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The Internet Time Travel Database

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El AnacronĂłpete

English release: The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey Literal: He who flies backwards in time

by Enrique Gaspar
Mad scientist Don Sindulfo and his best friend Benjamin take off in Sindulfo’s flying time machine along with Sindulfo’s niece, her maid, a troop of Spanish soldiers, and a bordelloful of French strumpets for madcap adventures at the 1860 Battle of Téouan, Queen Isabella’s Spain, nondescript locales in the eleventh and seventh centuries, 3rd-century China, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and a biblical time shortly after the flood.

After taking a year of Spanish at the University of Colorado, I undertook a three-year project of translating Gaspar’s novel to English, which is available in a pdf file for your reading pleasure. Even with the unpleasant twist at the end, it was still a fine, farcical romp through history.

— Michael Main
—Poco á poco—argumentaba un sensato.—Si el Anacronópete conduce á deshacer lo hecho, á mi me pasrece que debemos felicitarnos porque eso no permite reparar nuestras faltas.

—Tiene usted razón—clamaba empotrado en un testero del coche un marido cansado de su mujer.—En cuanto se abra la línea al público, tomo yo un billete para la vispera de mi boda.

“One step at a time,” argued a sensible voice. “If el Anacronópete aims to undo history, it seems to me that we must be congratulated as it allows us to amend our failures.”

“Quite right,” called a married man jammed into the front of the bus, thinking of his tiresome wife. “As soon as the ticket office opens to the public, I’m booking passage to the eve of my wedding.”

English
[ex=bare]El AnacronĂłpete | He who flies backwards in time[/ex] by Enrique Gaspar, in Novelas [Stories] (Daniel Cortezo, 1887).

The Worm Ouroboros

by E. R. Eddison
For the most part, the story is a high fantasy in which three chiefs of Demonland—Lord Juss, Spitfire, and Brandoch Daha—embark on a heroic quest to rescue the fourth lord from his imprisonment in the mountains of Impland. However, at the end, Queen Sophonisba undertakes a resolution to the final problem that could well involve time travel.
— Michael Main
Lord, it is an Ambassador from Witchland and his train. He craveth present audience."
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (Jonathan Cape, 1922).

The Twonky

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
A man, dazed from running into a temporal snag, appears in a radio factory, whereupon (before returning to his own time) he makes a radio that’s actually a Twonky, which promptly gets shipped to a Mr. Kerry Westerfield, who is initially quite confounded and amazed at everything it does.

Because of the story’s opening, I’m convinced the Twonky is from the future. The “temporal snag” that brought it to 1942 feels like an unexpected time rift to me, although the route back to the future is an intentional journey via an unexplained method.

— Michael Main
“Great Snell!” he gasped. “So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!”
“The Twonky” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942.

Rescue Party

by Arthur C. Clarke
Only a smidgen of unimportant time phenomena in the first paragraph of this ominous first contact story.
— Michael Main
But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning.
“Rescue Party” by Arthur C. Clarke, Astounding Science Fiction, May 1946.

Mickey Mouse, 22 October 1951 to 22 January 1952

Uncle Wombat’s Tock-Tock Time Machine

by Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson
Mickey Mouse, 22 October 1951 to 22 January 1952, “Uncle Wombat’s Tock-Tock Time Machine” by Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson, 22 October 1951 to 22 January 1952 [newspaper syndication].

Tales of Tomorrow (s01e37)

All the Time in the World

by unknown writers and Arthur C. Clarke, directed by Don Medford
The skilled robber is now Henry Judson and his target is now the New York Metropolitan Museum, but the plot essentials remain largely the same as in Clarke’s earlier story: Use the time traveler’s foolproof plan to rob the museum.
— Michael Main
Within this five-foot circle, time is speeded up to an almost unbelievable pace. But the world outside the circle remains unchanged.
“All the Time in the World” by unknown writers and Arthur C. Clarke, directed by Don Medford (ABC-TV, USA,13 June 1952).

