The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 Related to: The Twilight Zone
 from antiquity to 2017



   “Yesterday Was Monday”
by Theodore Sturgeon
First publication: Unknown, Jun 1941

Harry Wright goes to bed on Monday night, skips over Tuesday, and wakes up in a Wednesday that’s not quite been built yet.

 The weather makers put .006 of one percent too little moisture in the air on this set. There’s three-sevenths of an ounce too little gasoline in the storage tanks under here. 




   “Blind Alley”
aka “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”
by Malcolm Jameson
First publication: Unknown, Jun 1943

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. 


   “What You Need”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lewis Padgett)
First publication: Astounding, Oct 1945

Reporter Tim Carmichael visits Peter Talley, a shopkeeper on Park Avenue who provides for a select clientele things that they will need in the future.

I never include prescience stories in my list, but like Heinlein’s “Life-Line,” this one is an exception, both because of its tone and because it was made into episodes of both Tales of Tomorrow (the tv show) and The Twilight Zone.

   




   The Time Element
by Rod Serling
First aired: 24 Nov 1958 (on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse)

Serling wrote this one-hour time-travel episode as a pilot for a one-hour anthology show, but after it was filmed, Willaim 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. 




   The Twilight Zone
created by Rod Serling
First time travel: 30 Oct 1959

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”).
  1. Walking Distance (30 Oct 1959) Hero to time of youth
  2. Judgment Night (4 Dec 1959) Time Loop in World War II
  3. What You Need (25 Dec 1959) Prescience (no time travel)
  4. The Last Flight (5 Feb 1960) ¤ 42 years beyond WW II
  5. Execution (1 Apr 1960) From 1880 West to 1960 NY
  6. A Stop at Willoughby (6 May 1960) To idyllic past
  7. The Trouble with Templeton (9 Dec 1960) To 1927
  8. Back There (13 Jan 1961) Lincoln in 1865
  9. The Odyssey of Flight 33 (24 Feb 1961) To age of dinosaurs and more
  10. A Hundred Yards over the Rim (7 Apr 1961) From 1847 to 1961
  11. Once Upon a Time (15 Dec 1961) ¤ From 1890s to present
  12. A Quality of Mercy (29 Dec 1961) From 1945 to ’42 in WWII
  13. Death Ship (7 Feb 1963) ¤ Time Loop?
  14. No Time Like the Past (7 Mar 1963) To 1881 Indiana
  15. Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (11 Apr 1963) From age 75 to 30
  16. The Incredible World of Horace Ford (18 Apr 1963)    Hero to Time of Youth
  17. The Bard (23 May 1963) Shakespeare to the present
  18. The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms (6 Dec 1963) To Custer’s Last Stand
  19. Spur of the Moment (21 Feb 1964) ¤ Heroine warns earlier self

 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. 


   “One Life,
Furnished in Early Poverty”
by Harlan Ellison
First publication: Orbit 8, Oct 1970

At 42, Gus Rosenthal is in a place of security, importance, recogntion—in short, the perfect time to dig up that toy soldier that he buried in his back yard 30 years ago with the knowledge that doing so will take him back to that time to be an influence on an angry, bullied 12-year-old Gus.

 My thoughts were of myself: I’m coming to save you. I’m coming, Gus. You won’t hurt any more . . . you’ll never hurt. 


The story also appeared in this 1996 collection.   “Execution”
by George Clayton Johnson
First publication: Scripts and Stories written for “The Twilight Zone”, 1977

A man without conscience who’s about to be hung in 1880 is transported to a scientist’s lab in 1960.

Serling turned Johnson’s story into a 1960 Twilight Zone episode, but I’m uncertain whether the story was published before Johnson’s 1977 restrospective collection. Johnson is also well-known for Logan’s Run, with Jenny Agutter but (sadly) no time travel.

 Commonplace, if somewhat grim, unsocial event known as a necktie party. The guest of dishonor, a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow man, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswelll, in the last quiet moment of a violent life. 

—Opening narration of the Twilight Zone episode




   Twilight Zone: The Movie
by John Landis, et. al. (Landis, et. al, directors)
First release: 28 Jun 1983

The first of the Twilight Zone revivals collected rewrites of three of the original show’s stories 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 early 20th century America, and a man in a Vietnamese jungle during the Second Indochina War.

 Ray, help! Larry! It’s me! 




   The Twilight Zone (2nd Series)
created by Rod Serling
First time travel: 6 Jan 1985

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.
  1. One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty (6 Dec 1985)    Hero to his childhood
  2. A Matter of Minutes (24 Jan 1986) From 9:33 AM to 11:37 AM
  3. Profile in Silver (7 Mar 1986) Kennedy in 1963
  4. The Once and Future King (27 Sep 1986) Elvis in 1954
  5. The Junction (21 Feb 1987) To 1912
  6. Time and Teresa Golowitz (10 Jul 1987) Hero to his youth
  7. Extra Innings (1 Oct 1988) Baseball in 1910

 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!’ 

—JFK in “Profile in Silver”




   The Twilight Zone (3rd Series)
created by Rod Serling
First time travel: 2 Oct 2002

One season with 4 time-travel episodes.
  1. Cradle of Darkness (2 Oct 2002)    to kill baby Hitler
  2. Found and Lost (27 Nov 2002) relive your past
  3. Rewind (5 Feb 2003) short time ago
  4. Memphis (26 Feb 2003) MLK in 1968

 I reminded them that Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people. 


 

10 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)