Weird Fiction

Tag Area: Genre
Short Story

An Inhabitant of Carcosa

  • by Ambrose Bierce
  • in the San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser, 25 December 1886

The ghost of a man from the ancient, fictional city of Carcosa seems destined to wander the city’s ruins, meeting wildlife and perhaps one even older ghost. Although we detected no definitive time phenomena, the time frame of the story is nebulous and intriguing, and the city’s mythos provided a fertile ground for 20th-century writers including Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, and George R. R. Martin. —Michael Main
In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.
An impressionistic painting of the ruins of the ancient, fictional city of
                Carcosa with a small gathering of people in the foreground.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Novel

The House on the Borderland


Supernatural-story pioneer William Hope Hodgson was an inspiration for Lovecraft and later generations of writers. This novel of an Irish house that lay at the intersection of monstrous other dimensions seems to include time travel when the narrator witnesses and returns from a future the Earth is falling into the Sun while a second green star visits our solar system. —Michael Main
Years appeared to pass, slowly. The earth had almost reached the center of the sun’s disk. The light from the Green Sun—as now it must be called—shone through the interstices, that gapped the mouldered walls of the old house, giving them the appearance of being wrapped in green flames. The Swine-creatures still crawled about the walls.
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  • Horror
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Not in Our Stars


After a meteor strike and some scientific mumbo-jumbo, Felix Menzies wakes up in a jail cell on the day before his execution for murdering the man he wrongly thought was his wife’s lover—an act he doesn’t remember—, and then he starts waking up on each previous morning, whereupon he begins to think he can cheat Destiny by not murdering the guy in the first place. —Michael Main
If he did meet Savile, he was prepared to shake hands with him in the old way, and to realize what a neurotic fool he had been: also that Destiny had made an idiot of itself with the careless blundering born of the knowledge that nobody would ever know, nobody, that is, except himself; and, of course, Destiny safely relied on the assumption that nobody would believe him.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Playlet

The Jest of Hahalaba


Against the advice of his alchemist, Sir Arthur calls up the Spirit of Laughter on New Year’s Eve and asks to see the coming year’s issues of the Times. —Michael Main
Sir Arthur Strangways: Only a trifle. I wish to see a file of the Times.
Hahalaba:For what year?
19th-century, hand-drawn map showing Dunsany Castle and its surrounds.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Doubled and Redoubled


Jimmy Childers was certain of two things: that last night he’d set the alarm to silent (even though it went off this morning) and that yesterday, June 14th, was the perfect day, the likes of which could certainly never be repeated again.

This is the earliest sf story that I’ve seen with a time loop, although there was the earlier 1939 episode of The Shadow.
Jimmy had the queer feeling, which comes over one at times, he was reliving something that had already happened.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Blind Alley


Business tycoon Jack Feathersmith longs for the simple, good old days of his youth in Cliffordsville.
Nothing was further from Mr. Feathersmith’s mind than dealings with streamlined, mid-twentieth-century witches or dickerings with the Devil. But something had to be done. The world was fast going to the bowwows, and he suffered from an overwhelming nostalgia for the days of his youth. His thoughts contantly turned to Cliffordsville and the good old days when men were men and God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

Private Eye


A jilted man plans murderous revenge while trying to avoid any behavior that would reveal his plans to the government’s all-seeing technology that can reconstruct the past from electromagnetic and sound waves. —Michael Main
It was sensitive enough to pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter, descramble and screen them, and reproduce the image of what had happened.
Three blue eyes, a skull, and a surgical knife float on a tomatoe-colored
                background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

The Man Who Looked at Death


A local guide gives a copy of next month’s newspaper to Oren Van Schoon, a cruel and vicious man who will stop at nothing to learn the secrets of India’s fakirs. —Michael Main
This is worth more than all the rope tricks in India! With the information, you can bet on races, plunge into stocks . . . you will know the future!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #2

Don’t Look!


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.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Short Story

Journey into Mystery #2

The Pact


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.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #3

Hands Off!


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.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #4

The Bewitched Bike!


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.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #6

The Man Who Went Back


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!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
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
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #13

What Harry Saw


If you (or Harry, of course) should happen to see your wife with another man in your chronoscope, be careful about how you proceed. —Michael Main
I turned on the futurescope and saw her kissing Edmund, a man I work with!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #14

The Man Who Owned a World


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!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #16

The Question!


Computer genius and jealous husband Paul Jessup builds a mechanical brain that can answer any question about the future.  —Michael Main
The brain can foretell events for approximately 24 hours in the future!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #18

The Man Who Went Back!