All the Time in the World

by Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Ashton is offered a huge amount of money to carry out a foolproof plan of robbing the British Museum of its most valuable holdings.
— Michael Main
Your time scale has been altered. A minute in the outer world would be a year in this room.
“All the Time in the World” by Arthur C. Clarke, Startling Stories, July 1952.

Journey into Mystery #2

Don’t Look!

by an unknown writer and Jay Scott Pike
Yep, the mirror that Harold Whitney got from an odd old man really does let you see what people will look like in the future—a situation that we’d normally mark as a mere time phenomenon and tag as a simple kind of chronoscope. But the story also has a twist at the end that makes me wonder whether the old man was also a time traveler.
— Michael Main
I have here a strange invention, a mirror that will let you see how anyone will look at anytime in the future.
“Don’t Look!” by an unknown writer and Jay Scott Pike, in Journey into Mystery #2 (Atlas Comics, August 1952).

Journey into Mystery #2

The Pact

by an unknown writer 
Frances Conrad learns the dark truth about an unholy pact made by his ancestor from the horse’s mouth itself.
— Michael Main
The year is 1693, the month is June, and the day is the fifteenth. Come and watch with me.
“The Pact” by an unknown writer , in Journey into Mystery #2 (Atlas Comics, August 1952).

Journey into Mystery #3

Hands Off!

by an unknown writer and Bill Benulis
Eugene Varo makes a dark deal with a visitor from the past who wants Varo’s perfectly crafted artificial hands. This is the first story in Journey into Mystery to have definite time travel.
— Michael Main
I have come out of the dim past to bargain for those hands . . . and take them back with me . . . they are too beautiful for this age.
“Hands Off!” by an unknown writer and Bill Benulis, in Journey into Mystery #3 (Atlas Comics, October 1952).

Journey into Mystery #4

The Bewitched Bike!

by an unknown writer and Tony DiPreta
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.
“The Bewitched Bike!” by an unknown writer and Tony DiPreta, in Journey into Mystery #4 (Atlas Comics, December 1952).

Journey into Mystery #6

The Man Who Went Back

by Carl Wessler and Sam Kweskin
A man on death row murders his guards and escapes, getting on an odd bus where everyone is rapidly aging. And when he demands to be taken back, that’s when the real fun begins.
— Michael Main
You’ve got to stop the bus . . . turn around or we’ll all soon be dead of old age!
“The Man Who Went Back” by Carl Wessler and Sam Kweskin, in Journey into Mystery #6 (Atlas Comics, March 1953).

a Haertel Complex story

Common Time

by James Blish
Spaceman Garrard is the third pilot to attempt the trip to the binary star system of Alpha Centauri using the FTL drive invented by Dolph Haertel (the next Einstein!) The Haertel Complex stories provide little in the way of actual time travel, but this one does have minor relativistic time dilation and more significant differing time rates.
— Michael Main
Figuring backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he wanted: one second in ship time was two hours in Garrard time.
“Common Time” by James Blish, in Shadow of Tomorrow, edited by Frederik Pohl (Permabooks, July 1953).

Journey into Mystery #14

The Man Who Owned a World

by an unknown writer, Vic Carrabotta, and Jack Abel
Evil stepfather George intercepts a build-a-world kit from the future.
— Michael Main
Somewhere in the future, a postal error had been made and a package destined for a yet as unborn grandson had been lost in time and delivered to this house!
“The Man Who Owned a World” by an unknown writer, Vic Carrabotta, and Jack Abel, in Journey into Mystery #14 (Atlas Comics, February 1954).

Journey into Mystery #18

The Man Who Went Back!

by Carl Wessler and Pete Tumlinson
When Jeff Martin floats downstream, he literally floats back in time. Now, if only those two pesky men would quit following him,
— Michael Main
It looks like there was something about that swim in the river that threw me back ten years!
“The Man Who Went Back!” by Carl Wessler and Pete Tumlinson, in Journey into Mystery #18 (Atlas Comics, October 1954).

