Multiple Naive Timelines

Tag Area: Timeline Model
Flash Fiction

Un brillant sujet


Now that we’re in the enlightened 21st century, every self-respecting reader is intimately familiar with all the early time travel classics. Anno 7603, Paris avant les hommes,[/em] “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Clock That Went Backward,” El Anacronópete, The Time Machine, blah blah blah. But let’s be honest and call a Morlock a Morlock: All those old tales are tales of vacuous travelers through time, none of them giving a thought to contorted paradoxes, none wondering which lover they would get back (or get revenge on) if given the chance, none fretting about what might happen should they kill their younger self, and none having impure thoughts about sleeping with their mothers or the consequences of doing so. Yep, I’d always proudly boasted that it was my generation who discovered such sauciness.

And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago. —Michael Main
Divers incestes sont consommés. Palentête a quelques raisons de croire qu’il est son propre père.
translate Various incests are consummated. Skullhead has some reason to believe that he is his own father.
A yellowed title page from the 1922 publication of "Un brillant sujet."
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Comedy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Time-Traveler


Mathematics professor John D. Smith rues the day he saved his college room-mate from drowning only to have the ungrateful cad thwart his every career move for the next decade. Oh, if only Smith could redo that fateful day!

Fun note: Under the pen name Ralph Milne Farley, Massachusetts state senator Roger Sherman Hoar carried out explorations of all the early time travel paradoxes, most of which are available in his Omnibus of Time. —Michael Main
If I could go back into the past, there is one event which I should most certainly change: my rescue of Paul Arkwright!
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable 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
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #33

There’ll Be Some Changes Made


Paul Haines spends his days stewing over the money his 18th-centery ancestor wasted, until he realizes that there’s a way he can get it. I found the story oddly disquieting in that Paul never really faced punishment for his crime and he got the girl too boot—definitely not the usual weird fiction pattern, although I’ll still tag it that way. —Michael Main
Change the past! Why haven’t I thought of this before? It can be done!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

Life Sentence!


Leo Sampsom is a four-time thief serving a life sentence. So what has he got to lose when a strange man offers him a pill that will put him back into his own body right before his last theft? —Michael Main
But what if those pills really work? I’d be out of prison . . . free, back twenty years!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #45

What Happened to Harrison


Harrison bets his academics reputation on being able to show that his rival’s claim of sending a man’s subconscious back in time is hooey. —Michael Main
Keep your voice down, Harrison! You might wake Martin, and that would be dangerous! It would alter the past!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • 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
Short Story

The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass


This cautionary tale about Snodgras—time traveler who brought modern-day healthcare back to the Roman Empire—originally appeared as an essay in the editorial pages of Pohl’s [⁠Galaxy[/em] along with a nod to L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall, but it’s since made its way into more than one story compilation. —Michael Main
Snodgrass decided to make the Roman world healthy and to keep its people alive through 20th century medicine.
A probe with four large panels at right angles and a green exhast approaches
                the Horsehead Nebula.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Si Morley 1

Time and Again


Si goes back to 19th century New York to solve a crime and (of course) fall in love.

This is Janet’s favorite time-travel novel, in which Finney elaborates on themes that were set in earlier stories such as “Double Take.” —Michael Main
There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Closing the Timelid


Centuries in the future, Orion throws an illicit party in which the partygoers get to experience complete death in the past. —Michael Main
Ah, agony in a tearing that made him feel, for the first time, every particle of his body as it screamed in pain.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Novel

From Time to Time


Finney’s sequel to Time and Again initially finds Si Morley living a happy life in the 19th century with his 19th century family, while The Project in the future never even got started because he prevented the inventor’s parents from ever meeting. But vague memories linger in some of the Project member’s minds, and Morley can’t stay put. —Michael Main
They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Paycheck


Unlike Philip K. Dick’s story of the same name, the film has only viewing the future rather than physical time travel such as the story’s time scoop’s retrieval capability. Also, the film omits Dick’s dystopian police state and his theme of fate via what appears (in the story) to be a single static timeline. On the other side of the coin, the filmmakers made an epic car chase scene, took Jenning’s female sidekick off the sidelines, and attempted to massively raise the stakes via some questionable choices by Jennings. —Michael Main
Shorty: Look, if we know anything, we know that time travel's not possible. Einstein proved that. Right?
Michael: Time travel, yes. But Einstein was very clear that he believed time viewing, theoretically, could be accomplished.
A man runs toward us from out of an exploding jigsaw puzzle of a train tunnel.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Men in Black 3


When Boris the Animal escapes from lunar prison and returns to 1969 to kill Agent K and expose Earth to attack, Agent J must follow to save Agent K and all of Earth!

