The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1990 to 1996



   Time Barbarians
by Joseph John Barmettler (Barmetler, director)
First release: 1990

In an ancient world of swords, sorcery, loin cloths, and jeweled 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.

 The man you seek is in this world no longer. You must travel to another time to find him. 




   12:01 P.M.
by Richard Lupoff, Stephen Tolkin and Jonathan Heap (Heap, director)
First release: 1990 (27 minute short film)

Kurtwood Smith brings Myron Castleman’s 59 minutes to life.

 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. 




   Kappatoo
created by Ben Steed
First episode: 20 Jan 1990

In an amusing twist on The Prince and the Pauper, Kappatoo 70934 swaps places with his twentieth century lookalike, Simon, in this one-season series and its follow-up, Kappatoo II, in 1992. I like that Simon in the future had a computer as his foil, whereas back in our time, Kappatoo has a cat. The vintage 1990 PCs are also fun.

 Not where, when. When did I come from? Which happens to be the year 2270. 




   Eternity Comics’ The Time Machine
adapted by Bill Spangler and John Ross
First publication: Apr 1990

This three-issue black-and-white adaptation has some creative twists such as when it occurs to the traveller how to use the machine to destroy the Morlocks. In 1991, the three issues were issued as a single graphic novel in trade paperback size.

 I was elated! I gripped the starting lever with both hands and went off with a thud. 




   Back to the Future III
by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Zemeckis, director)
First release: 25 May 1990

Marty and 1955 Doc travel back to the old west where the older Doc is trapped along with various Biff ancestors and a possible love interest for Doc.

 It means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it. 




   Future Zone
aka Future Force 2
by David A. Prior (Prior, director)
First release: 18 Jul 1990

John Tucker—a future gunslinging cop in Mobile, AL, played by David Carradine—is visited by a thirty-year-old Billy who’s almost as quick on the draw as John. But—ah, Grasshopper—just where does the visitor’s prescient knowledge come from, and more to the point given the ending of the film: Who taught Billy to shoot?

 Tucker: Where’d you learn to shoot like that?
Billy: You might say I learned from the best.
Tucker: And who might that be?
Billy: You’d never believe me. 




   Alvin and the Chipmonks
by Dianne Dixon
First time travel: 8 Sep 1990

It was not until the final season of the Alvin revival (nearly two decades after creator Bagdasarian’s death) that Theodore, Simon and Alvin had a series of movie take-offs including Dianne Dixon’s episode, “Back to Our Future,” in which the quirky inventor Clyde Crashcup (filling in for Doc Brown) brings the 90s trio back to the 50s to stop the original trio from giving up their singing careers.

 Now remember boys, you must convince the old Alvin to stick with his musical career, so you can all be stars in the future! 




   Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures (Animated)
produced by David Kirschner, Paul Sabella and Andy Heyward
First episode: 15 Sep 1990

 . . . featuring the most outstanding voices of the original Two Great Ones, but bogus plots and dialog.

 ♫ Whenever time stands still and trouble moves too fast, to save the future, we must learn about the past. ♫ 




   The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3
created by Reed Shelly and Bruce Shelly
First time travel: 29 Sep 1990

The animation and sound effects are a good reflection of the video game. In one episode (“Toddler Terrors of Time Travel”), the son of King Bowser invents a time machine to go back in time and stop Mario, Luigi and Toad from ever coming to their kingdom. The heroes stow away, and everyone ends up as toddlers in Brooklyn.

 Maybe we can go back and change history, King Dad. All we need is a little time travel. 




   The Spirit of '76
by Roman Coppola and Lucas Reiner (Reiner, director)
First release: 12 Oct 1990

In the year 2176, three time travelers aiming for 1776 end up in the time of David Cassidy and disco instead.

 Channel Six, our foremost epistomological anthrosociologist has redlined and outlined you for a mission back in time. 




   “The Time Traveler”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Nov 1990

The little demon Azazel (the hero of many an Asimov tale) sends a world-renowned writer travels back in time to see his first writing teacher at a 1934 school that is remarkably like Asimov’s own Boys High in Brooklyn.

 “Because,” and here he struck his chest a resounding thump, “the burning memories of youthful snubs and spurnings remain unavenged and, indeed, forever unavengable.” 




   Frankenstein Unbound
adapted by Roger Corman and F.X. Feeney (Corman, director)
First release: 2 Nov 1990

Joe Buchanan invents a weapon that was meant to be so terrible it would end war forever, but the weapon causes time rifts, one of which takes him (and his futuristic talking car, a.k.a. his electric carriage) back in time where he meets Dr. Frankenstein (a standoffish man, but willing to talk science), Frankenstein’s monster (who is fascinated with the talking car) and Mary Wollstonecraft (a budding author).

It did a reasonable job of bringing Brian Aldiss’s book’s premise to the screen, with a better pace than the book, but the short dream sequences were ineffective for me and Dr. Frankenstein is more of a clichéd villian than in the book.

 Zero pollution, maximum ozone shield: Something tells me we’re not in New Los Angeles any more. 


   “Ben Franklin’s Laser”
by Doug Beason
First publication: Analog, mid-Dec 1990

It appears that the sun will go nova in 75 hours, which leaves Grayson to go back in time to give a boost to science in Ben Franklin’s time.

 It sounded nice and simple: allow Ben Franklin to invent the laser and let the technology casade. Grow enough so that in five hundred years we’d have something to get us out of this mess. 


   “3 RMS Good View”
by Karen Haber
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, mid-Dec 1990

When a lawyer from the future decides to rent an apartment in 1968 San Francisco, she must first sign your standard temporal noninterference contract—yeah, like that one ever holds up in court!

 Don’t change the past or the past will change you. The time laws. You lawyers understand this kind of thing. You, and you alone, are responsible for any dislocation of past events, persons or things, et cetera et cetera. Read the small print and sign. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  Time and Chance by Alan Brennert, Feb 1990 [alternate timelines ]

  Jacob’s Ladder by Bruce Joel Rubin, 2 Nov 1990 [no definite time travel ]



   Warlock
by David Twohy (Steve Miner, director)
First release: 11 Jan 1991

A captured warlock in 1691 Massachusetts is thrown forward 300 years to Los Angeles with warlock-hunter Giles Redferne in hot pursuit. Twentieth century chase ensues with pretty nurse Kassandra aiding the hunter.

 A grand grimore? Here? Now? 




   “The Romanian Question”
by Michael Moorcock
First publication: Back Brain Recluse 18, Spring 1991

Jerry appears to be a time traveler (or maybe God) involved with Hitler and the democratic movement in Romania, but really did’t get it. But the bicycle he rides as a time machine shares a description with the time machine in “Behold the Man.”

 The time machine was a sphere of milky fluid attached to the front lamp-holder of a Raleigh “Royal Albert” Police Bicycle of the old, sturdy type, before all the corruption had been made public. 




   “Crossroads”
aka “Cross Roads Blues”
by Paul McAuley
First publication: Interzone, Apr 1991

In an alternate 1960s America where the U.S. is isolationist and Adam Clayton Powell is president, Time traveler (or “Loop rider”) Ike Turner has a fascination with blues player Bobby Johnson, so he sticks around a bit longer than he should in 1937 to meet the musician. It shouldn’t be a big deal; after all, according to Einstein, not even the Loop riders can change the past.

 Anyway, he went away maybe a year, and I don’t know if he went to the crossroads with ol Legba or not, but Son House told me when he came back he was carryin a gitar, and asked for a spot like old times. Well, Son was about ready to take a break, and told Bobby Johnson to go ahead and got himself outside before the boy began. But that time it was all changed. That time, he tol me, the music he heard Bobby Johnson make put the hair on his head to standin. 




   “Robot Visions”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apr 1991

A team of Temporalists send robot RG-32 200 years into the future where it seems to almost all that mankind is doing better than expected on Earth and in space.

 RG-32 was a rather old-fashioned robot, eminently replaceable. He could observe and report, perhaps without quite the ingenuity and penetration of a human being—but well enough. He would be without fear, intent only on following orders, and he could be expected to tell the truth. 


   Outlander
aka Cross Stitch
by Diana Gabaldon

I am a snob. Normally, I relegate time travel romances to the slag heap at the end of each year. But this novel changed the whole genre from a backwater to a raging waterfall, so it gets its own happy spot in the grown-up list.

