Pandemics, Epidemics, and Bio-Disasters

Tag Area: Real-World Event
Novelette

Vintage Season


More and more strange people are appearing each day in and around Oliver Wilson’s home; the explanation from the euphoric redhead leads him to believe they are time travelers gathering for an important event. —Michael Main
Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a broad metal bowl containing steaming liquid.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Feature Film

12 Monkeys


In the year 2035, with the world devastated by an artificially engineered plague, convict James Cole is sent back in time to gather information about the plague’s origin so the scientists can figure out how to fight it. —Michael Main
If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.
The faces of Bruce Willis (as old James with one red eye), Brat Pitt (as young
                James), and Madeline Stowe (as Kathryn) stare out of the shadows.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Here and Now

  • by Ann Brashares
  • (Delacorte Press, April 2014) [print · e-book]

Teenager Prenna James and her mother are two of the survivors of a future plague who return to the early 21st century to live out a quiet life under strict non-interference rules. —Michael Main
“And then I’ll be a proper early-twenty-first-century girl?” I ask. I feel like crying. I don’t want to be set.”
A mozaic of triangular photos and colors forms half of the face of a young
                woman.
  • Science Fiction
  • Romance
  • Audience: Young Adults
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

12 Monkeys, Season 1


Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow). —Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]
A man
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
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