Journey into Mystery #20

The Messenger!

by Paul S. Newman and Jack Abel
Jeff Calder is a true prankster, but his new messenger, Dal J. Keefe, seems to take every prank without missing a beat.
— Michael Main
Messenger, you’re just in time! Recieved a priority order from the top . . . scrounge up a gallow of yellow paint with black stripes.
“The Messenger!” by Paul S. Newman and Jack Abel, in Journey into Mystery #20 (Atlas Comics, December 1954).

Journey into Mystery #28

They Wouldn’t Believe Him!

by unknown writers and Pete Tumlinson
To escape a forced marriage, a woman in the future tries to disappear into the pase, but her fiance tracks her down.
— Michael Main
I’ll marry you, Everest! But first may I go on a short time-vacation?
“They Wouldn’t Believe Him!” by unknown writers and Pete Tumlinson, in Journey into Mystery #28 (Atlas Comics, November1955).

Journey into Mystery #39

I Lived Four Times!

by Carl Wessler, Bob Forgione, and Jack Abel
Stefan Orjanski, a Hungarian soldier, is taken by his love to a sorcerer who can help him desert the army, but the help requires first living through part of the lives of four others.
— Michael Main
I felt so strange . . . as if I were not alone! As if I were not myself!
“I Lived Four Times!” by Carl Wessler, Bob Forgione, and Jack Abel, in Journey into Mystery #39 (Atlas Comics, October 1956).

Journey into Mystery #41

He Came from Nowhere

by an unknown writer and Gray Morrow
As a government scientist makes a breakthrough discovery, he’s confronted out of nowhere by a time traveling kidnapper from a future government.
— Michael Main
Your work, this house, everything must be destroyed!
“He Came from Nowhere” by an unknown writer and Gray Morrow, in Journey into Mystery #41 (Atlas Comics, December 1956).

Aviary Hall 3

Charlotte Sometimes

by Penelope Farmer
Two young, boarding-school students—Charlotte in 1963 and Clare in 1918—swap minds through time every night, until one day the bed that’s causing all this magic gets moved to the hospital ward, and they are stuck in each other’s times.
— Michael Main
“But I’m not Clare,” Charlotte began to say hopelessly, then stopped herself, explanation being impossible, especially since this girl seemed to think so incredibly that she was Clare.
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer (Chatto and Windus, September 1969).

Time Patrol 3

Gibraltar Falls

by Poul Anderson
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.
“Gibraltar Falls” by Poul Anderson, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1975.

Professor Noah’s Spaceship

by Brian Wildsmith
Professor Noah rescues all the animals from a dying planet, and during their journey of 40 days and 40 nights they plan to travel through a time-zone to take them hundreds of years into the future. At one point, the elephant must take a spacewalk to fix the time-zone guideance fin, which suggests that the time-zone is some sort of a wormhole or other time portal in space rather than mere reletavistic time dilation—and indeed there is actual time travel!
— Michael Main
He put on a special space-suit, went out through the air-lock, and pulled the fin into shape.
Professor Noah’s Spaceship by Brian Wildsmith (Oxford University Press, December 1980).

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e06)

Where No One Has Gone Before

by Diane Duane and Michael Reaves
Yes, we see minor time phenomena when Picard and other members of the crew vividly experience moments and beings from their pasts, possibly created by their thoughts, but the real import of the episode is the introduction of The Traveler, who among other things is able to alter spacetime and is always on the lookout for promising individuals such as Wesley Crusher.
— Michael Main
The Traveler to Picard about Wesley: In such musical geniuses I saw in one of your ship’s libraries—one called Mozart, who as a small child wrote astonishing symphonies, a genius who made music not only to be heard, but seen and felt beyond the understanding, the ability of others. Wesley is such a person, not with music, but with the equally lovely intricacies of time, energy, propulsion, and the instruments of this vessel, which allow all that to be played . . .
Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e06), “Where No One Has Gone Before” by Diane Duane and Michael Reaves (Paramount Domestic Television, USA, 24 October 1987) [syndicated].

Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e01-02)

Encounter at Farpoint

by D. C. Fontana
As the new captain of the Enterprise and other new members of his crew become acquainted with their galaxy class starship and its capabilities, they travel to a curious city on Deneb IV and also encounter a powerful being from the Q who, among other things, exhibits a possible power over time itself.
— Michael Main
Troi: Captain, sir, this is not an illusion of a dream.
Picard: But these courts belong in the past.
Troi:I don’t understand either, but this is real.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (s01e01-02), “Encounter at Farpoint” by D. C. Fontana (Paramount Domestic Television, USA, 28 September 1987) [syndicated].

Oxford Historians 1

Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis
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.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Bantam Spectra, July 1992).

Oxford Historians 2

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last

by Connie Willis
To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis (Easton Press, 1998).

A Time Odyssey 1

Time’s Eye

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
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.
Time’s Eye by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, January 2004).

A Time Odyssey 2

Sunstorm

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, March 2005).

A Time Odyssey 3

Firstborn

by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Firstborn by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Del Rey, January 2008).

Paradox

by Lizzie Mickery and Mark Greig, directed by Simon Cellan Jones and Omar Madha
D.I. Rebecca Flint quickly realizes that the mysterious photos downloading themselves to Dr. Christian King’s lab must be depicting future crimes and other calamities that only Rebecca and her team can stop.
— Michael Main
Gada: Think of the implications if we do stop something . . . mess with things that we don’t understand.
Flint: You wouldn’t say that if we’d stopped the tanker.
Gada: Perhaps the tanker was meant to crash. It wasn’t our place to . . .
Flint: . . . Save lives?
Paradox by Lizzie Mickery and Mark Greig, directed by Simon Cellan Jones and Omar Madha (BBC One, 24 November to 22 December 2009).

Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Time-Travel Trouble!

by Billy Wrecks
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.
Time-Travel Trouble! by Billy Wrecks (Random House Children’s Books, July 2014).

Effect and Cause

by Grove Koger
Over dinner, a group of professional men and women called the Club discuss a recent happening at a house that’s been haunted since 1928.
— Michael Main
The house Parry lived in had been built in 1928, right before the Depression hit, and the odd thing was that it apparently was haunted from the very beginning. From day one.
“Effect and Cause” by Grove Koger, Bewildering Stories, 15 September 2014.

Star Trek

The Many and the Few

by Wendy Welcott
Spock travels back and forth through time to save the Federation.
— Michael Main
Peering into the murky abyss, Spock saw something he had never seen before: a window, a portal to that other world, not a vision, not a light, but a feeling, a feeling he didn’t understand—wonderment.
The Many and the Few by Wendy Welcott, submission to Star Trek’s To Boldly Go Script Competition, 16 February 2016.

The Shadows of Alexandrium

by David Gerrold
Up in the Citadel, we polled eight Librarians on whether this story should be included in the database. The results? Nobody thought it should be excluded, nobody thought it should be included, and eleven were certain it wasn’t a story. Probably. So with that mandate along with the fact that at one point in the narrative neither space nor time exist and at another point outside the narrative David Gerrold annouced this was an homage to Douglas Adams and Doctor Who, we hereby present the official indexing of “The Shadows of Alexandrium.”
— Michael Main
If we had the time—well, actually, we do, because there isn’t any time here, just like there isn’t any space, except what we’ve been creating by being here, all this staring around—that’s making nothing into something.
“The Shadows of Alexandrium” by David Gerrold, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2020.

Fusco Brothers, 7 August 2022

Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen

by J. C. Duffy
You’re listening to the soothing sounds of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians . . .
Fusco Brothers, “Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen” by J. C. Duffy, 7 August 2022.

Frank & Ernest

Microwaves

by Tom Thaves
. . . and this one is our top of the line
“Microwaves” by Tom Thaves, from Frank & Ernest (syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association, 3 October 2023).
as of 4:46 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
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