 The truth is that nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing whatever appeared to happen and yet I experienced a feeling of elemental terror so great that I lost all sense of who, or what, or where I was. I was in the heart of chaos, and no power of mind or body was of use against it. 




   “The Gallery of His Dreams”
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First publication: Axolotl Press, Jul 1991

Having spent his life and his fortune documenting the American Civil War, pioneering photographer Mathew Brady is repeatedly visited by a woman of the future who asks him to photograph the horrors of the wars she knows, starting with Hiroshima.

 “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Brady said. He didn’t turn to see which portraits she had indicated. “I didn’t mean to offend you. These portraits show what war really is, and I think it’s something we need to remember lest we try it again.” 




   T2: Judgement Day
by James Cameron and William Wisher, Jr. (Cameron, director)
First release: 1 Jul 1991

Once more, the machines from 2029 send back a killer cyborg, this time a T-1000 to kill John Connor himself in 1995, but Connor of the future counters by sending one of the original Model 101s to save himself.

 Come with me if you want to live. 

—The T-800 to Sarah at the Pescadero State Hospital




   Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey
by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (Stephen Herek, director)
First release: 19 Jul 1991

Two Evil Robots come from the future to kill Bill and Ted and destroy their babes, and after that happens, the Two Great Ones begin a journey that starts with Death and ends with Two Little Ones.

 Look, after we get away from this guy, we use the booth. We time travel back to before the concert and set up the things we need to get him now. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #11
All the Weyrs of Pern
by Anne McCaffrey
First publication: Sep 1991

After the time of the first books, Pern undergoes a technological revival engendered by the rediscovery of the Admin AI built by the original colonists. An ambitious plan to eliminate Thread forever (yeah, like that’s gonna happen) hinges on time travel and blowing up engines on the Red Star.

 Jaxom shrugged as he changed pages. “A dragon has to know exactly the time when he is going to, or he can come out of between at the same spot he’s inhabiting at that earlier time. Too close, and it is thought that both dragon and rider will die. Equally, it’s unwise to go any place you haven’t already been, so you shouldn’t go forward, because you wouldn’t know if you were there or not.” 




   Quantum Leap Comic Books
edited by George Broderick, Jr.
First publication: Sep 1991

Little known fact: The Quantum Leap comic books were actually written and drawn two decades before the birth of their creators, which is the only reason they have been given a special temporal dispensation overriding the law that forbids post-1969 comic books in this list. In the first issue, Sam desperately wants to save Martin Luther King Jr., but he realizes that’s not the reason he’s in Memphis.

 He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. 




   Back to the Future (Animated)
created by Bob Gale
First episode: 14 Sep 1991

After III, Doc Brown and Clara settle and raise a family in Hill Valley, though “settle” might be the wrong word when you once again have a working DeLorean.

 You do sorta look like that J. Michael Fox guy. 




   “Bad Timing”
by Molly Brown
First publication: Interzone, Dec 1991

When Alan’s coworker tells him that an old women’s magazine has a romance story called “The Love That Conquered Time” with Alan himself as the hero, he is dubious, but he reads the thing nonetheless.

 You’re the only reason, Claudia. I did it for you. I read a story that you wrote and I knew it was about me and that it was about you. I searched in the Archives and I found your picture and then I knew that I loved you and that I had always loved you and that I always would. 




   Murder Most Horrid
starring by Dawn French
First time travel: 5 Dec 1991

In this anthology series, Dawn French finds herself in one murder story after another, including one tale of a “Determined Woman” physicist who uses her time machine in an attempt to change the happenings of one particular murder.

 If you don’t get out of this house, I’m going to murder you! 



Romance Time Travel of 1991
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Stolen Brides 0.5: His Stolen Bride by Shelly Thacker




No Time Travel. Move along.
  In the Native State by Tom Stoppard, 20 Apr 1991 [parallel stories in different times ]

  Time’s Arrow or the Nature of the Offence by Martin Amis, Sep 1991 [surreal ]



   “Down the River Road”
by Gregory Benford
First publication: After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, Jan 1992

On the verge of becoming a man, John travels a river that is an admixture of time-flow and liquid metal—or possibly of magic and science—with the goal of finding out about a father whom he barely remembers.

 John followed the boot tracks away from the launch. They led inland, so there was no time pressure to fight. His clothes dried out as he walked beneath a shimmering patch of burnt-goald worldwall that hung tantalizingly behind roiling clouds. 




   ドラゴンボール
English title: Dragon Ball (translated from Japanese)
adapted by Takao Koyama
First time travel: 8 Jan 1992

Sent to Earth as a mere baby to lay preparations for an alien invasion, Goku suffers a clonk on the head, losing all memory of his mission and subsequently becoming a champion defender of our planet. I haven’t watched enough episodes to know for sure when the first time travel occurred, but it may have been in Episode 122 of the second Dragon Ball series (Dragon Ball Z, “My Dad is Vegeta”) in which time traveler Trunks arrives with a warning. Trunk and time traveling continued into the reboot series, Dragon Ball Z Kai, which I’ve seen on the Toon network.

 Thirdly, please tell me the grown-up version of my mysterious son from the future is with you. 

—Bulma in Dragon Ball Z Kai, “Bulma Discovers a Time Machine”




  Reggie Rivers #2
“The Big Splash”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jun 1992

Just what caused the dinosaurs’ extinction?

 The scientists had been arguing for half a century over the nature of the K-T Event. Some said a comet or a planetoid hit the Earth; others, that one or more of those big super-volcanoes, like the one that mad your Yellowstone Park, cut loose with an eruption that blanketed the Earth with ash and smoke. 




   Waxwork II: Lost in Time
by Anthony Hickox (Hickox, director)
First release: 16 Jun 1992

After the flaming climax at the end of Waxwork (which had no time travel that I could see), Mark and Sarah (a different actress) crawl home only to be followed by a disembodied hand that (before being garbage disposaled into tiny pieces) hacks Sarah’s nearly evil stepfather to death. Nobody at Sarah’s subsequent trial for murder believes that story, so after listening to a movie of dead Patrick Macnee, they escape into a series of bad horror movie remakes from Frankenstein to Aliens.

Of course, all these movies are set in different times, but is there any actual time travel? The final scene gives a definitive answer, although it does not manage to generate even half a star for my rating.

 We burned that place to the ground. Nothing could have got out. 




   Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures (Live)
created by Darren Starr
First episode: 28 Jun 1992

The Two Great Ones become the two lame ones, although the Elvis episode has some redeeming factors.

 It’s a completely creepy feeling to fail before a large group of Elvises. 




  Time Trap #2
Back to the Time Trap
by Keith Laumer
First publication: Jul 1992

Twenty-two years after the first installment, Laumer provides a sequel to Roger Tyson’s humorous adventures with powerful time traveling aliens who fling Roger back in forth in time.

 “This is Roger; he’s as helpless and bewildered as I am. We were just planning how to escape from this, ah, time trap. How did you—’
“Went in the pantry,’ Fred grunted. 




   “Two Guys from the Future”
by Terry Bisson
First publication: Omni, Aug 1992

Two guys from the future show up in an art gallery (to “salvage the works of art of your posteriors” because “no shit is fixing to hang loose any someday now.”) where they meet a security-guard-cum-artist and her boss, Mimsy.

 “We are two guys from the future.”
“Yeah, right. Now get the hell out of here!”
“Don’t shoot! Is that a gun?”
That gave me pause; it was a flashlight. 




  Reggie Rivers #3
“The Synthetic Barbarian”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 1992

Clifton Standish’s motivation for travel to the Mesozoic is not entirely what it seems.

 One day this bloke Standish came in with his friend Hofmann, saying they wanted a time safari to cave-man days, to shoot dinosaurs the way our ancestors used to do. 




   The Ugly Little Boy
aka Child of Time
novelization by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
First publication: Sep 1992

The story of Ms. Fellowes and Timmie is augmented by the story of what his tribe did during his time away.

 He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him more dearly than anything in the world. 




   Darkwing Duck
created by Tad Stones
First time travel: 18 Sep 1992

The crimefighting duck (or his pals) time traveled at least five times, some of which used arch-nemesis Quackerjack’s Time Top (no word on whether it was stolen from Brick Bradford).
  1. Paraducks (18 Sep 1991) to earlier in DW’s life
  2. Quack of Ages (18 Nov 1991) back to 1921
  3. Time and Punishment (19 Nov 1991)     Gosalyn to the future
  4. Inherit the Wimp (19 Sep 1992) DW’s ancestors to the present
  5. Extinct Possibility (5 Dec 1992) to the time of the dinosaurs

 Need I remind you about the time with the floor wax, the peanut butter and my VCR? 