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!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #20

The Messenger!


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.
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #21

The Missing Men


After sailing around the world, the Queen of the Sea returns to port without a sole aboard, and only private investigator Dolan knows why. —Michael Main
It’s incredible! How in the world could all those people disappear in mid-ocean?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #27

The Man Who Stopped Time!


After George Applby’s proposal is rejected by his fiancée, George stumbles across a stopwatch that freezes time for other people in the vicinity, so naturally he hatches a scheme to use the watch to break up Nancy and her new boyfriend. —Michael Main
I don’t want some other girl! I want Nancy! If only I could stop time!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #28

They Wouldn’t Believe Him!


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?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #2

Madam Futura


Madam Futura has an infallible knack for seeing the future—a knack that businessman Ben Gainer plans to exploit, even though he figures her for a fake. —Michael Main
That Madam Futura knows everything! She can see the past, the present, and the future!
In the first two panels, a mystical woman in a green turban looks over a
                crystal ball and reads the future of two people.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
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

Adventure into Mystery #2

The Betrayer!


Raymond Coates gets his wish of going back to profit from the War Between the States rather than joining the union army fight, but the war profiteering doesn’t work out quite the way he wanted. —Michael Main
If I could live the past thrity years over I’d not make the same mistakes!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #37

The Deep Freeze


Fresh off a heist of $150,000, three crooks freeze themselves for 150 years to escape the law. —Michael Main
We were in suspended animation for two hundred years!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #5

The Man Who Changed Times


A prisoner, Vincent Rand, is offered a way out of his ten-year sentence. —Michael Main
Wouldn’t you prefer being free, even five hundred years in the past, to serving out a ten year sentence in this prison?
In three panels, a man in a green suit makes a proposal to a prisoner about
                travel to the past.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #38

Those Who Vanish!


Conman Pete Arlen buys a magic spring that purportedly makes people twenty years younger, and then he unloads it before knowing all the particulars of its magic. —Michael Main
You mean to tell me that the waters of Chi-Na-Nichi actually makes people twenty years younger!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable 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

Adventure into Mystery #5

No Place to Hide!


Back in the 19th century, Ernst Mahl steals a historic king’s crown and a time travel potion, which leads him back to the 18th century where he must steal it again. —Michael Main
When Ernst materialized again, he found himself in familiar surroundings! He realized it was his own town, but there was something different . . .
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

The Panhandler


One of the six time travelers who’ve arrived to intervene in Doug Cotter’s panhandling life just seems to know far too much about Doug’s private life. —Michael Main
You haven’t a prison record yet. But you will have . . . unless you let us help you!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #6

The Eye That’s Never Shut!


The eye of an ancient Greek sphinx statue tells Rex Ronoff that he can steal the Great Sultana Diamond and never be caught. —Michael Main
The eye says I won’t get caught . . . and it is never wrong!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #42

While the City Sleeps!


When the police come looking for Zeno the midget who pretends to be a ventriliquist’s dummy, he takes a suspended animation pill to make it seem that he’s a real wooden dummy. —Michael Main
See this pill? I got it from a chemist-pal of mine who’s working on suspended animation!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
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
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #46

The Middle of the Night!


While repairing a watch, Alfred Mott realizes that it can take him back in time, so he heads back to the time of Louis XVI to steal the French crown jewels. —Michael Main
After I repaired it, I tested the our hand by pushing it backward all the way around . . . and today became yesterday!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #47

The Blinding Flash!


In order to retrieve his cigarette lighter from a crime scene, a small-time thief agrees to be a test subject for Professor Mark Hanson’s atom-powered machine that sends an astral projection of a person into the past. Oh, I almost forgot: There’s one other volunteer, too. —Michael Main
Professor Mark Hanson has tus far been unable to get a single person to use his remarkable discovery for recovering the past!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #8

The Man Who Couldn’t Be Killed!