Tim and I saw this on Fathers Day Eve in 2012. —Michael Main
This is now my new favorite moment in human history.
Will Smith (as Agent J) sits on a motor inside a giant wheel, zipping down a
                highway in a tunnel.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • 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
TV Season

The Flash, Season 1

  • written and directed by multiple people
  • (The CW, USA, 7 October 2014) to 19 May 2015)

Time travel is implied right from the first episode of the CW’s rendition of The Flash where a newspaper from the future is seen in the closing scene. The rest of the first season builds a fine time-travel arc that includes a nefarious time traveler from the far future, a classic grandfather paradox with a twist (sadly not examined), a do-over day for the Flash (which Harrison Wells calls “temporal reversion”), and a final episode that sees the Flash travel back to his childhood (as well as a hint that Rip Hunter himself will soon appear on the CW scene). —Michael Main
Wells: Yes, it’s possible, but problematic. Assuming you could create the conditions necessary to take that journey, that journey would then be fraught with potential pitfalls: the Novikov Principle of Self-Consistency, for example.

Joe: Wait—the what, now?

Barry: If you travel back in time to change something, then you end up being the causal factor of that event.

Cisco: Like . . . Terminator.

Joe: Ah!

Wells: Or is time plastic? Is it mutable, whereby any changes in the continuum could create an alternate timeline?

Cisco: Back to the Future.

Joe: Ah, saw that one, too.
The Flash, in his red costume, zig-zags through an empty city street, leaving a
                yellow electric bolt behind him.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Flash, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • (The CW, USA, 6 October 2015) to 24 May 2016)

After Barry aborts his mission to the past in Season 1 in order to prevent his own present from being erased, he finds that his travel has caused even bigger problems! Yep, a rift has been a-opened to a parallel world with an alternate Flash and an evil speedster and—it would seem—more time travelin’ and another attempt to save his mom and dad! —Michael Main
No, that’s not how it works. In our timeline, Barry’s mother’s already dead, and her death is a fixed point. And nothing can change that.
Surounded by yellow lightning, Grant Gustin (as the Flash) races towards us in
                his red costume with a new white logo on his chest.
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

Arthur (s20e01a)

Buster’s Second Chance


According to Brain, the past cannot be changed, but Buster still tries to do so when he’s thrown back to preschool by a time vortex. —Manachu
Buster: What’s the square root of 49? [Buster thinks] I don’t know. I don’t know! . . . I’m baaaaack!
An animated white rabbit wearing rectangular red glasses looks shocked to be
                falling into a green-and-white vortex.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Shakesville


Fifty future versions of a man show up in his apartment (49 of whom are corrupted) to warn him of an impending fateful decision that he must make correctly. —Michael Main
It’s not anything fatal. You know it can’t be anything fatal, because if it was, then there would be no future self who could be sent back to warn you.
Three identical men sleep in what must be a very crowded bed.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

내가 이 나라의 평강공주다

  • Mai onri leobeusong
  • My only lovesong
  • My Only Love Song
  • by 김수진, directed by 민두식
  • (Netflix, 9 June 2017)

Diva actress Song Soo-jung drives off in a huff in her manager’s VW van—Boing Boing—only to find herself in the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo where she meets characters from her historical TV show including the real Princess Pyeonggang and the roguish hero On-Dal. —Michael Main
A cheerful Gong Seung-yeon (as Soo-jung) drives a cute white van while a
                frightened Lee Jong-hyun (as On Dal) hangs on beside her.
  • Romance
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

In Another Time


Hanna Ginsberg—a young Jewish violinist in Germany during the rise of Hitler—awakens in a field in 1946 with no memory of the past decade. —Michael Main
“Do you have a time machine,” he’d asked his father. It was hard to fathom, unbelievable even as he’d said it, but the idea fascinated him with little-boy wonder.
In a diagonally split photo a man on one side holds the hand of a woman on the
                other while a World War 2 plane flies overhead.
  • Romance
  • Music and Musicals
  • War
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

See You Yesterday


Up in the ITTDB Citadel, our first attraction is naturally to the time travel aspects of any movie, even when the result is an incomprehensible time wreck resulting from a pair of teenage geniuses. That’s what’s on the surface here, but it also seems to be a metaphor for the even bigger train wreck of the racist society in the 21st-century United States. —Michael Main
You’re missing the big picture here: If time travel were possible, it would be the greatest ethical and philosophical conundrum of the modern age.
Teens Eden Duncan-Smith (as C. J. Walker with glowing glasses) and Dante
                Crichlow (as Sebastian Thomas) run in front of a clockface.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Remington Mansion 2

The Tinseltown Murderer


Josie Matthews and her husband, David Remington, travel to 1936 Los Angeles after discovering that her prior trip to 1929 has changed history—specifically by prolonging World War II. They meet up with friends from 1929 and attempt to find and fix the problem. While doing so, they encounter communists, Nazis, the Los Angeles chapter of the Hitler Youth, movie studio executives, and several murders. —Tandy Ringoringo
“What? You live almost a hundred years in the future and you’ve never seen microfilm before?” asked Grant, who shook his head. “Women.”