  Reggie Rivers #4
“Crocamander Quest”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: The Ultimate Dinosaur, Oct 1992

Long before T. rex was king of the predators, the Triassic was terrorized by the 5-meter long amphibian K. col with a meter-long head, a powerful jaw, and rows of sharp teeth.

 Imagine a newt or salamander expanded to crocodile size, with a huge head for catching smaller fry, and you’ll have the idea. Might call it a crocamander, eh? 




   The Guns of the South
by Harry Turtledove
First publication: Oct 1992

A faction from the early 21st century brings boatloads of AK-47 machine guns back to General Lee in the War between the States.

 My friends and I—everyone who belongs to America Will Break—come from a hundred and fifty years in your future. 




   Captain Planet and the Planeteers
aka The New Adventures of Captain Planet
created by Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle
First time travel: 31 Oct 1992

Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, sends out five magic rings which are obtained by teenagers who are then tasked with protecting the planet Earth, sometimes individually and sometimes by combining to call forth Captain Planet who (among other things) can even take them into the past (“OK at the Gunfight Corral”).

 There she is, boys: my own time machine. 


   Quantum Leap Novels
First book: Nov 1992

  1. The Novel (aka Carny Knowledge) (Nov 1992)    Ashley McConnell
  2. Too Close for Comfort (Apr 1993) Ashley McConnell
  3. The Wall (Jan 1994) Ashley McConnell
  4. The Beginning (Jan 1994, UK) Julie Robitaille
  5. The Ghost and the Gumshoe (Jan 1994, UK) Julie Robitaille
  6. Prelude (Jun 1994) Ashley McConnell
  7. Knights of Morningstar (Sep 1994) Melanie Rawn
  8. Search and Rescue (Dec 1994) Melissa Crandall
  9. Random Measures (Mar 1995) Ashley McConnell
  10. Pulitzer (Jun 1995) L. Elizabeth Storm
  11. Double or Nothing (Dec 1995) C.J. Henderson
  12. Odyssey (Mar 1996) Barbara E. Walton
  13. Independence (Aug 1996) John Peel
  14. Angels Unaware (Jan 1997) L. Elizabeth Storm
  15. Obsessions (Mar 1997) Carol Davis
  16. Loch Ness Leap (Jul 1997) Sandy Schofield
  17. Heat Wave (Nov 1997) Melanie Kent
  18. Foreknowledge (Mar 1998) Christo Defillipis
  19. Song and Dance (Oct 1998) Mindy Peterman
  20. Mirror’s Edge (Feb 2000) Ester D. Reese

 “Oh, boy,” he whispered. 




  Reggie Rivers #5
“The Satanic Illusion”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nov 1992

Murder most foul when religious fundamentalists plan a time safari to disprove the theory of evolution.

 It will demonstrate that all these prehistoric beasts, whereof your clients bring home heads, hides, and photographs, did not live in succession, but all at the same time. 



Romance Time Travel of 1992
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Outlander 2: Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Compound Interest” by Jim Heath, Eidolon, Spring 1992 [despite title, no time travel ]

  “Atlantis” by Orson Scott Card, Grails, Oct 1992 [viewing the past ]

  The Poof Point by Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, Nov 1992 [backward aging ]



  Reggie Rivers #6
“The Cayuse”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Expanse, 1993

Apparently, the parasaurolophus does not play well with certain 20th century technology.



  Reggie Rivers #7
“Pliocene Romance”
aka “Miocene Romance”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Analog, Jan 1993

How would an animal rights activist view the hunting of extinct species on Reggie’s time safaris?

 But the beasts my clients hunt on these time safaris are all long extinct anyway. Ending the safaris wouldn’t bring any dinosaurs or mastodons back to life. 




   “The Battle of Long Island”
by Nancy Kress
First publication: Omni, Feb/Mar 1993

Major Susan Peters is in charge of all the nurses at “The Hole” where a series of soldiers from alternative past Revolutionary Wars keep appearing.

 They’re often like this. They find themsleves in an alien, impossible, unimaginable place, surround by guards with uniforms and weapons they don’t recognize, and yet their first concern is not their personal fate but the battle they left behind. 




   Bradbury Comics’ “A Sound of Thunder”
adapted by Richard Corben
First publication: Ray Bradbury Comics 1, Feb 1993

In addition to reprinting Williamson’s 1954 adaptation, Ray Bradbury Comics 1 had a new 12-page adaptation by Richard Corben.

 My god! It could reach up and grab the moon. 




   Groundhog Day
by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis (Ramis, director)
First release: 12 Feb 1993

A jaded weatherman, Phil Connors (no relation to John Connor), is in Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog Day goings-on, continually repeating the day and—after losing his jaded edge—striving for Rita’s heart.

 You’re not a god. You can take my word for it: This is twelve years of Catholic school talking. 




   Army of Darkness
by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi (Sam Raimi, director)
First release: 19 Feb 1993

A Connecticut Yankee (or maybe Michigan) in King Arthur's Court meets the Living Dead and their kin.

 This is my boom-stick. It’s a 12-guage, double barreled Remington—S-mart’s top-of-the-line. You’ll find them in the Sporting Goods Department. 




   X-Men Cartoon
created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
First time travel: 13 Mar 1993

Even though the 1992 cartoon had all them new-fangled X-Men and their funky costumes, I still got some enjoyment from the Kirby-designed villians, such as the Sentinels in the two-part time-travel story, “Days of Future Past” (which, not coincidentally, will also be the name of the upcoming X-Men movie). Well, they were sort of Kirby-designed: He penciled the cover and sketched the layouts of X-Men 14.

 We rebels have a theory: If the assasination of the 90s never occurred . . . 




   Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
Turtles in Time
adapted by Stuart Gillard (Gillard, director)
First release: 19 Mar 1993

Tim’s favorite reptiles (at age 8) moved from animated to live-action for the silver screen. For this third installment, the turtles’ human friend April swaps place with a 17th century Japanese prince, and the ninjas in a half shell head back to rescue her.

 Awesome! But do you think they had pizza back then? 




  Reggie Rivers #8
“The Mislaid Mastodon”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Analog, May 1993

Wait a minute! Didn’t Reggie lay down the law long ago that his time safaris can’t meddle in human times? So how’s he gonna bring back a Mastodon alive for his latest customer?



   “Just Like Old Times”
aka Seems Like Old Times
by Robert J. Sawyer
First publication: On Spec, Jun 1993

When serial killer Rudolph Cohen is convicted to die for his crimes, by transfering his consciousness into a previous nearly-dead being with no ability to control that being. He chooses a T. Rex. as the previous being, and it turns out that he can control it.

 We can project a human being’s consciousness back in time, superimposing his or her mind overtop of that of someone who lived in the past. 




   Glimpses
by Lewis Shiner
First publication: Jul 1993

A weak marriage isn’t enough to sustain Ray Shackleford, but he doesn’t want to leave either, so he spends time in his mind wondering what various unmade albums would be like from the Beatles and other 60s bands (the Doors, the Beach Boys), and one day the music of those unmade albums starts coming from the speakers in his stereo repair shop.

 When I opened my eyes it was nighttime and I was crouched on the sidewalk in front of Brian’s house and it wasn't 1989 anymore. 




   12:01
by Richard Lupoff, Jonathan Heap, Richard Morton (Jack Sholder, director)
First aired: 5 Jul 1993 (made-for-tv)

Trapped in a one-day time loop, Barry Thomas tries to bring down the company that’s causing the loop, hopefully coming to a happy ending with the gorgeous scientist who runs the project.

 Barry: Oh my God. It’s twelve o’clock.
Lisa: No! We’ve got to do something!
Barry: There’s no time. Quick, tell me what your favorite color is. 




   The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
created by Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse
First episode: 27 Aug 1993

In a steampunk old west, gunfighter Brisco County, Jr., and his sidekick Lord Bowler are hired to track down the maniacal time-traveler John Bly who, among other things, kills the senior Brisco County and seeks a powerful Orb from the future—plenty of excitement for the 27 episodes of its one season.

At least one Brisco time traveler from 5502 appears naked a la the terminator, but (as of 2015) Harlan Ellison hasn’t sue Brisco over the time-travel requirement.

