Stone Age (3.4 Ma to 3000 BC: Paleo/Epipaleo/Meso/Neo/Chalcolithic)

Tag Area: Era
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
Short Story

The Tooth


Old Dr. Radley knows that Lois Lane loves their dentist, Bob Garney, so he hatches a plan that will throw the potential loverbirds together in prehistoric times, hoping to jolt Bob into romantic action. Oh—and something about breaking the spell of Radley’s evil, abscessed tooth seems to be behind it all.  —Michael Main
That evening, as he and Lois Lane stepped into the waiting room, Garney came out of his office and looked in.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable 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
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
Comic Book

The Monster Awakes


Av aviator in China during World War II unintentionally awakens a 100-foot tall, sadistic giant named Garaz from a centuries-long sleep. —Michael Main
Thank you for awakening me and freeing me from my prison! Wait! I will not harm you! You are my friend! You will come with me!
No image currently available.
  • Horror
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Astonishing #23

Doom of Ages


Three arctic explorers are thankful for the life-saving meat they’ve stumbled across in a frozen mammoth, until they start to wonder what killed the proboscidea. —Michael Main
“I wonder what killed it?” Hafton wondered curiously, cutting swiftly through the thick masses of mastodon meat.
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #8

Time Reversal


A blackmailer demonstrates his ability to send an entire city back to prehistoric times. —Michael Main
We received a note telling us that unless we paid the sum of three million dollars this great city would be taken back to prehistoric days.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Movie Cartoon

Casper the Friendly Ghost Theatrical #34

Red White and Boo


Every Casper cartoon had the same plot, including at least one (“Red, White and Boo”) from 1955 where Casper wonders whether people in the past will also be scared of him, so he uses a time machine to visit a caveman, Robert Fulton, Paul Revere, General Washington, and a Revolutionary War battle. —Michael Main
Gee, maybe people in the past won’t be scared of me.
Casper, the Friendly Ghost, startles a horse in front of Paul Revere
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Time Patrol 2

Delenda Est


Curse those rogue time travelers! Who do they think they are? And what gives them the right to make Hannibal victorious in that classic Punic conflict? And what can Patrolman Manse Everard and his Venusian partner Van Sarawak do in an altered 20th-century world to make it right again? —Michael Main
Events are the result of a complex. There are no single causes. That’s why it’s so hard to change history. If I went back to, say, the Middle Ages, and shot one of FDR’s Dutch forebears, he’ll still be born in the late nineteenth century—because he and his genes resulted fom the entire world of his ancestors, and there’d have been compensation. But evey so often, a really key event does occur. Some one happening is a nexus of so many world lines that its outcome is decisive for the whole future.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #6

Caveman


Herman Pringle despairs of ever having the respect of his wife Clara, so much so that he daydreams of living the life of of a caveman where every man’s wife was his servant. —Michael Main
But she’d never push me around if we lived back in the time of the cavemen! No, siree! I’d be boss.
In the large first panel, a man in a business suit stands in front of a larger
                version of himself as a caveman.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Lem’s Star Diaries

Czarna komnata profesora Tarantogi

  • Professor Tarantoga's black room
  • by Stanisław Lem
  • in Noc księżycowa (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1963) [Published as a TV script (“widowisko telewizyjne”) the year before the 1964 Polish TV broadcast.]

Professor Tarantoga saves human civilization! After using his chronopad to investigate the leading scientists and artists in history, Tarantoga concludes that without exception they are lazy drunkards. So naturally, he sends smart young people into various eras to invent differential calculus, to paint the Mona Lisa, etc.—all while a pair of police inspectors have their eye on him. —based on Wikipedia
A pencil sketch of an odd bird standing on the head of a dog-like robot
                with a full moon in the sky.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Star Trek (s03e23)

All Our Yesterdays


The three principal Trekkers find themselves on a planet where everyone is being evacuated to the past to escape an impending supernova. —Michael Main
Spock! You’re reverting into your ancestors, five thousand years before you were born!
In an icy cave, Leonard Nimoy (as Spock) places his hands on Mariette Harley
                (as Zarabeth) for a Vulcan mind meld.
  • Science Fiction
  • 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
Feature Film

Bill & Ted I

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure


The Two Great Ones, Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan, are the subjects of time-traveler Rufus’s mission, but instead they end up using his machine to write a history report to save their band, Wyld Stallyns. —Michael Main
Most excellent!
Alex Winter (A K A Bill) and Keanu Reeves (A K A Ted) sit on top of a phone
                booth crammed with Napoleon and other historical figures in orbit around Earth.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Barbarians