“We have computer code which can store a warehouse of microfilm in a space the size of a pinhead.”

“How the hell do you do that?”

“With a series of zeros and ones.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever.”

“Yeah, I don’t really understand it myself.”
No image currently available.
  • Romance
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Your Cat


You travel back in time to save your childhood cat in exactly the way that you know she was saved. —Michael Main
You have traveled thirty years back in time to save your cat.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Captain Nova


Captain Nova Kester travels back from a devastated future to warn an energy mogel about the impending climate cataclysm, but only young Nas takes her seriously. That happens when time travel causes you to revert to 12 years old. —Michael Main
Luister, jongedame: De mensen denken al eeuwen dat ze leven in het einde der tijden. Het zou handig ziln als je jezelf ietsje minderbelangrijk maakt.
translate Listen, young lady: People have thought for centuries that the end of time is drawing near. It would help everyone if you showed just a little less . . . self-importance.
Kika van de Vijver (as young Nova Kester) and three costars pose in front of a
                merged background of 2025 and the future.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Vacation in Sunny Future


The narrator takes a vacation to the future, since going to the past is sensibly banned. —Michael Main
Like all those stories where the world goes to hell because of some tiny stupid thing I might do back then.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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

Pera Palas’ta Gece Yarısı, Season 1

  • Midnight at Pera Palace
  • Midnight at the Pera Palace
  • by Elif Usman, directed by Emre Şahin and Nisan Dağ
  • (Netflix, worldwide, 3 March 2022) [8 episodes]

While researching an article about the 130th anniversary of Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel, dedicated journalist Esra Koksuz finds herself at the hotel back in 1919, investigating the murder of her own doppelgänger and racing to stop the murder of Turkey’s founder. —Michael Main
Mustafa Kemal 16 Mayıs günü o gemiye sağ salim binemezse Kurtsuluşı Savaşı başlamayacak. Cumhuriyet kurulmayacak. Türkiye diye bir ülke olmayacak.
translate If Mustafa Kamal doesn’t board that ship on May the 16th, the War of Independence won’t begin, the Republic won’t be founded, and Turkey will never come to be!
No image currently available.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

This Time Tomorrow


After turning forty in a snit because of her career decisions, her unexciting boyfriend, and her dying father, Alice Stern wakes up on her 16th birthday in her teen body. —Michael Main
“I know it’s your birthday,” Leonard said. “You’ve made me watch Sixteen Candles enough times to ensure that I wouldn’t let this one slide.”
A light brown scribble winds its way around a lighter brown cover of Straub’s
                novel, This Time Tomorrow.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Hero of Your Own Story


A bad egg creates chaos by leaving time portals open between various times in various parts of the multiverse. —Michael Main
Your time portals are not big enough for any of the really exciting monsters.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Art of Navigating an Affair in a Time Rift


Audra Cobb is pulled through time rifts from one parallel universe to another with a bit of time travel thrown in. I think the parallel universes are a literary mechanism to explore daydreaming about what might have been while under the spell of limerence. —Michael Main
The egg yolk path glistens in my periphery and my fingertips tingle. Once the rift closes, we go back. Back to before the rift ruptured. Back to when Joseph first moved in and before we . . .
Illustration of a young woman in a powered bodysuit sitting on a balcony
                overlooking a futuristic city.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (s01e10)

A Quality of Mercy


A despondent Captain Pike considers warning two future cadets about the accident that will kill them and maim Pike himself, but before he can write to them, his older self shows up to transport young Pike to the future that the warnings will create. —Michael Main
Young Pike: How am I supposed to believe . . . ?
Old Pike: . . . that I’m really you?
Young Pike: You ever gonna let me get a word in edgewise?
Old Pike: I knew you were gonna say that. Does that help?
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (s02e03)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow


A mysterious, bloody man appears and warns La’an of an attack in the past, after which she races to the bridge, only to find herself in an alternate timeline with a young James T. Kirk at the helm.

A trip to the past seeems in order. —Michael Main
There’s going to be an attack. It’s going to change the timeline. We have to stop it.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Greatest Hits

  • written and directed by Ned Benson
  • (South by Southwest Film Festival, 14 March 2024)

No image currently available.
  • Silver Medal Eloi
  • Romance
  • Music and Musicals
  • Definite Time Travel