 Brisco: Are you an angel? You look like an angel.
Karina: No. I’m from the future. My name is Karina.
Brisco: And, uh, in the future you’ve kinda given up on clothes? 


   Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction
by Paul J. Nahin
First publication: Sep 1993

If you have only one reference book on your shelf—on any topic—this must be it. Get the second edition.

 This is, I believe, a book for the adventurous in spirit. 




   King Arthur and the Knights of Justice
created by Jean Chalopin
First episode: 13 Sep 1993

When the real King Arthur and his knights are put out of commission by the evil Morgana, Merlin brings a football player, Arthur King, and his teammates, the Knights, back as replacements for two seasons on this syndicated series.

 And then, from the field of the future, a new king will come to save the world of the past. 


   “The Girl with Some Kind of Past.
And George.”
by William Tenn
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Oct 1993

A pretty, young time traveler from the future visits the most fascinating person she can think of in the past—that would be playboy George Rice, coincidentally her great-great-grandfather—but she won’t tell George what makes him so fascinating.

 That left the incest angle, and I asked him about that. He says that making it with your great-great-granddaughter from the twenty-first century is not much different from making it with your clothes-designer neighbor from across the hall. 




   Pinky and the Brain
created by Tom Ruegger and Steven Spielberg
First time travel: 6 Oct 1993

In their quest for world domination, the pair of gene-spliced lab mice traveled through time multiple times, both in their role as an Animaniacs guest feature and in their own series. Their jaunts include a visit to H.G. Wells and his time machine.

As with the Warners in other Animaniacs episodes, it’s not always clear whether Pinky and the Brain are traveling through time or merely acting out a drama set in a different time period. Such is life within four walls.
  1. Pavlov’s Mice, Animaniacs (6 Oct 1993)
  2. When Mice Ruled the Earth (H.G. Wells), Animaniacs (23 Oct 1993)
  3. Puppet Rulers, Animaniacs (12 Nov 1993)
  4. Don’t Tread on Us, Animaniacs (11 Nov 1995)
  5. Brain of the Future, Pinky and the Brain 8 Feb 1997)

 Greetings from a post-apocalyptic future. We have traveled back through time to bring you the answer to all of your problems. We are your future selves. 

——Brain of the Future




   Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
created by Reed Shelly, Bruce Shelly, Phil Harnage and Kent Butterworth
First time travel: 26 Oct 1993

Video game character Sonic and his sidekick Tails repeatedly foil the evil Dr. Robotnik, including a four-part quest to the past where Robotnik seeks the four all-powerful chaos emeralds in the times of Blackbeard, King Arfur, Sonic’s ancestors and prehistory.
  1. Blackbot the Pirate (26 Oct 1993) to time of Blackbeard
  2. Hedgehog of the Hound Table (27 Oct 1993)    to time of King Arfur
  3. Robotnik’s Pyramid Scheme (28 Oct 1993) erasing Sonic’s family tree
  4. Prehistoric Sonic (29 Oct 1993) to caveman times and elsewhere

 I can’t go through with this. My theories of time and space were developed for peace, not for your evil schemes. 




  Reggie Rivers #9
“The Honeymoon Dragon”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: Rivers of Time, Nov 1993

Reggie Rivers must watch his back when he accepts an invitation from a journalist to track down a Megalania (kinda like a giant Komodo dragon) in the Quaternary period. This is the only new story in the 1993 Reggie Rivers Collection, Rivers of Time.



   The Silurian Tales
by Steven Utley
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nov 1993

I’ve read ten of Utley’s stories of an expedition plopped into the Silurian geologic period, the most recent of which, “The End in Eden,” tells the tale of customs agents Phil Morrow and Sal Shelton, living at the border between the Silurian period and the present, matching wits with NCIS and JAG officers over a case of possible smuggling of Paleolithic biological specimens.
  1. There and Then (Nov 1993) Asimov’s
  2. The Age of Mud and Slime (Mar 1996) Asimov’s
  3. A Silurian Tale (May 1996) Asimov’s
  4. The Wind Over the World (Oct/Nov 1996) Asimov’s
  5. The Real World (30 Aug 2000) Sci Fiction
  6. Chain of Life (Oct/Nov 2000) Asimov’s
  7. The Despoblado (22 Nov 2000) Sci Fiction
  8. Cloud by Van Gogh (Dec 2000) F&SF
  9. Half a Loaf (Jan 2001) Asimov’s
  10. Five Miles from Pavement (21 Mar 2001) Sci Fiction
  11. The World Without (Jul 2001) Asimov’s
  12. Walking in Circles (Jan 2002) Asimov’s
  13. Treading the Maze (Feb 2002) Asimov’s
  14. Foodstuff (Feb 2002) F&SF
  15. Beyond the Sea (29 Aug 2002) Revolution SF
  16. Exile (Aug 2003) Asimov’s
  17. Chaos and Gods (18 Aug 2003) Revolution SF
  18. Invisible Kingdoms (Feb 2004) F&SF
  19. Babel (Mar 2004) Analog
  20. Another Continuum Heard From! (2 Apr 2004)   Revolution SF
  21. A Paleozoic Palimpsest (Oct 2004) F&SF
  22. The Wave-Function Collapse (Mar 2005) Asimov’s
  23. Promised Land (Jul 2005) F&SF
  24. Silv’ry Moon (Oct/Nov 2005) F&SF
  25. Diluvium (May 2006) F&SF
  26. All of Creation (18 Jan 2008) Cosmos
  27. The World Within the World (Mar 2008) Asimov’s
  28. The 400-Million-Year Itch (Apr 2008) F&SF
  29. Variant (Summer 2008) Postscripts
  30. The Woman Under the World (Jul 2008) Asimov’s
  31. Slug Hell (Sep 2008) Asimov’s
  32. Lost Places of Earth (Jan 2009) in We Think, Therefore We Are
  33. The Tortoise Grows Elate (Mar/Apr 2012) F&SF
  34. The End in Eden (Oct 2012) Analog
  35. The Gift Horse (Fall 2012) in The 400-Million-Year Itch
  36. Sidestep (Spring 2013) in Invisible Kingdoms

 Where’s he going to run to? Home is four hundred million miles away. 

—The End in Eden




   Philadelphia Experiment II
by Wallace C. Bennett, Don Jakoby, et. al. (Stephen Cornwell, director)
First release: 12 Nov 1993

At the end of the first movie, David Herdeg was left in 1983 America; ten years later, another experiment sends a nuclear bombed to 1943 Germany and David must go back to stop from creating a Nazi-ruled world.

 That plane got sucked back there. Landed in the heart of Nazi Germany. 




   Goodnight Sweetheart
created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
First episode: 18 Nov 1993

Television repairman Gary Sparrow walks into a pub and meets a friendly barmaid in London during World War II, a spot where he repeatedly returns to escape a mundane life and loving but sometimes trying wife in 1993.

 Oh, I must say you might be takin’ this 1940s theme a bit too far. 




   We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story
adaptation by John Patrick Shanley
First release: 24 Nov 1993

Based on the children’s book of the same name, Rex tells the story of how he went from the Cretaceous to the modern-day golf course. The story is weak, but the animation and voices are better than the usual 90s fare.

 Greetings friends, and welcome to my shack. My name is Captain Neweyes, and I live in the far future where all the stars and all the planets have had to learn to get along. 




   Dilbert
by Scott Adams
First time travel: 19 Dec 1993

 Make sure nothing changes because of my visit or it will kill everyone in the future. 



Romance Time Travel of 1993
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Outlander 3: Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

  Tempest in Time by Eugenia Riley

  Two Hearts in Time by Eugenia Riley

  Stolen Brides 1: Forever His by Shelly Thacker




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Tomorrow Calling by Tim Leandro, 1993 [alternate timelines ]

  Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, 13 Apr 1993 [parallel stories from different times ]

  “The Four-Thousand-Year-Old Boy” by Lawrence Dyer, Interzone, Jul 1993 [immortality ]

  Muddle Earth by John Brunner, Sep 1993 [long sleep ]

  Demolition Man by Marco Brambilla, 8 Oct 1993 [long sleep ]

  Blue Flame by Cassian Elwes (Elwes, director), Dec 1993 [no definite time travel ]



   “Another Story or
a Fisherman of the Inland Sea”
by Ursula K. Le Guin
First publication: A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)

At 18, Hideo leaves his family and his planet, O, to become part of a group that invents instantaneous tranportation—a device that ends up taking him back to the time that he first left Planet O.