In an ancient world of swords, sorcery, loin cloths, and bejeweled bikinis, an evil thief kills King Deran’s queen before escaping to modern-day Los Angeles. Since the thief also took a magic amulet with him, a loinclothless wizardess sends Deran after him to retrieve the amulet and avenge the queen’s brutal death. —Michael Main
The man you seek is in this world no longer. You must travel to another time to find him.
Scantily dressed barbarians Deron McBee (as Doran) and Jonne Ayers (as Lystra)
                stand in front of a forest with a modern city showing in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Early Chapter Book

The Magic Tree House 7

Sunset of the Sabertooth


The tree house takes Jack and Annie back to the stone age where they run into Cro-Magnon man, a cave bea, a sabertooth tiger, a mammoth, a woolly rhino, and other prehistoric beasties before returning home with the third magic object to rescue Morgan. —Michael Main
She stroked the mammoth’s giant ear. “Bye, Lulu. Thank you,” she said.
From atop a small cliff, a sabertooth tiger roars down at young Jack and
                Annie.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants [s1:e14A]

SB-129


The first of SpongeBob’s family to foray into time was Squidward, whose accidental cryofreeze took him two millennia into the future. Of course, even primitive sponges know that that was not actual time travel, but future-SpongeTrons point the six-limbed cephalopod to a time machine that took him on two actual time travel trips before returning him to his own time. No, we don’t know whether one of the future SpongeTrons is SB-129, but we do note that the production code for this episode was 2515-129. —Inmate Jan
Well, why didn’t ya just ask? The time machine is down the hall and to the left.
Squidward, the green anthropomorphized squid, looks in shock at a throw switch
                with labels for Future and Past.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • 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
Cartoon

SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67

Time Machine

  • [writer and director unknown]
  • (SpongeBob SquarePants Mini 67, Nickelodean (USA, 14 June 2011)

In the first of three time travel mini-episodes—each around one minute long—SpongeBob and Patrick put their hot tub time machine through the works, hoping to find Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy in their prime. —Michael Main
Will they get it right? Will SpongeBob and Patrick get to see their superheroes in their super-prime?
Cartoon character Sponge-Bob and his starfish pal Patrick sit in a time travel
                tub on the sea floor.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

The Treehouse #5

The 65-Storey Treehouse

  • by Andy Griffiths (story) and Terry Denton (art)
  • (Macmillan Australia, August 2015)

Each installment of Andy and Terry’s Treehouse series sees the house grow upward, but what if the house never had a proper building permit? No problem, if you’ve got a time machine in a wheelie trash bin! Caution: Important detours along the way may be necessary to save antkind and The Time Machine. —Michael Main
“Don’t you see?” says Terry. “We’ll just travel back in time and get a permit for the treehouse.”
A Giant cartoon tree with a spiral staircase winding around it and dozens of
                entrances and crazy happenings.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • 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
Picture Book

Arthur Travels Back in Time


Arthur the fearless dog travels to different times in a large blue cannister. The story is written in verse that ignores meter and uses rhymes that don’t quite work. —Ruthie Mariner
With sights on events his eyes have never seen, Arthur is ready for his new time machine.
A dog wearing clothes and a red cape leaps onto a cannister-shaped time
                machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Best. Scientist. EVER.


You head out on a quick, rollicking ride back through time, with an unknown pursuer and an ambiguous conclusion. —Tandy Ringoringo
You come to the conclusion that you can correct everything if you stop yourself before you steal the time machine.
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
Short Story

The Actor


Lomua, a prehistoric hunter, is bitten by a poisonous snake and must make a quick decision on how to best protect the rest of the tribe from a stampede of wildebeests. What in the world does that have to do with an actor in the far future? —Michael Main
Lomua opened his eyes in an immaculate room with pastel walls and warm lights, feeling fully refreshed.
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Cartoon

The Creature Cases, s02e01

The Missing Mammoth: A Holiday Mystery


An intense story about Sam, Kit, and R.O.N. going back in time to the ice age with wooly mammoths and how they got back to C.L.A.D.E.
—Manachu
You’re right. We’ve got to help them, even if we are stuck in the Ice Age.
Sam and Kit try to hang on the a rampaging wooly mammoth.
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Audience: Preschoolers
  • 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