The law of the land states that Henri Benrey must be executed on a Monday, so he gets a medicine man on Devil’s Island to give him a potion that will wipe out all his Mondays. —Michael Main
They can not hang me now, Annette! I have all the time in the world to escape from this island!
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Adventure into Mystery #8

The Night of March 5th


The machine that spy Bruno Ames steals takes him one year into the future where the Daily Bugle tells him his boss has been sentenced to life in prison. —Michael Main
I just left Novitch this morning! How could he have been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced, all in one day?
No image currently available.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #9

The Day I Lived Over Again


While on the lam, hardened criminal Blackie Nelson gets a chance to live the day over—and this time he plans to evade the police and win the girl! —Michael Main
The day’s starting over again! This doll’s going to fall for me . . . Only this time I’m going to work things different!
In the large first panel, a man in a business suit stands in front of a larger
                version of himself as a caveman.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (s01e6)

The Time Element


Serling wrote this one-hour time-travel episode as a pilot for a one-hour anthology show, but after it was filmed, William Dozier at CBS requested a change to a half-hour format. So, “The Time Element” was shelved while Serling worked on a new pilot (which also had a stormy history). Meanwhile, Bert Granet, producer of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, caught wind of the original Serling pilot and quickly snapped up the production for which he had to then fight hard with the Westinghouse bigwigs in order to air.

The story involves a time traveler, Pete Jensen, who couldn’t stop the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he certainly made his mark as the Twilight Zone precursor.
I have information that the Japanese are gonna bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow morning at approximately 8am Honolulu time.
|pending alt-text|
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


Five seasons with many time-travel episodes. Four (marked with ¤) were written by Richard Matheson, one was by E. Jack Neuman (“Templeton”), one by Reginold Rose (“Horace Ford”), and the rest were by Serling (including “What You Need” based on a Lewis Padgett story with prescience only and no real time travel, “Execution” from a story of George Clayton Johnson, “A Quality of Mercy” from a Sam Rolfe story featuring a young Dean Stockwell, and “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” from Malcolm Jameson’s “Blind Alley”).
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e10)

Judgment Night


Carl Lanser finds himself on a transatlantic voyage of the cargo liner S.S. Queen of Glasgow, in 1942, not knowing much about himself or how he got there, but knowing volumes about submarine warfare. —Michael Main
There’d be no wolf packs converging on a single ship, Major Devereaux. The principle of the submarine pack is based on the convoy attack.
Patrick Macnee (as First Officer McLeod) stands behind a disoriented Nehemiah
                Persoff (as Carl Lanser) in the bar of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #67

The Black Clock!


An ex-con steals a clock and quickly learns that it’ll bring him death if he doesn’t return it to its owner—but doing that would mean another prison sentence. —Michael Main
You mustn’t touch the clock! It’s enchanted! It will put you under a spell!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e26)

Execution


Back in the 1880s, just after a man without conscience is dropped from a lone tree with a rope around his neck, a scientist pulls him into 20th-century New York City.

Serling wrote this script based on a George Clayton Johnson’s bare bones, present-tense treatment for a TV script, complete with an indication of where the commercial break should go. For this episode, Serling filled in the flesh and cut the fat from a bare bones, present-tense treatment by George Clayton Johnson. The treatment appeared in Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection of scripts and stories, and in Volume 9 of Serling’s collected Twilight Zone scripts, Johnson commented that “Rod took my idea and went off to the races with it. He had a remarkable knowledge of what would and wouldn’t work on television, and he took everything that wouldn’t work out of ‘Execution’. He worked like a surgeon; a little snip here, a complete amputation over there, move this bone into place, graft over that one. When he was done, my little story had grown into a television script that lived and breathed on its own.” Serling also added a nice twist at the end that, for us, warranted the TV episode an Eloi Honorable Mention.
Rod Serling wrote this script based on a 1960 Twilight Zone episode of the same name, but I’m uncertain whether the story was published before Johnson’s 1977 retrospective collection. —Michael Main
Caswell: I wanna see if there are things out there like you described to me. Carriages without horses and the buildings that rise to—

Professor Manion: They’re out there, Caswell. . . . Things you can’t imagine.
Dressed in a tie and black jacket, and holding his trademarked cigarette, Rod
                Serling stands in front of a time machine.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e10)

A Most Unusual Camera


Petty thieves Chet and Paula Diedrich are frustrated, angry, and in a bickering mood when they find nothing but cheap junk in the 400-lbs. of stuff they lifted from a curios store in the middle of the night, . . . until that boxy looking camera with the indecipherable label—dix à la propriétaire—produces a photo of the immediate future. —Michael Main
Yeah, it takes dopey pictures—dopey pictures like things that haven’t happened yet, but they do happen.
Jean Carson (as Paula Diedrich) holds up an unusual, boxy camera.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #27

Look into the Future


Decades ago, a prescient dream gave a young man confidence to ruthlessly pursue his ambitions. —Michael Main
The mine did cave later . . . but mining is a dangerous business and some always die! The important thing is, I got production!
A collage of three panels taken from "A Look Into the Future" by Steve Ditko.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #75

The Magic of Mordoo!