 So: once upon a time when I was twenty-one years old I left my home and came on the NAFAL ship Terraces of Darranda to study at the Ekumenical Schools on Hain. 


   Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of . . .
by Todd Strasser
First time travel: 1994 (Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of School)

Most of Strasser’s 17 Help! books trap young Jake Sherman in the body of this or that adult (or dog), but two of the books have the boy repeating the day over and over (. . . in the First Day of School and . . . in the First Day of Summer Camp).

 It was the first day again! 




   “Women on the Brink of a Cataclysm”
by Molly Brown
First publication: Interzone, Jan 1994

Joanna, a successful sculptor in New York, agrees to be the traveler for her friend Toni’s time machine, but what neither of them knows is that any travel backward in time will start an avalanche of various artist Joannas going back and forth between alternate universes.

 “Even if you’ve found a way, I’m not going back,” she said. “No way am I going back. Ever. This is my life now, my world, and I like it. Though . . .” She paused a moment, and her face—my face—crumpled into a mass of lines. Oh God, I thought, I don’t look as old as her, do I? She blinked hard, several times, as if she was trying not to cry. “How’s Katie? Is she all right?” 




   “The Tourist”
by Paul Park
First publication: Interzone, Feb 1994

Once the time-travel tourist business gets going, there’s no stopping it, not to mention all those travelers who feel they have business with Hitler or Stalin—which brings about an interesting theory of time not being a continuum at all, all told through the personal lens of one recently divorced man who buys a ticket for Paleolithic Spain and sets out after his ex-wife.

 We just can’t keep our hands off, and as a result, Cuba has invaded prehistoric Texas, the Empire of Ashok has become a Chinese client state, and Napoleon is in some kind of indirect communication with Genghis Khan. 




   The Quantum Physics of Time Travel
by David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood
First publication: Scientific American, Mar 1994

I propose that all writers of time travel fiction should be required to read certain articles, and this is the first. Deutsch and Lockwood do an admirable job of describing the well-known Grandfather Paradox and the lesser known paradox of the causal loop (in which, for example, an art critic brings a book of famous paintings back to the artist before the time when the paintings were painted, and this book then inspires those very paintings, leaving the question of who created the paintings).

The article then tries to unwind these paradoxes in classical physics, where there is but one universe. In this universe, a time traveler who returns to the past can do nothing except that which was already done. For example, the traveler simply cannot kill his or her own grandfather before Grandpa meets Grandma because we know (by the birth of the traveler) that that didn’t happen. So, something in the universe must stop the murder. Things must happen as they happened.

But, say Deutsch and Lockwood, this conspiracy of the universe to preserve consistency violates the Autonomy Principle, according to which “it is possible to create in our immediate environment any configuration of matter that the laws of physics permit locally, without reference to what the rest of the universe may be doing.” In other words, if it’s physically possible for the traveler to point a gun at Grandpa, then the fact that elsewhen in the universe Grandpa must knock up Grandma cannot interfere with the traveler’s ability to pull the trigger.

Deutsch and Lockwood use the Autonomy Principle to reject something, but it’s classical physics they reject, not time travel. In a similar way, for stories that rely on a Causal Loop Paradox, Deutsch and Lockwood ask: Just where did the original idea of the paintings come from? They reject that the paintings might have come from nowhere (TANSTAAFL!), and again they reject classical physics.

Personally, I hope that time travel writers don’t fully embrace the Autonomy Principle and TANSTAAFL, because I want more wonderful stories where, in fact, there is but one history of events, the future and past may both be fixed, free will is an illusion, and free lunches exist. Hooray for “—All You Zombies—”!

But with classical physics banned, what else is there? Deutsch and Lockwood turn to Everett’s Many Worlds model wherein each collapse of the quantum wave function results in a new universe. When a time traveler goes to the past, they say, the arrival of the traveler creates a new multiverse, and this multiverse does not need to act the same as the original. Grandpa can die! The artist can be given inspiration from an artist doppleganger in the original universe!

Noteably, though, Deutsch and Lockwood never discuss how time travel might cause the same kind of universe splitting as the collapse of the wave function, but never mind. What they do discuss is how the new universe must respond to changes, and many stories where changing the past is possible fall down on this account. For example, if you change the past so that the reason for your trip to the past no longer exists, then when you return to the present you should find a new version of yourself who never considered traveling to the past. Multiverse time travelers should read this article just to understand that the present they return to may very well have another versin of themselves. Two Marty McFlies!

One final note: Of course we don’t live in a classical physics universe. That's clear from the many experiments that support quantum physics. But living in a quantum world doesn’t immediately imply Many Worlds. Could time travel exist in a single quantum universe? Or does it? For thoughts on that, check out the online “Scientific American article “Time Travel Simulation Resolves Grandfather Paradox” by Lee Billings.

 In the art critic story, quantum mechanics allows events, from the participants’ perspective, to occur much as Dummett describes. The universe that the critic comes from must have been one in which the artist did, eventually, learn to paint well. In that universe, the pictures were produced by creative effort, and reproductions were later taken to the past of another universe. There the paintings were Indeed plagiarized—if one can be said to plagiarize the work of another version of oneself—and the painter did get \“some- thing for nothing.” But there is no para- dox, because now the existence of the pictures was caused by genuine creative effort, albeit in another universe. 




   Time Chasers
aka Tangents
by David Giancola (Giancola, director)
First release: 17 Mar 1994

Before watching this movie (about amateur inventor Nick Miller’s time machine in a two-prop plane and the evil corporation that tries to take it over), I never realized that the word “unwatchable” had degrees. Of course, the movie itself is unwatchable, but in a genuinely inoffensive, cultish way; the self-absorbed add-on commentary from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 hosts who presented it in 1997 on early-morning tv is categorically unwatchable.

 You brought us up here this morning to look at your—time machine?! 




  Time Traders #5
Firehand
by Andre Norton and P.M. Griffin
First publication: Jun 1994

So how do you battle a powerful, time-traveling alien race who visited Earth in the far distant past? Ross Murdoch has the right idea: You go back in time yourself to set up a resistance in the Dominion of Virgin civilazation, which was wiped out by the murderous, bald aliens. And you get yourself a love interest.

 . . . she kissed him joyfully. 




   Boys’ Life’s The Time Machine
adapted by Seymour Reit and Ernie Colon
First publication: Boys’ Life, Jun 1994

Nearly a century after the original publication of Wells’s tale, author Seymour Reit and artist Ernie Colon faithfully the comic book version up to date. The art was enjoyable, but to me, the traveller’s connection with Weena is downplayed in exchange for werewolfish Morlocks.

 After much study I’ve discovered that we can travel through time just as we travel through space . . . 




   Babylon 5
created by J. Michael Straczynski
First time travel: 10 Aug 1994

In the 23rd century, a space station serves as a crossroads for humans, aliens, and science fiction tropes including, of course, time travel.

I was never drawn into this program in the way I was for Next Generation, Voyager, and even DS9. I think that’s partly because of weak dialog and acting and also, for me, the cast of characters never created interrelationships that felt like a family.
  1. Babylon Squared (10 Aug 1994) Babylon 4 unstuck in time
  2. Comes the Inquisitor (25 Oct 1995) man from 1888 London
  3. War Without End (13-20 May 1996) back to Babylon 4

 This is nuts! A station doesn’t just disappear and then reappear four years later like some kind of Flying Dutchman. 

—“Babylon Squared”






   The Magic School Bus
by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
First time travel: 8 Sep 1994

In The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs, Miss Frizzle and her charges turn the bus into a time machine that takes them to the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. The bus had several other adventures in time, too, although not all by Cole and Degen.
  1. Dinosaur Detectives (2002) Chapter Book 9
  2. At the First Thanksgiving by Joanna Cole
  3. Builds the Statue of Liberty by Anne Capeci
  4. Flies with Dinosaurs by Martin Schwabacher
  5. Ancient Egypt (2001) Mrs. Frizzle 1
  6. Medieval Castle (2003) Mrs. Frizzle 2
  7. Imperial China (2005) Mrs. Frizzle 3

 Class, we’re in the late triassic period—the time of the early dinosaurs! 




   Timecop
by Mark Verheiden (Peter Hyams, director)
First release: 14 Sep 1994

When I was a teen, my friends and I (hi Dan and Paul) produced a fanzine called Free Fall. What’s that got to do with Timecop? For a short time, I was part of a group called APA 5, which Paul introduced me to. We would all send our fanzines to a central location, where they would be collated and the resulting giant fanzine sent back to each of us—one of whom was the eventual Hollywood writing success, Mark Verheiden. Oh, and in this movie, Time Enforcement Commission agent Van Damme goes back in time to blow lots of stuff up in hopes of saving his already-blown-up wife.

 I can’t tell you anything. He’ll send somebody back to wipe out my grandparents. It’ll be like I’ve never existed. My mother, my father, my wife, my kids, my fucking cat. 




   The Simpsons
created by Matt Groening
First time travel: 30 Oct 1994

Homer’s first time travel was part of the fifth Halloween montage in a segment called “Time and Punishment” (aka “Homer’s Time Travel Nightmare”) where each tiny dinosaur he stomps on alters his own life. The next bit I saw was Professor Frink, who built and used the chronotrike in “Springfield Up,” attempting to tell his young self to choose a different career.
  1. Treehouse of Horror V (30 Oct 1994) Butterfly Effect spoof
  2. Springfield Up (18 Feb 2007) Frink’s chronotrike
  3. Treehouse of Horror XXIII (7 Oct 2012)    Back to the Future spoof

 Homer: [to self] Okay, don’t panic! Remember the advice Dad gave you on your wedding day.
Grandpa: [in flashback] If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything, because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine. 




   Dog City
produced by Jim Henson Productions
First time travel: 12 Nov 1994

This combined animation/muppet show from Jim Hensen Productions gets an extra half star just because the main characters are all dogs, one of who explains how a time machine has completely altered Dog City in the episode “Future Schlock’ (12 Nov 1994).

 Due to the use of a time machine, events were changed in Dog City’s past, which naturally affected Dog City’s future, which was Dog City’s present, of course. 


   A.J.’s Time Travelers
by Barry Friedman (Mike Finney, director)
First episode: 3 Dec 1984

In the four episodes of this Fox Network Saturday morning show, teenaged Commander A.J. Malloy leads a crew through horribly written educational trips through time including visits to Imhotep, Newton, Gutenberg and the Tuskegee Airmen, Salem, Santa, and more.

I wish I knew more about when this aired. The first episode was definitely “Imhotep&rdquo,; since that is where A.J. meets his crew; it might have aired as early as 3 Dec 1984.

 Having a conversation with a dog in a time machine and you think something can be impossible? 



Romance Time Travel of 1994
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Remembrance by Jude Deveraux

  When Lightning Strikes by Kristin Hannah

  Mariana by Susanna Kearsley




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Dragonriders of Pern #12: The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, Oct 1994 [no time travel ]



   天は赤い河のほとり (Series)
English title: The Red River Series, aka Anatolia Story (translated from Japanese)
by Chie Shinohara
First chapter: Sho̅jo Comic, 1995

Shortly after her first kiss, fifteen-year-old Yuri is transported back to the Hittite Empire in ancient Anatolia where she becomes involved in royal intrigue.

The adventure was originally published in sixty chapters of Sho̅jo Comic starting in early 1995. The chapters were collected into 28 volumes for book publication, also starting in 1995. For me, it’s unique enough that I’ll break the rule of no-post-1969 comic book time travel.

Please send me a note if you know the date of the first Sho̅jo, or better yet, please send a scan of the cover!

 This place looks like the prop room for the Trojan War. 




Tim’s stash, still in the garage.

   The Goosebumps Books
by R.L. Stine
First time travel: Jan 1995

Tim was seven when the Goosebumps books first arrived, the perfect age to be creeped out by R.L. Stine (although Tim preferred the Animorphs). At least three of the original series had some time travel, as did many of the later Give Yourself Goosebumps books. Much of the time travel in those choose-your-own-adventure style of books occurred in alternative endings.
  1. A Night in Terror Tower (Jan 1995) Goosebumps 27
  2. The Cuckoo Clock of Doom (Feb 1995) Goosebumps 28
  3. Escape from the Carnival of Horrors (Jul 1995) G.Y.G. 1
  4. Tick Tock, You’re Dead (Nov 1995) G.Y.G. 2
  5. Trapped in Bat Wing Hall (Dec 1995) G.Y.G. 3
  6. The Knight in Screaming Armor (Sep 1996) G.Y.G. 9
  7. Vampire Breath (Nov 1996) Goosebumps 49
  8. Deep in the Jungle of Doom (Nov 1996) G.Y.G. 11
  9. Scream of the Evil Genie (Jan 1997) G.Y.G. 13
  10. The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island (Sep 1997) G.Y.G. 21
  11. Return to the Carnival of Horror (Oct 1997) G.Y.G. 22
  12. Return to Terror Tower (May 1998) G.Y.G. Special 2
  13. Revenge of the Body Squeezers (Jun 1999) G.Y.G. Special 6
  14. Into the Twistor of Terror (Aug 1999) G.Y.G. 38
  15. Danger Time (Jan 2000) G.Y.G. 41
  16. Heads You Lose! (May 2010) Horrorland 15

 It must have been my wish, I thought.
My birthday wish.
After Tara tripped me and I fell on my cake, I wished I could go back in time and start my birthday all over again.
Somehow my wish came true.
Wow! I thought. This is kind of cool. 






   Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller
First time travel: 2 Jan 1995

Seven seasons with nine time-travel episodes including the most troublesome “Trials and Tribble-ations.”
  1. Past Tense I/II (2/9 Jan 1995) back 300 years
  2. Visionary (2 Feb 1995) O’Brian jumps forward several hours
  3. The Visitor (9 Oct 1995) Sisko skips through timelines
  4. Little Green Men (13 Nov 1995) to 1947 Roswell
  5. Accession (26 Feb 1996) Akorem, a poet from 200 years past
  6. Trials and Tribble-ations (4 Nov 1996) take a good guess
  7. Children of Time (5 May 1997) Defiant crew visit their descendants
  8. Wrongs Darker than Death . . . (1 Apr 1998) Kira back to mother’s time
  9. Time’s Orphan (20 May 1998) Molly O’Brien falls into time portal
  10. The Sound of Her Voice (10 Jun 1998) The Defiant answers a distress call

 We do not discuss it with outsiders. 

—Worf in “Trials and Tribble-ations”






   Star Trek: Voyager
created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor
First time travel: 30 Jan 1995

Seven seasons with 12 time-travel episodes, two of which featured Kess’s namesake, Kes.
  1. Time and Again (30 Jan 1995) back one day to save a planet
  2. Eye of the Needle (20 Feb 1995) contact an old Romulan ship
  3. Future’s End I/II (13/20 Nov 1996) back to 1900s via 2900 AD technology
  4. Before and After (9 Apr 1997) Kes skips through her life
  5. Year of Hell I/II (5/12 Nov 1997) Krenim temporal ship
  6. Timeless (18 Nov 1998) 15 years in the future
  7. Relativity (12 May 1999) Seven becomes a time cop
  8. Fury (3 May 2000) Kes wants to change her past
  9. Shattered (17 Jan 2001) Chakotay steps between times
  10. Endgame (23 May 2001) future Voyager hatches a plan

 As they say in the Temporal Mechanics Department: There’s no time like the present. 


   From Time to Time
by Jack Finney
First publication: Feb 1995

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.

 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&mdash 






   Lois and Clark
created by Deborah Joy LeVine
First time travel: 26 Mar 1995

Four seasons with 7 time-travel episodes:
  1. Tempus Fugitive (26 Mar 1995) to 1966 (H.G. Wells, Tempus)
  2. And the Answer Is . . . (21 May 1995) time traveler’s diary (Tempus)
  3. Tempus Anyone? (21 Jan 1996) future alternate universe, Tempus
  4. Soul Mates (13 Oct 1996) back to prevent a curse
  5. ’Twas the Night before Mxymas (15 Dec 1996)    Christmas Eve time loop
  6. Meet John Doe (2 Mar 1997) future Tempus runs for president
  7. Lois and Clarks (9 Mar 1997) future Tempus traps Clark

 Lois, did you know that in the future you're revered at the same level as Superman? Why, there are books about you, statues, an interactive game—you’re even a breakfast cereal. 




   The Outer Limits (2nd Series)
created by Leslie Stevens
First episode: 5 May 1995

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 Limts. After one season, the network will be ours, and we can continue for many happy seasons into the future.
  1. Virtual Future (5 May 1995) time travel or v.r.?
  2. Stitch in Time (14 Jan 1996) murderer with a time machine
  3. Falling Star (30 Jun 1996) pop music fan from the future
  4. Vanishing Act (21 Jul 1996) aliens unintentionally time travel
  5. Tribunal (14 May 1999) to Nazi concentration camps (Prentice)
  6. Breaking Point (18 Feb 2000) time traveler to wife’s death
  7. Decompression (30 Jun 2000) time traveler vs. politician
  8. Gettysburg (28 Jul 2000) to U.S. Civil War (Prentice)
  9. Time to Time (11 Aug 2001) woman to father’s death (Prentice)
  10. Final Appeal (3 Sep 2000) Stitch in Time continuation
  11. Patient Zero (23 Mar 2001) attempt to prevent deadly virus
  12. Abduction (18 Aug 2001) teens vs alien (with 2s of time travel)

 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! 




   The Langoliers
adapted by Tom Holland
First aired: 14-15 May 1995 (made-for-tv)

As in Stephen King’s novella of the same name, this two-night made-for-tv movie follows the ten people who find that they’re the only ones left on board a transcontinental flight. Even after they land, nobody else is on the ground. In order of importance, the movie’s about (1) the characters, (2) horror, and (3) a little speculative fiction. In the end, the resolution involving time is the same as in the book.

 I’ve been sitting here, running all these old stories through my head, you know: time warps, space warps, alien raiding parties. I mean, we really don’t know if there’s anything left down there, do we? 




   A Young Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur’s Court
by Frank Encarnacao and Ralph L. Thomas (Thomas, director)
First aired: 27 May 1995 (made-for-tv)

Michael York plays Merlin to teenage rock-and-roll hopeful Hank Morgan is zapped back to the round table Mark-Twain-style by a wonky speaker.

 Lancelot? This is awesome. 


   “Time’s Revenge”
by Pauline Ashwell
First publication: Analog, Jun 1995

A housewife has a chance encounter with a time-traveler who deals in ancient artifacts, after which the two of them have time-to-time encounters.

 I had not realised how important the Time Traveler’s visits had become in my pleasant, prosperous, humdrum existence. 




   Wendy’s 3D Color Classics’
The Time Machine
adapted by Neal Adams
First publication: third issue of 1995, Summer 1995

My strongest memory of Neal Adams comes from his artwork and plotting for the final eleven issues of the original X-Men. By that time, I felt that Marvel was in decline, but The Strangest Teens of All! still had my attention even if they didn’t yet have time travel. Much later, Adams adapted Wells’s famous tale in a 3D mini-comic giveaway for Wendy’s kids’ meals in a style that’s remniscent of his early 1970s work on Tower of Shadows.

In addition to the wonderful Neal Adams art, I’m also intrigued by the ChromaDepth® 3D glasses in which different wavelengths are shifted left or right a differing amount in the two eyepieces to create a 3D effect. If I understand it right, this means that Adams could draw the comic normally, and the 3D effect is added in the coloring process.

 This exciting comic can be read as is or with the new type of 3-D glasses provided. Look through the lens and you’ll see full color pictures turn into dazzling 3-D right before your eyes! 




   The Time-Traveling Terraformers
by Pauline Ashwell
First story: Analog, Aug 1995

Sandy Jennings, an orphan and a red-headed Ph.D. student in microbiology, is recruited into a terraforming project by a group of several hundred time travelers who work in a loosely defined, non-authoritarian structure that spans years of their lifetimes and eons of the planet’s time. Sandy is not seen in the third and fourth stories, which show nick-of-time recruitments of vulcanologist Simon Hardacre and plankton expert Haru.

I liked these last two stories, especially the character of Haru, but I longed for more development beyond what Sandy had already shown us of their common universe.
  1. Hunted Head (Aug 1995) Analog
  2. One Thousand Years (May 2000)    Analog
  3. Out of Fire (Mar 2001) Analog
  4. Elsewhere (Jun 2001) Analog

 Knowledge, absolute and definite knowledge of the future as it affects yourself, is never any use. Whether it is bad or good, you cannot do anything that will change it. It simply takes away your power to decide. 




   A Kid in King Arthur’s Court
by Michael Part and Robert L. Levy (Michael Gottlieb, diretor)
First release: 11 Aug 1995

This time around, the Yankee is failed little-leaguer Calvin Fuller who’s pulled back to Camelot where we see him with a flashlight, a Walkman, roller blades, superglue, a mountain bike with training wheels, bubble gum, karate, a candy bar, a Swiss Army knife, an aging Arthur and a pretty young princess.

 Swiss Army knife! The very name conjurs up greatness! 




   “The Chronology Protection Case”
by Paul Levinson
First publication: Analog, Sep 1995

When six of seven physicists (plus one pretty wife) in a time-travel research group meet untimely ends, forensic examiner Phil D’Amato suspects that a paradox-paranoid universe is looking out for itself.

 The drive back to Westchester was harrowing. Two cars nearly side swiped me, and one big-ass truck stopped so suddenly in front of me that I had all I could do to swerve out of crashing into it and becoming an instant Long Island Expressway pancake. 






   Star Trek: Gargoyles
created by Greg Weisman
First time travel: 14 Sep 1995

What’s that? You didn’t realize that Tim’s favorite childhood cartoon was part of the Star Trek universe? And I suppose you also believe that Doc Brown had nothing to do with Brownian motion?! According to the creator, this universe has a fixed time line in which you may travel but not change things—what he calls “working paradoxes,” though my memory holds only one time-travel episode, “Vows” (14 Sep 1995).

 You may have prevented me from altering the past, but you failed too. You see I have clear memories of your little inspirational about keeping my vows of love. I never forgot it. Obviously history is immutable. 




   The Magic School Bus
created by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
First time travel: 23 Sep 1995

Apart from “The Busasaurus,” in which The Magic School Bus in the Time of Dinosaurs comes to the little animated screen (although only with the Cretaceous period), I don’t know whether Miss Frizzle and her charges ever took any other trips through time.

 To really understand a dinosaur, you really need to walk in its shoes. 




   Mirror, Mirror
created by Poise Graeme-Evans
First episode: 30 Sep 1995

Troubled 14-year-old Jo Tiegan is given a mirror that lets her visit back-and-forth with another girl who lives in her very bedroom in 1919 New Zealand.

 I was just positioning the mirror for your daughter. . . . Jo, you must leave it right there. It’s right for it to be there. By tomorrow morning, you’ll understand. 




   Josh Kirby Movies
aka Josh Kirby . . . Time Warrior
first movie by Paul Callisi, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris (Ernest D. Farino, director)
First movie: 24 Oct 1995

Fourteen-year-old boy Josh Kirby teams with alien girl Azabeth Siege to have world-saving vhs adventures in time.
  1. Chapter 1, Planet of the Dino-Knights (24 Oct 1995)
  2. Chapter 2, The Human Pets (31 Oct 1995)
  3. Chapter 3, Trapped on Toyworld (21 Nov 1995)
  4. Chapter 4, Eggs from 70 Million B.C. (19 Dec 1995)
  5. Chapter 5, Journey to the Magic Cavern (16 Apr 1996)
  6. Chapter 6, Last Battle for the Universe (21 May 1996)

 Irwin 1138: Luckily, I had just perfected a chrono-displacement device capable of launching inanimate objects into the fourth dimension.
Josh: Wait! You invented a time machine?
Irwin 1138: Isn’t that just what I said? 




   Goosebumps TV Show
developed by Deborah Forte
First time travel: 3 Nov 1995

R.L. Stine’s creepy kids’ books translated to tv, but for me, the pace on the small screen was always slow. A couple episodes had definite time travel, and some of the episodes were filmed in Bellevue, WA, where I went to junior high school, but I haven’t recognized any landmarks.
  1. The Cuckoo Clock of Doom (3 Nov 1995) redo birthday
  2. A Night in Terror Tower (25 Feb 1996) English castle

 So Tara has never been born. I suppose there’s some way to go back in time to get her, right? I guess I probably ought to do that. And I will . . . one of these days. 

—“The Cuckoo Clock of Doom”






   Star Truck: Animaniacs
by Earl Kress (Audi Paden, director)
First publication: 4 Nov 1995

The Warner kids beam onto the Star Truck ship in the year 2995 where Captain Mr Spork, Squattie, and the rest of the gang don’t realize that they are a mid-twentieth century tv show.

If you don’t get knocked out by the giant Star Truck hammer, you’ll briefly spot Pinky and the Brain in this satire. That pair had their own chronoatypical adventures in separate episodes of Animaniacs and their own show.

N.B. the Warners often visited movie or tv sets in different times in which it wasn’t clear whether the other characters knew that they were actors in a dramatical production. In Star Truck the Warners could well be in the future, but in other episodes (e.g., Hercules Unwound, which costars Pinky and the Brain), the fourth wall is shattered.

 Yakko: Come on, Cap, let’s go back to New York in the 1930s.
Dot: You can fall in love with Joan Collins—
Yakko: —and then she’ll die. 




   Wishbone
created by Peter Orton and Ellia Den
First time travel: 7 Nov 1995

Wishbone, our favorite imaginative dog, is an different literary adventurer during every episode, including one scarey 1995 tale (“Bark to the Future”) where he became the traveller. The kids loved this show, especially Hannah (and me).

 This is the problem with time. I’m hungry now, but snack time is later. Why can’t later be now? 



Romance Time Travel of 1995
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Time Travelers 1: Both Sides of Time by Caroline B. Cooney

  Pirates by Linda Lael Miller

  Timeswept Bride by Eugenia Riley

  A Tryst in Time by Eugenia Riley

  Awaken, My Love by Robin Schone




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard, 27 Feb 1995 [parallel stories from different times ]

  “Once and Future” by Mercedes Lackey, Excalibur, May 1995 [reincarnation ]

  Time Travel Through the Bible by Arden Albrecht and Don Hall, 23 Oct 1995 [despite title, no time travel ]



   The Busy World of Richard Scarry
created by Richard Scarry
First time travel: 1996



In one Busytown episode, two of Richard Scarry’s cheerful characters, Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm, are accidentally taken back to Colonial Busytown by Mr. Fix-It’s Tardis-like time machine. Fortunately, Mr. Fix-It’s ancestor helps them fix the broken lever in the time machine (even before today’s Mr. Fix-It can rescue them in another familiar looking time machine).

 This isn’t any old elevator, boys. It’s a time machine! This is for traveling through time. 




   Dinosaur Valley Girls
by Donald F. Glut (Glut, director)
First release: circa 1996

Afterction-movie hero Tony Markham is tossed by a magic talisman into a time of dinosaurs, cavemen, and sex-starved cavewomen who shave their legs with clam shells (including one named Buf-Fee). Someday I must decide whether movies with simultaneous dinosaurs and cavemen can be classified as time travel or must always be relegated to mere fantasy.

 That skull you saw, those slabs and more, are all carbon-dated at less than a million years old. My only explanation is that there once existed a place I call Dinosaur Valley, where unknown forces somehow brought together creatures from different times and places. 




   “A Note from the Future”
by Cathy Camper
First publication: Wired, Jan 1996

Wired prints a handwritten note from the future.

 HA HA Wish they cold truly see how futur isrelly. 




   12 Monkeys
by David Peoples and Janet Peoples (Terry Gilliam, director)
First release: 5 Jan 1996

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.

 And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right, Owen? I mean, psychiatry: it’s the latest religion. We decide what’s right and wrong. We decide who’s crazy or not. I’m in trouble here. I’m losing my faith. 




   Pastwatch: The Redemption of
Christopher Columbus
by Orson Scott Card
First publication: 1996

Diko, a second-generation researcher in a project that observes the past, discovers that it’s actually possible to send objects to the past and that a previous timeline did just this to alter Christopher Columbus’s fate; now, Diko and two others propose a further alteration that involves three travelers going to the 15th century.

 All of history was available, it seemed, and yet Pastwatch had barely scratched the surface of the past, and most watchers looked forward to a limitless future of rummaging through time. 


   Johnny and the Bomb
by Terry Pratchett
First publication: Apr 1996

In this third book of the series, teenaged Johnny Maxwell and his yahoo friends uses Mrs. Tachyon’s shopping trolley to travel through time to World War II.

  . . . if you go mad, do you know you’ve gone mad? If you don’t, how do you know you’re not mad? 




   Duckman
created by Everett Peck
First time travel: 20 Apr 1996

Seinfeld’s pal, George Costanza, lends his voice to private detective, lousy family man, and general lech Eric Tiberius Duckman, who in one amusing episode was visited by multiple future selfs warning him of multiple future mistakes.

 Actually, it seems that while trying to set the alarm on my clock radio, I may have ripped a hole in the time-space continuum. 

—Ajax in “The Once and Future Duck”




   Dexter’s Laboratory
created by Genndy Tartakovsky
First time travel: 28 Apr 1996

Boy Genius Dexter makes amazing invention after amazing invention including a time machine that his annoying sister Dee Dee first used in the first episode, “DeeDeemensional.” I enjoyed the way it ended.
  1. Deedeemensional (28 Apr 1996)    Dee Dee goes back an hour
  2. Ego Trip (10 Dec 1999) destroys terminator robots and visits future

 If there were a message that was so important it required time travel, I certainly would not send my idiot sister. 

—Dexter to Dee Dee in “Deedeemensional”


   “Time Travelers Never Die”
by Jack McDevitt
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 1996

Dave Dryden and his pal Shel have a great life traveling through time, visiting with Napolean and DaVinci, until Shel dies. Or does he?

I was lucky enough to meet Jack McDevitt at Jim Gunn’s workshop in Lawrence. He was always encouraging, kind, insightful and upbeat—for me, the best of the resident writers at the workshop.

 Time travel should not be possible in a rational universe. 




   Early Edition
created by Bob Brush
First episode: 28 Sep 1996

A calico cat brings Gary tomorrow’s newspaper every morning—and at least two episodes in the four seasons sent softspoken Gary back in time (to the Chicago Fire in “Hot Time in the Old Time” and to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in “Everybody Goes to Rick’s). Go Gary!

One of the reasons this show appealed to me is the occurrence of a strong, introverted lead character, which is a rarity in all fiction.

 What if, by some magic, you found the power to really change things? People, events, maybe even your life. Would you even know where to start? Maybe you can’t know. Until it happens. 




   Richie Rich Cartoon
by Gary Conrad, Robert Schecter and Alicia Marie Schudt
First time travel: 5 Oct 1996

In the 1962 Richie Rich comic book, the poor little rich kid had an actual time machine, but in the 1996 cartoon (“Back in the Saddle”), he and Gloria just find themselves back in the old west with no machinations needed, where they meet Reggie the Kid.

 Richie, look at the date! June 1896! 




   Star Trek: First Contact
by Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, et. al. (Jonathan Frakes, director)
First release: 22 Nov 1996

Picard and the Enterprise travel back to 2063 to stop the Borg from preventing Zefram Cochrane’s invention of the warp drive.

 Assimilate this! 


   “Crossing into the Empire”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: David Copperfield’s Beyond Imagination, Dec 1996

Mulreany is a trader who travels back to 14th century Byzantium with Coca-Cola and other treats.

 One glance and Mulreany has no doubt that the version of the capital that has arrived on this trip is the twelfth-century one. 




   Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders
by Kenneth J. Berton (Berton, director)
First release: a forgetable day in 1996

A grandfather tells his grandson two stories about Merlin coming to the present day to set up the eponymous mystical shop. Other than that, though, no time traveling.

 Grandpa: You know, actually, that toy monkey reminds me of a story I once wrote for television. Let’s see, what was it? Of course: Merlin!
Grandkid: Merlin?
Grandpa: Merlin the sorcerer. Only it didn’t take place in the time with King Arthur. You see, Merlin used his powers to come to our time, to set up a shop of mystical wonders for all to see. 



Romance Time Travel of 1996
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Time Travelers 2: Out of Time by Caroline B. Cooney

  Legend by Jude Deveraux

  Outlander 4: Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

  When There Is Hope by Jane Goodger

  Creole 1: Frankly, My Dear by Sandra Hill

  A Dance through Time by Lynn Kurland

  Lennox 1: Breath of Magic by Theresa Medeiros

  Phantom in Time by Eugenia Riley




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Timelock by Joseph John Barmettler and J. Reifel [long sleep ]

  “Note from the Future” by Ray Vukcevich, Wired, Jan 1996 [no definite time travel ]

  Hellraiser IV: Bloodline by Peter Atkins (Kevin Yagher, director), 8 Mar 1996 [long life ]

  Dragonriders of Pern #13: Red Star Rising by Anne McCaffrey, Aug 1996 [no time travel ]
  aka Dragonseye

 

158 items are in the time-travel list for these search settings.
Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (main@colorado.edu)