Campfire Catastrophe

  • by Ami Diane
  • (Amazon Digital Services, April 2020) [e-book]

Ella has been in Keystone over a year now. They are in a new location: “another forest of deciduous trees and low mountains. It blended nicely with the native Colorado plant life.” And they start off with a nice camping trip with some school kids. But one of the kids wanders off into a cave, and when Ella finds her, there is a dying man present. —Tandy Ringoringo
[. . .] the bubble could transfer to a flux capacitor in a DeLorean, and we could use the car to travel back to the future.
A small camping tent, campfire, and backpack on a street of small-town
                storefronts.
  • Fantasy
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Flashback


After high-powered lawyer Charlie Leroy gets her client cleared from a rape charge by claiming that the accuser’s lacy underwear was consent to have sex, Charlie finds herself transported by a divine cabdriver to historical moments that were key for women’s rights. —Michael Main
Attends . . . si maman n'épouse pas papa, je vais pas naître. Je viens de me tuer.
translate Wait . . . if Mom never marries Dad, I won’t be born. I just killed myself.
Issa Doumbia (as cabdriver Hubert) leans on a cab in front of Caroline Vigneaux
                (as Charlie), who is surrounded by lots of people from history.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Time Bandits, s01e02

Mayan


Even though Kevin seems (mostly) helpful to the bandits, Penelope still tries to dump him in the Ice Age and Maya times. —Michael Main
I’m not cut out to be a time traveling bandit.
Young Kal-El Tuk (as Kevin) stands boldly, wearing his glasses, knight tunic,
                and translation helmet.
  • Fantasy
  • 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