Franz finds Katrina attractive, but he wishes she were younger, so he approaches a Bavarian magician to make her young again. —Michael Main
But I want a young wife--a glamorous one! Not a middle-aged female!
No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #75

The Man Who Lost the World!


Just when does the professor’s time machine send things to? Nobody knows, so when the prof’s flunky feels poorly treated, he decides to find out on his own. —Michael Main
But if I could find outwhether the machine sends people intothe past or the future, then I would know something even he doesn’t know!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #85

Filbert’s Frightful Future


Mad scientist Filbert Phelps wants to use his time machine to become the richest man in the world, —Michael Main
Yes, I am a genius . . . and that’s why I’m about to become fabuously rich! Just as soon as I finish my greatest invention . . .
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #85

Off-Limits!


A free spirited space explorer decides to visit Planet 6-G despite it being off limits. —Michael Main
Maybe I’ll even be given rights to 6_G as a reward!
No image currently available.
  • Science Fiction
  • Weird Fiction
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Time Phenomena
TV Series

The Outer Limits


The original series ran only a season and a half with 49 episodes on the science fiction end of The Twilight Zone mold, but a full hour long. At least four episodes had some time travel.
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about the experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to. . . The Outer Limits!
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Twilight Zone [s1e30] (treatm.ent)

Execution


Back in the Old West, just after outlaw Jason Black is dropped from a lone tree with a rope around his neck, two scientists pull him into the 20th century. The story isn’t your typical short story; instead, it’s a treatment that Johnson presented to Rod Serling for a Twilight Zone episode that aired on 1 April 1960.
Listen to me. There is a strange world outside that door. Without us to help you, anything can happen to you. This is the twentieth century, don’t you understand?
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

Twilight Zone: The Movie

Time Out

  • written and directed by John Landis
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 24 June 1983)

The Twilight Zone anthology movie reprises three of the original show’s stories along with one new story, “Time Out” by John Landis, in which disgruntled bigot Bill Connor finds himself as a Jew in World War II German occupied Europe, a black man facing the clan in mid-20th century America, and a man in a Vietnamese jungle during the Second Indochina War. —Michael Main
Ray, help! Larry! It’s me!
Five startled faces superimposed over a starry sky above a logo for Twilight
                Zone, the Movie.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


Three seasons with 7 time-travel episodes. Harlan Ellison was a consultant on the series that included an adaptation of his “One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty.” The series also adapted Sturgeon’s “Yesterday Was Monday’, altering the plot and renaming it to “A Matter of Minutes,” and George R.R. Martin did the script for the time-travel episode “The Once and Future King” based on an idea submitted by Bryce Maritano.
Let the record show that in any age—good or bad—there are men of high ideals: men of courage, men who do more than that for which they are called upon. You will not always know their names. But let their deeds stand as monuments, so that when the human race is called to judgment, we may say, ‘This too was humanity!’
|pending alt-text|
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

The Showtime 30-Minute Movie [s:1e1]

12:01 PM


Kurtwood Smith portrays Myron Castleman’s noon hour over and over in this first movie adaptation of Richard Lupoff’s short story. —Michael Main
You see, it’s like . . . it’s like we’re stuck. You know, like a . . . like a needle on a scratched record. It all starts at 12:01, and everything goes along fine until one o’clock and then Bam! the whole world snaps back to 12:01 again.
A white digital clock display on a black backgroiund shows twelve oh one P M.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Outer Limits


Sadly, this revival (which outlasted the original by more than 100 episodes) was shown mostly on cable, so I didn’t see many of the first airings. But as I was writing up this listing, I realized that between the two runs of The Outer Limits, three runs of The Twilight Zone, one season of Tales of Tomorrow, and a handful of other miscellaneous episodes of weird anthology series, we could easily put together a full season of a new anthology show: The Time Travel Zone Limits. After one season, the network will be ours, and we can continue for many happy seasons into the future.
There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousand channels or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. For the next hour, we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the deepest inner mind to. . . The Outer Limits!
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  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

The Twilight Zone


One season with 4 time-travel episodes.
I reminded them that Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people.
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  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Series

Dimension 404


The Twilight Zone rides again, but this time on streaming TV (Hulu)! The first three episodes, all released on April 4, included a Wishbone meets Captain Planet episode, “Chronos,” with a model of time-travel that made no sense (but was still a hoot).
You know you’ve got the wrong equation for closed timelike curves, right?
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Weird Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel