The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 2000 to 2009

   “Time Out of Joint”
by Pauline Ashwell
First publication: Analog, Jan 2000

A time traveler who makes a living as an antiquities dealer tells a tale of a Greek urn that appeared in two different places at the same time.

 If the Time Traveller sold his wares directly from the maker, modern tests would show that they are only a few years old. They are stored in an underground cavern somewhere in the Pliocene to rack up the appropriate number of centuries, so that tests for thermoluminescence and cosmic ray tracks give the right answer. 


This story appeared in Analog’s Probability Zero series of flash fiction.   “Whose Millennium?”
by Michael A. Burstein
First publication: Analog, Jan 2000

A time-traveling Jew shows up in a police station on the final date of the Hebrew calendar.

 It’s September 29, 2239. 




   Archie Cartoons
originally directed by Hal Sutherland
First time travel: 14 Feb 2000

There were Archie cartoons when I was a kid: The first ones I remember had the Riverdale teens as a pop band (“Sugar, Sugar!”) around the same time as the Monkees, but I don’t recall any time travel then, even if it was directed by Hal Sutherland, soon-to-be director of the animated Star Trek. However, I did spot a later three-part time travel story in Archie’s Weird Mysteries that ran in 2000 (“Archie’s Date with Fate,” “Alternate Riverdales,” and “Teen Out of Time”).

 Free will and predestination aside, I vow to completely redesign my time travel invention to make it safer. 

—Dilton in “Archie’s Date with Fate”




   2000x: Tales of the Next Millennia
produced by Yuri Rasovsky
First time travel: 4 Apr 2000

Yuri Rasovsky brought radio plays back to the future, or at least to the 21st century. The first play, broadcast on 4 Apr 2000, was based on Heinlein’s time travel story, “By His Bootstraps,” with the role of Bob Wilson distinctively voiced by Richard Dreyfuss. I'm not certain, but host Harlan Ellison might be the voice of the narrator in that episode.

At least two later time-travel stories were also produced.
  1. By His Bootstraps (4 Apr 2000) by Robert A. Heinlein
  2. A Sleep and a Forgetting (30 May 2000) by Robert Silverberg
  3. The Hunting Season (27 Jun 2000) by Frank M. Robinson

 2000X is produced by the Hollywood Theater of the Ear in association with National Public Radio. 




   Frequency
by Toby Emmerich (Gregory Hoblit, director)
First release: 28 Apr 2000

In 1999, John Sullivan, living in his boyhood home, finds an old ham radio that his dad had built, he naturally wants to see whether it still works. As it turns out, not only does it work, but it puts him in communication with 1969 where he talks to his dad, Frank, on the very day before Frank’s death in a fire. Frank now avoids the fire, which gives his 1999 son the memories of both a fatherless life and a life where Frank survived but John’s mother did not.

 I want you to hide that wallet: someplace where nobody’s gonna find it for thirty years. 


   “How I Won the Lottery, Broke the Time Barrier (or is that Broke the Time Barrier, Won the Lottery), and Still Wound Up Broke”
by Ian Randal Strock
First publication: Analog, Jun 2000

A lowly lab assistant receives a message from his future self with the winning lottery numbers.

 Tomorrow’s Lotto drawing is for forty-five million dollars. The winning numbers will be 17, 19, 30, 32, 42, and 51. 


   “Built upon the Sands of Time”
by Michael F. Flynn
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2000

Physics professor Owen fitzHugh tells a story in a pub about how a small quantum fluctuation in the past can cause big consequences down the line—and how he may have sent a chronon into the past to do just that.

 I’m not sure. A device to excite time quanta, I think. Into the past, of course. 


from jimloy.com

   “The Invention of Time Travel”
by Jim Loy
First publication: jimloy.com, 1 Jul 2000

After reading Professor Hanson’s acceptance speech to the Swedish Academy, another man tells the real story of the professor’s invention.

 Wanted: Time traveller to please give me a ride in a time machine. Please meet me at 342 E. Snow Way, New York, NY, at noon, July 1, 2000. 




   The Kid
by Audrey Wells (Jon Turteltaub, director)
First release: 7 Jul 2000

I never quite figured out how Russ Duritz meets his own eight-year-old self, Rusty, but the young kid certainly manages to straighten out the older kid.

 So, I’m forty, I’m not married, I don’t fly jets, and I don’t have a dog? I grow up to be a loser. 


   “Quid pro Quo”
by Ray Bradbury
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct 2000

An author, frustrated by the wasted talent of Simon Cross, builds a time machine to bring the wasted Cross back to meet the promising young Cross.

 You do not build a time machine unless you know where you are going. 




   犬夜叉
English title: InuYasha (translated from Japanese)
First episode: 16 Oct 2000

Teen Kagome Higurashi is transported from modern Tokyo to the Japanese Age of Warring States (around 1500 A.D.) where she inhabits the body of her earlier self and fights the demon InuYasha.

The manga comic was adapted into 193 anime episodes in two series (InuYasha and InuYasha: The Final Act, both of which were dubbed in English. I do wish that the translation of the quote shown below had been more true to Dorothy’s line from The Wizard of Oz.

 We really aren’t in Tokyo any more, are we? 


   “Crow’s Feat”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Nov 2000

Mid-list science fiction writer Paul Gallatin runs into scientist Ivan Ivanovich at a party, and the scientist offers to send Paul back to Shakespeare’s time.

 Tell me, how many copies do you think a book would sell if it proved your belief that Shakespeare was a fraud? 


   “Is There Anybody There?”
by Kim Newman
First publication: The New English Library Book of Internet Stories, Nov 2000

More horror than anything else, but amusing nevertheless as an internet stalker in 2001 communicates via a ouija board with a psychic in 1923.

 Always, he would leave memories to cherish; months later, he would check up on his net-pals—his score so far was five institutionalisations and two suicides—just to see that the experience was still vivid. He was determined to crawl into IRENE D’s skull and stay there, replicating like a virus, wiping her hard drive. 




   “The Pottawatomie Giant”
by Andy Duncan
First publication: Sci Fiction, 1 Nov 2000

In the early 1900s, boxer Jess Willard wins the world championship but then snubs Houdini; after he dies, he gets a second chance.

 He opened them to find himself in a far more uncomfortable chair, in a balcony at the Los Angeles Orpheum, in the middle of Harry Houdini’s opening-night performance, November 30, 1915. 


movie poster for Timetravel_0   The John Titor Urban Myth
by Anonymous
First internet post: 2 Nov 2000

I suppose no time-travel list of the third millennium is complete without the urban myth of time-traveler John Titor who began posting messages on the internet in November of 2000, claiming to have come from the year 2036 with dire warnings. Apart from numerous amusing internet pages on the traveler, there are also a handful of published items.
  1. John Titor: A Time Traveler’s Tale (Dec 2003) Book
  2. Time Traveler Zero Zero (2004) Play
  3. Timetravel_0 (Aug 2009) Docudrama
  4. Steins;Gate (Oct 2009) Video game, manga, etc.

 I was just about to give up hope on anyone knowing who Tipler or Kerr was on this worldline. The basics for time travel start at CERN in about a year and end in 2034 with the first “time machine” built by GE. 

—Titor’s first internet post




   South Park
created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone
First time travel: 8 Nov 2000

The first indication of time travel in South Park was in 4th grade when (among other things) Cartman’s Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper Futura S2000 has designs on killing Kenny and taking over the world, but fortunately a robot from the future has come back to protect and serve.
  1. 4th Grade (8 Nov 2000) attempt to return to 3rd grade
  2. Trapper Keeper (15 Nov 2000)    T2 spoof
  3. My Future Self ’n’ Me (4 Dec 2002) Stan’s future self
  4. Goobacks (28 Apr 2004) emigrants from the future
  5. Go God Go XII (8 Nov 2006) Cartman to future religious war

 I have come to destroy that trapper keeper because it was the Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper that belongs to an Eric Cartman in South Park which three years from now manifests itself into an omnipotent super being and destroys all of hu-manity. 




   Dude, Where’s My Car?
by Philip Stark (Danny Leiner, director)
First release: 15 Dec 2000

After a day of whacky adventures, Dude and Sweet find the cosmic continuum transfunctioner, save the world, make up with the twins, and are transported back to a time before the hijinks ensued.

 Wait a second, let’s recap. Last night, we lost my car, we accepted stolen money from a transsexual stripper, and now some space nerds want us to find something we can’t pronounce. I hate to say it, Chester, but maybe we need to cut back on the shibbying. 




   Courage, the Cowardly Dog
created by John R. Dilworth
First time travel: 29 Dec 2000

In one episode (“1000 Years in the Future”) of the misadventures of Courage and his family, an errant meteor knocks them into the future, it’s up to Courage to explore things in the new Banana Republic and get them back to their own time (or maybe chance will have to do that).

 I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more, or the present time, or some combination of the two. 



Romance Time Travel of 2000
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Time after Time 1: Everything in Its Time by Dee Davis

  Once a Pirate by Susan Grant

  The Traveller by Lynn Kurland

  Highlander 3: The Highlander's Touch by Karen Marie Moning

  Embers of Time by Eugenia Riley




No Time Travel. Move along.
  The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, Mar 2000 [viewing the past ]

  Out of Time by Rob Gilmer and Ernest Thompson (Thompson, director), 17 May 2000 [long sleep ]

  Seventeen Again by Stewart St. John, 12 Nov 2000 [fountain of youth ]



  Dragonriders of Pern #15
The Skies of Pern
by Anne McCaffrey
First publication: Feb 2001

Don’t think for a moment that a Threadless world is going to mean the end of dragon drama or traveling between times. After a comet hits the Eastern Ring Sea, F’lessan and other dragonriders make a plan to go back in time to evacuate the devastated coastal holds before the impact.

 “Does that mean we’re to time it?” Mirrim asked T’gellan in a hushed tone as soon as they were past Tunge, who had not recovered from the multiple shocks.
“What else?” F’lessan asked, right behind her, hauling Tai along beside him.
“How else could we do what is to be done?” T’gellan added as he dragged his weyrmate into a near run. “Yes, Ramoth just confirmed it to Monarth.”
“But what do we do first?” Mirrim demanded in a scared voice.
“Monarth’s bespeaking Talina’s Arwith. I’ve told her to take four wings at once to Monaco Bay, to warn Partmaster Zewe and to start moving people to safety.” 




   Power Rangers Time Force
by Judd Lynn and Jackie Marchland
First episode: 3 Feb 2001

In the ninth season of the power rangers, evil mutant Ransik flees from the 30th century back to our time. Rangers pursue. I don’t know whether other years had time travel.

 If I can’t rule the present, then I’ll just rule the paaaaaast! 


The two stories were expanded into this 2009 novel.   The Titus Oates Stories
by Brenda W. Clough
First story: Analog, Apr 2001

Titus Oates, a member of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, is taken from the time stream and revived in a bewildering 21st century, whereupon he does what any self-respecting explorer would do—heads to the stars!

The two Oates stories (“May Be Some Time” in the April 2001 Analog and “Tiptoe on a Fence Post” in the Jul/Aug 2002 Analog) were combined and expanded for the 2009 novel, Revise the World.

 Not only are you a person rescued from a tragic death, but your removal is supremely unlikely to trigger any change in the time-stream, since your body was lost: presumed frozen solid, entombed in a glacier for eons . . . 




   “What Weena Knew”
by James Van Pelt
First publication: Analog, Apr 2001

James Van Pelt kindly had coffee with me and signed a baseball for me at a Denver science fiction convention—oh, and he wrote (among other things) this fine story of Weena from the moment that H.G. Wells’s time traveller rescued her from the river.

I met the prolific and kind James Van Pelt at a convention in Denver, where we talked about one of his students who later came to Boulder to study computer science. I had misinterpreted a biography of Van Pelt in Analog as if it were an obituary, so I was happy to see the outstanding writer alive and willing to sign a baseball that I presented to him.

 Then a vice clamped her upper arm. A surge. A tremendous force, and she was clear of the stream. Air! There was air to breathe, but all she could do was cough. She was being carried. Her cheek rested on skin. Hough arms wrapped her close until they were on the bank. Gently, her rescuer put her down. Rock warmed her back; her hands lay flat in the heat, her head dropped onto the warmth. Against the sky stood a figure stragely shaped. Weena’s vision swirled—she could barely focus—but before she passed out, she saw in wonder, he was a giant. 




   Just Visiting
by Jean-Marie Poiré, Christian Clavier and John Hughes (Poiré, director)
First release: 6 Apr 2001

I just wasn’t in the mood for a comedy when I tried to watch this movie where witchcraft transports a 13th-century knight and his servant to the year 2000.

 You could tell from the petulant arch on his furrowed brow that he was not in route to a good deed. 




   Farscape
created by Rockne S. O’Bannon
First time travel: 13 Apr 2001

I enjoyed the interplay of the characters in the first season: Earth astronaut John Crichton who’s sucked through a wormhole in the style of Star Trek Voyager to end up on a living spaceship (Moya) with the Pilot plus four fugitives: Peacekeeper soldier Aeryn, Warrior D’Argo, deposed emperor Rygel XVI, and the priestess Zhaan—all being persued by the obsessed Bialar Crais. That first season had visions of the future but, alas, no time travel. In later seasons my interest waned, even though there was real time travel in one episode, “Different Destinations” (13 Apr 2001).

 Chiana has already told me a few words. Yes. No. Bite me. That’s all I need to know. 

—D’Argo in “Kansas”




   The Poultry Paradox
by Carlos Pedroza (Pedroza, director)
First released: 15 Apr 2001

So which did come first?

 Broadcasting live from the beginning of time, despite everything; we’ll prove that the chicken came before the egg. 




   T2 Novels
by S.M. Stirling
First book: May 2001

There are interminable Terminator spin-offs, and this series is the first. I enjoyed the first book, T2: Infiltrator, set after the second movie with Sarah and 16-year-old son on the run in Paraguay.
  1. T2: Infiltrator (2001)  
  2. T2: Rising Storm (2003)  
  3. T2: The Future War (2004)  

 Come with me if you want to live. 

—John Connor to Kyle Reese in T2: The Future War




   Futurama
created by Matt Groening
First time travel: 6 May 2001

Philip J. Fry never caught my interest the way the Simpsons did, but after suviving a millennium in cryogenic suspension, Philip and his 31st century cohorts do have some wacky time travel, including “The Late Philip J. Fry” wherein the professor’s one-way time machine takes them further and further into futures with a strange resemblance to various sf movie futures.
  1. Time Keeps on Slippin’ (6 May 2001) Chronitons skip time forward
  2. Roswell That Ends Well (9 Dec 2001) back to Area 51 in 1947
  3. The Why of Fry (6 Apr 2003) back to time he was frozen
  4. The Late Philip J. Fry (29 Jul 2010) time machine that only goes forward
  5. Meanwhile (4 Sep 2013) ten second rewind button
  6. All the Presidents’ Heads (28 Jul 2011)    American revolution

 We are travelers from the past, my good one. Since your time, human evolution has diverged. There are we—advanced in intellect and morality—and the dumblocks—stupid, vicious brutes who live underground. 

—from “The Late Philip J. Fry”


   “A Matter of Time”
by Robert Reginald
First publication: Katydid & Other Critters, Jun 2001

When Jake Smith’s neighbor—Stratton Bundford Audray, Ph.D.—invents a time machine, Jake volunteers to be the first human traveler in order to solve a vexing problem about his own ancestry.

 I’ve been tracing my family tree, and ’ve reached this dead end, because Smith is such a common name, and I’d really like to volunteer to make the first manned expedition into the past. 


The story also appeared in this 2010 collection.   “Saving Jane Austen”
by Robert Reginald
First publication: Katydid & Other Critters, Jun 2001

Time travelers Jake Lawson, Patricia Wardon, and their small entourage travel to 1801 England to observe young Jane Austen, who to Jake seems incredibly unimpressive while Patty observes that she is full of sentimental claptrap. Things, however, are not always what they seem.

 This is the fourth timestep I’ve made, and I can never quite get used to arriving downtime with nary a stitch in place. I know the engineers have explained the scientific reasons why this must be so, something about biostatic energy not being transferable to inert objects, but if that’s the case, why don’t we also lose our teeth, our nails, and hair at the same time? 




   Time Squad
created by Dave Wasson
First episode: 8 Jun 2001

In a utopian future, the past starts to unravel and it’s up to Otto, a ten-year-old 21st century orphan, and the rest of the Time Squad to patch things back together.

 That’s the History Instability Alarm! It’s time for another mission! 


   “Grandpa?”
by Edward M. Lerner
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2001

Professor Thaddeus Fitch gives a practical demonstration of the grandfather paradox to his physics classes.

 Imagine that I had the technology with which to visit my grandfather in his youth. Once there, what is to stop me from killing him before he’d had the opportunity to reproduce? But if I did succeed, who was it who had travelled backward . . . 




   劇場版ポケットモンスター セレビィ 時を越えた遭遇（であい
English title: Pokémon 4Ever: Celebi—Voice of the Forest (translated from Japanese)
by Hideki Sonoda (Kunihiko Yuyama, director)
First release: 7 Jul 2001

A tiny Pokéemon Celebi and his boy are chased into the future by a Pokémon hunter.

 They say there’s a sound you can hear when the spirit that protects the forest is time traveling. 




   Burton’s Planet of the Apes
by Pierre Boulle, William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner, et. al. (Tim Burton, director)
First release: 27 Jul 2001

I found two redeeming features in this melodramatic complete remake: Helena Bonham Carter and a time-travel twist at the end that was beyond my understanding.

 In this temple as in the hearts of the apes for whom he saved the planet the memory of General Thade is enshrined forever  


Publicity poster for Writers of the Future   “T.E.A. and Koumiss”
by Steven C. Raine
First publication: Writers of the Future Volume 17, Aug 2001

Time-travel agent Germaine returns to the time of Ghengis Khan along with telepath bimbo Elena, intent on stopping Vlad from installing a millenia-long Russian utopia.

 Vladimir zipped back in time to change the past. With his background, our psych reckons with 90 percent probability that his goal will be to make medieval Russia supreme through guiding the Great Prince here. 


   “Time Out of Mind”
by Everett S. Jacobs
First publication: Writers of the Future Volume 17, Aug 2001

Thomas Randall, young and single, lives in a world that is besotted by bubbles that shift acres from one time to another.

 The rotting carcass of an apatosaurus blocked the intersection of Highway 9 and Needham Road. 




   Samurai Jack
created by Genndy Tartakovsky
First episode: 10 Aug 2001

When the evil Aku returns to threaten the empire, a young prince trains for years to eventually fight and defeat him, but before Aku can be fully vanquished, he sends the prince into the future where he battles through threat after threat (with stories told in pictures more than words) in his quest to return to his own time.

 I thought once like you, but the sword is only a tool. What power has it compared to that of the hand that wields it? 




   Invader Zim
created by Jhonen Vasquez
First time travel: 24 Aug 2001

Tim showed me the one Zim time-travel episode (“Big, Bad Rubber Piggy”) on Christmas Day in 2010. The would-be alien invader Zim plans to send a terminator robot back to kill is nemesis Dib, but the time-travel portal will accept only rubber piggies, which Zim manages to make do with.

 You could prevent Walton Chunky from ever inventing Breakfast Chunks by using temporal object replacement technology! 

—“Big, Bad Rubbery Piggy”


Before publishing a sequel to The Time Machine, Bricker also had a War of the Worlds sequel in this 2010 anthology.

   “Love and Glass”
by Michael Scott Bricker
First publication: Bones of the World, Sep 2001

Stranded at the end of the world, Wells’s time traveller has only one companion, a Morlock descendant whom the traveller dubs George, until others appear, including the predator called The Queen of Hearts.

 The Time Traveller asked him whether he was the last of his kind, George touched his shoulder, and within that look passed understanding. 




   Happy Accidents
by Brad Anderson (Anderson, director)
First release: 12 Sep 2001

Ruby Weaver tells her therapist that her latest beau, Sam Deed, is sweet, kind and quirky—and the fantasy that he’s come back from the year 2470 because of that photo he saw of her (and possibly to make an important change) is nothing more than a game that they play.

 Break the causal chain. 






   Star Trek: Enterprise
created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga
First episode: 26 Sep 2001

You must watch the whole of Enterprise to grok the full arc of the Temporal Cold War with 13 episodes that were more temporal than others:
  1. Cold Front (28 Nov 2001) Crewman Daniels from 31st century
  2. Shockwave I/II (22 May / 18 Sep 2002) forward to 31st century
  3. Future Tense (19 Feb 2003) little time loops and cold war
  4. Twilight (5 Nov 2003) future T’Pol tries to correct past
  5. Carpenter Street (26 Nov 2003) Detroit in 2004
  6. Azati Prime (3 Mar 2004) more of Daniels and Cold War
  7. E² (5 May 2004) meet your own descendants
  8. Zero Hour (26 May 2004) World War II
  9. Storm Front I/II (8/15 Oct 2004) World War II
  10. In a Mirror, Darkly I/II (22/29 Apr 2005)    23rd-century Defiant

 Old T’Pol: There’s a human expression: Follow your heart.
Young T’Pol: What if my heart doesn’t know what it wants?
Old T’Pol: It will, in time, it will. 




   “Other People”
by Neil Gaiman
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2001

The demon of this story carries out an exquisite torture of his victim. At the end, we do discover the victim’s fate, though I wondered what became of the demon. Time travel? I haven’t heard Gaiman talk of this story, but I like to think of it in that way because of the opening and closing quotes.

 “Time is fluid here,” he told the new arrival. 


   “Oven, Witch and Wardrobe”
by Tom Sweeney
First publication: Analog, Oct 2001

Siobhan hopes to advance in the time-travelers' hierarchy by successfully transferring plague-doomed children from 1410 Europe to Colonial America.

 It had seemed such an easy thing to do. Beguile hungry children with food, ship their dirty young butts off to colonial America and return to the twenty-third century to become the first researcher ever to use time travel for humanitarian purposes. 




   Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge
by Jon Cooksey, Ali Marie Matheson and Paul Burnbaum (Mary Lambert, director)
First release: 12 Oct 2001 (made-for-tv)

Teenage witch Marnie Piper has a mom who doesn’t want her to carry on in the witch tradition, a grandma (Debbie Reynolds) who wants to take her on as an apprentice, and Kal—a cute guy hanging around who turns out to be the son of the family nemesis. When Marnie gets trapped by Kal in the other-dimension Halloweentown, Marnie and her troll friend Luke use time travel to escape; later they use a black-holeish “timeline” to get back to the present and save the day.

 You know that looks just like a Stephen Hawking description of a non-stellar black hole. 




   Buffy the Vampire Slayer
created by Joss Whedon
First time travel: 23 Oct 2001

Time travel was not a staple for the young bloodsucker nemesis, but Buffy did slay time on a few occassions.
  1. Life Serial (23 Oct 2001)    in a time loop fighting a mummy hand
  2. Get It Done (18 Feb 2003)    back to meet original slayer makers

 Via, concursus, tempus, spatium, audi me ut imperio. Screw it! Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? But that’s not the issue. I’m the one in charge, and I’m telling you open that portal, now! 

—Willow in “Get It Done”




   Die Abrafaxe—Unter schwarzer Flagge
English title: The Pirates of Tortuga: Under the Black Flag (translated from German)
aka The Abrafaxe: Under the Black Flag
by Everett, Grützke, Platt, and Rietschel (Hahn and Power, directors)
First release: 25 Oct 2001

Abrax (English: Alex), Brabax (Max) and Califax—the young characters from the long-running German comic book, Mosaik—came to the animated screen in this time-travel adventure where they meet the 18th century pirates Anne Bonnie (good and beautiful) and Blackbeard (bad and bearded).

 The future’s a cruel mistress. She never declares her hand until it’s too late. 


The anthology had 12 original time travel stories, including “A Touch Through Time.” Let’s see whether I can manage 12 interesting images to illustrate the stories.   “A Touch Through Time”
by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Dr. Connor Robins uses his time machine to grab extinct animals who are about to die anyway (since things break down if he tries to alter the past), and he also a young actress who died in a 1920s fire.

Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch, an avid geologist and writer, died of breast cancer shortly after this story was published.

 You could steal all the cells you wanted to use in cloning, or some sperm and ova. Anything, provided that the interaction changed nothing about their time-stream. We could even pull some of the bodies forward. 


The story also appeared online for the
Free Fiction Monday
of 5 Aug 2013.		   “Blood Trail”
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Detective Wheldon, the top man in NYPD Homicide is approached by two FBI agents who offer to let him go back in time two weeks to observe the 4th killing by a serial killer.

This is the first story in Future Imperfect, a 2001 anthology of 12 original time-travel stories, co-edited by the prolific anthology Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) who was also a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

 When it became clear that time travel was even a remote possibility, the government bought a lot of scientists. Those who didn’t play got discredited. 


The story also appeared in this 2005 collection.   “Convolution”
by James P. Hogan
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Professor Alymer Arbuthnot Abercrombie is on the verge of completing eight years of work to build a time machine when all of his vital notes are stolen.

 How can he tell you what you’ll do, like some kind of robot executing a program? You’re a human being with free will, for heaven’s sake. What happens if you plumb decide you’re not going to do it? 


The story also appeared in this 2005 collection.   “Doing Time”
by Robin Wayne Bailey
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Samuel Enderby, Director and Chief Researcher of the Enderby Institute for Temporal Studies (and the inventor of the time machine) accidently finds himself stranded in 10,000,000 AD where the only other occupants are criminals who have been launched uptime using his technology.

 A marvelous tool for research has been abused and twisted to a vicious purpose. 


   “In the Company of Heroes”
by Diane Duane
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

A Swiss clockmaker offers billionaire Rob Willingden the chance to go back to his boyhood to stop the theft of his prized collection of Captain Thunder comics.

In 1987, Marvel’s own Roy Thomas was one of the founders of Hero Comics which sported a title called Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt, but the 1960s timing for the comic book of this story makes it more likely to be modeled after The Mighty Thor who premiered in Journey Into Mystery 83 (Aug 1962).

 This is a repair I think you must make. It is irresponsible to leave something broken when it can be fixed— 


Tipler's Physics of Immortality   “Iterations”
by William H. Keith, Jr.
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

An accident near a black hole has seemingly doomed Kevyn Shalamarn along with her copilot and her AI, until they are pulled into a future that could be taken from Frank Tipler’s The Physics of Immortality.

 The goal of this device is nothing less than complete knowledge, knowledge of everything that ever has been, that ever will be, that ever could be. 


The Anasazi Man in a Maze design   “Jeff’s Best Joke”
by Jane Lindskold
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

When a crazy old man calling himself Coyote shows up at an archaeological dig in New Mexico claiming that the Anasazi disappeared into time, Jeff knows that the only way to convince the world of Coyote’s truth is to play a colossal joke on his co-director Jimmy.

 Time even passes differently at the top of a high building than at its base. 


   “Mint Condition”
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Sissy is an experienced agent for CollectorCorps, but she always gets stuck with a male chauvinist rookie for her partner in trips to retrieve highly collectable items from the past.

As you can tell from the comic book image, I’d say that the comic book Sissy was after in this trip was based on Giant-Size X-Men 1.

 Autographed copies of Minus Men 121? Practically nonexistent in 2059, at least until we got home with some. 


The story also appeared in this 2003 collection.   “Palimpsest Day”
by Gary A. Braunbeck
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

In his forties, Danny’s parents are long gone as is the hope he had of marrying the girl he longed for in high school; instead, he runs a used bookstore in his childhood hometown, takes care of his Downs Syndrome sister, and has a surprising chance to change everything in the past.

 Live your life as if you were already living for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. 

—Danny’s mother (possibly quoting Victor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning).


   “Theory of Relativity”
by Jody Lynn Nye
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

Dr. Rachel Fenstone takes her time machine from her universe to a parallel universe (both of which contain the Marx Brothers) where she meets an analog of herself so that together they can figure out where their histories diverged and visit that moment in their mutual pasts.

 In June’s reality her grandfather was an inventor, too, but his parents settled in New York, where the boys grew up in the tenements not far from where the Marx Brothers were born. 


The story also appeared in Stephen Jones’s 2010 anthology, Visitants.   “Things I Didn’t Know My Father Knew”
by Peter Crowther
First publication: Past Imperfect, Nov 2001

After his wife leaves for the day, writer Bennett Differing’s house is engulfed in a thick white fog, out of which comes his father who died 27 years before.

The second publication in Visitants (2010) is more in-line with the story than a time-travel anthology.

 Maybe the dead did use mist as a means of getting around—so many movies had already figured that one out . . . and maybe they did travel in time. 


   “What Time Is It?”
by Rita Lamb
First publication: The Young Oxford Book of Timewarp Stories, Nov 2001

A 15-year-old boy sits with his elderly grandmother who had trouble remembering what time she is in, and at least once, the trouble slips over to the boy, too.

 And drowsily I put my hand down to where I felt the warm, heavy head shifting restlessly on my kneww, and I stoked the silky crown, and I looked into the puzzled brown eyes of a young dog. 


David Wyatt’s interior art for the story from Timewarp Stories   “Timestorm”
by Steve Bowkett
First publication: The Young Oxford Book of Timewarp Stories, Nov 2001

Danny and his partner in soldiering are at ground zero when a storm of refugees from a devastated future begins to arrive.

 Nobody really knew much about that devastation—The Catastrophe, as it had been called. It had happened—would happen, from Danny’s perspective—almost a million years in the future, or so the Time Techs believed. 




   Black Knight
by Darryl Quarles, Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow (Gil Junger, director)
First release: 21 Nov 2001

When janitor Jamal Walker falls into the moat at Medieval World, he wakes up and carries out a weak impersonation of a Connecticut Yankee.

 Your Majesty, starting at small forward from Englewood High, two-time all-county conference player of the year, the messenger from Normandie—Jamal “Skyyyyyy” Walker! 




   The Bonaventure-Carmody Series
by Chris Roberson
First book: Dec 2001

After boarding-school student Roxanne Bonaventure stumbles across a bloody old woman who gives her a bracelet, she begins to find herself in different times and alternate universes with different Beatles’ songs and alternate Beatles.

This first novel, Any Time at All: The Lives and Time of Roxanne Bonaventure, was expanded into Here, There & Everywhere and followed by three more books.
  1. Set the Seas on Fire (Dec 2001)
  2. Any Time at All (Sep 2002)
  3. Here, There & Everywhere  (Apr 2005) expands Any Time at All
  4. Paragaea: A Planetary Romance (May 2006)
  5. Set the Seas on Fire  (Aug 2007) Expansion
  6. End of the Century (Feb 2009)

 Roxanne smiled awkwardly, and looked over Julien’s shoulder at the open stall. It looked unremarkable now, drab green-painted metal walls and a white porcelain toilet. Hardly the thing you’d expect from some sort of door in time. At least proper English children in books got to travel through wardrobes and garden holes, not through unhygenic high school bathrooms. 




   Another Day
by Helen Frost and Don MacLeod (Jeffrey Reiner, director)
First release: 4 Dec 2001

After pregnant Kate’s boyfriend dies in a factory fire, she decides to forgo medical school and raise the baby along with her best friend David until four years later when a tramatic incident, some melodramtic music and godawful narration throw her back to before the fire.

 That’s impossible. It’s one of a kind, and I made it with Meghan in crafts class last week. 


   “Time Sharing”
by Leland Neville
First publication: Fantastic, Winter 2001

Detective Lindsey Fillmore arrives at Taylor Houston’s house to investigate a dead body and possibly connect it to Houston’s video-making time-traveling escapades.



   Kate and Leopold
by Steven Rogers and James Mangold (Mangold, director)
First release: 25 Dec 2001

Leopold, a 19th century blueblood, awakens in 21st century New York where he meets and confounds adwoman Kate.

 Time, it has been proposed, is the fourth dimension. And yet, for mortal man, time has no dimension at all. We are like horses with blinders, seeing only what lies before us, forever guessing the future and fabricating the past. 



Romance Time Travel of 2001
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Time Travelers 4: For All Time by Caroline B. Cooney

  Time after Time 2: Cottage in the Mist by Dee Davis

  Time Travel 4: Twilight in the Babylon by Suzanne Frank

  Outlander 5: The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

  Knight Errant 1: Knight Errant by R. Garcia y Robertson

  Lady of the Locket by Melanie George

  Scottish Highlands 1: After the Storm by Tia Isabella

  Highlander 4: Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

  Here and Now by Constance O'Day-Flannery

  Time after Time by Constance O'Day-Flannery




No Time Travel. Move along.
  The Monkey King (miniseries) by David Henry Hwang [civilization regresses ]
  aka The Lost Empire

  Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time by Ralph E. Vaughan [despite title, no time travel ]

  “A New Beginning” by Tony Ballantyne, Interzone, Jan 2001 [alien memory ]

  The Poof Point by Stu Krieger (Neal Israel, director), 14 Sep 2001 [backward aging ]

  “The Gift of a Dream” by Dean Wesley Smith, Past Imperfect, Nov 2001 [fountain of youth ]

  The One by Glen Morgan and James Wong, 2 Nov 2001 [alternate timelines ]

  Vanilla Sky by Cameron Crowe, 14 Dec 2001 [long sleep ]

   “Tachycardia”
by Paul Park
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2002

A retired widower travels back to his son’s death during an operation in which his heart is momentarily stopped.

 “Geoffrey,” I tried to say. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring through the bars of his cage, his arms as thin as the sticks of bamboo, as they had been toward the end. 




   The Fairly Odd Parents
created by Butch Hartman
First time travel: 26 Jan 2002

Young Timmy Turner has two fairly odd fairy parents who can grant wishes, but are always creating problems for Timmy to fix, including at least twice when he had to wish himself back in time: to the old west (“Old, Old West”) and to a pirate ship (“Odd Pirates”).

 Safety’s for yellow bellies. 

—Timmy’s dad in “Odd, Odd West”




   Donnie Darko
by Richard Kelly (Kelly, director)
First release: 30 Jan 2002

For me, this cultish movie about a schizophrenic teenager presented a shallow understanding of both schizophrenia and time travel.

 I have reached the end of your book and there are so many things that I need to ask you. Sometimes I’m afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll tell me that this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to. 




   “Veritas”
by Robert Reed
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Feb 2002

Jonathon Colfax, Emperor of the Roman Empire, tells the story of his travel back from the 21st century and the intrigues of his rise to power.

Robert Reed is my favorite prolific short story author from around the turn of the millennium.

 What we should do is gather up a group of people, and train them, and then travel back in time and conquer the Roman Empire. 


   “Ransom”
by Albert E. Cowdrey
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mar 2002

Maks Hamilton, time-travel agent who lives centuries after the troubled times, must travel back to just before the disasters to kidnap a boy.

Albert E. Cowdrey is another of my favorite turn-of-the-millennium short story writers.

 I’ve got a sense of justice. It amused me to kidnap the son of the man who kidnapped me. 




   DC’s The Time Machine
adapted by John Logan and Mike Collins
First publication: Mar 2002

Nicely done, giveaway comic with a 10-page teaser for the movie on slick paper.

 Will Mara be rescued? Will Alexander recover the time machine? Will he ever prevent Emma’s death and return to 1903? For the answers, see “The Time Machine”—opening March 8—only in theaters! 




   Tomorrow Man
aka Time Shifters
by Doug Campbell (Campbell, director)
First release: 5 Mar 2002

Bryon, a murderer in the present day, steals a time-travel device from a cop in a secret government program so that he can go back to rescue his ten-year-old self from an abusive father. The kidnap plan succeeds, but the father gloms onto the pursuing cop as she returns to the future, and together they chase after Byron (old) and Byron (young) with lots of gunfights.

 He’s kidnapped himself, his younger self. If’s difficult to understand, but crap like this happens. 




   Simon Wells’s The Time Machine
adapted by John Logan (Simon Wells, director)
First release: 8 Mar 2002

This version (definitely not your grandfather’s time machine) has imaginative settings, but for me, the refactored plot was all dramatic music and no substance.

 You built your time machine because of Emma’s death. If she had lived, it would never have existed. So how could you use your machine to go back in time and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy, just as I am the inescapable result of you. You have your answer. Now go. 




   Dust
by Milcho Manchevski (Manchevski, director)
First release: 5 Apr 2002

A reliable source (well, TV Guide) told me this would be a thought-provoking time-travel Western. I can affirm that the first of those double-barreled adjectives is inaccurate; it’s harder to tell about the second, even after surviving the incomprehensible story of two brothers in the old west (and Macedonia), a mean-spirited woman in the present, and a black dude who may have had his thumbs broken by crooked present-day police (or possibly he broke them at the Alamo).

 Edge: What’s you gonna do with this stupid story anyway?
Angela: You’ll see at the end.
Michael: Only if you survive that long. 




   The Chronology Protection Case (Movie)
adapted by Jay Kensinger (Kensinger, director)
First released: 20 Apr 2002

Stilted acting and hokey science, but still an enjoyable, low-budget adaptation with a believable version of D’Amato.

 Everything is related to each other on some level, and people have discovered that the deeper you go, the more you find that totally different things are made of the same thing. 


   “Hot Tip”
by Billy Bruce Winkles
First publication: Analog, May 2002

Obscure physicist John Suttle receives a phone call from the future with information about his eventual fate.

 As I said, I’m calling you from the twenty-fifth century. I am also a physicist. In fact, I’m the leader of a research group that’s studying space-time contortion phenomena. Recently, we discovered a way to make phone calls into the past. 




   Felicity
created by J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves
First time travel: 1 May 2002

High school senior Felicity Porter follows Ben to college in New York and mopes around him for four years before he cheats on her, so (in the final five episodes of the series) her friend Meghan casts a spell to send her back in time where she can be with Noel who’s always had a crush on her although now he’s not quite so certain, after all there is that Hannah girl.

 Next time be a more responsible time traveler. 

—Meghan to Felicity




   “When Bertie Met Mary”
by John Morressy
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 2002

A time traveler seeks Dr. Frankenstein.

 The time traveler—for so I must call him—emerged from his laboratory with a small wooden box cradled in his hands. 




   Odyssey 5
created by Manny Coto
First time travel: 21 Jun 2002

Five shuttle astronauts in orbit watch the mysterious destruction of the Earth, after which an alien offers to send their consciousnesses back in time five years to solve the mystery and save the earth. For me, it was the melodramatic music, weak scientific concepts and weaker dialog that fated this show to one season, although they did take on some interesting questions about how the crew’s actionsmay alter time.

 I . . . have it in my power . . . to project you back. 




   Austin Powers in Goldmember
by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers (Jay Roach, director)
First released: 26 Jul 2002

When the Austin Power’s father is kidnapped and taken to 1975 by the evil Goldmember, the famous spy must follow in the Pimpmobile.

 Powers: Where’s Goldmember?!
Dr. Evil: Not where, Mr. Powers—when! 


1st edition

2nd edition

3rd edition

   Graphic Classics: H.G. Wells
by Nicola Cuti, Antonella Caputo, Seth Frail and Craig Wilson
First publication: Graphic Classics 3 (1st Edition), Aug 2002

Eureka publishers have released a series of Graphic Classics trade paperbacks, each issue of which collects together comic book versions of stories, usually from a single classic author such as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, Jack London, and more. And, yes, the series includes an H.G. Wells issue (#3) which has undergone three editions, each of which has presented new black and white Time Machine material.

My favorite is the Wilson version (3rd edition), which has a steampunkish Eerie Comics feel and an extended stand-alone version with ten additional pages. My
  1. 1st edition (Aug 2002) A Time Machine Portfolio by Nicola Cuti
  2. 2nd edition (Apr 2005) The Time Machine by Antonella Caputo and Seth Frail
  3. Stand-alone (Jun 2013) The Time Machine by Caputo and Craig Wilson
  4. 3rd edition (Feb 2014) The Time Machine by Caputo and Craig Wilson

 I cannot help but wonder. Will he return? It may be he was swept back into the past. Or did he go forward into one of the nearer ages, when men are still men, but with the wearisome problems of our own age solved? I may never know. 

—from Caputo’s adaptation




   “Time and Again”
by Betsy Gallup
First publication: Revolution SF, 8 Aug 2002

Some years after Cassie has given up her career to be a full-time mom, it occurs to her that she might use the beta version of her mother’s invention, the Redux 3000, to make life a little different.

 Her mom had spent a lifetime researching time travel and The Redux bracelet was the result. Cassie was one of several test subjects asked to test the new technology. 




   Megas XLR
created by Jody Schaeffer and George Krstic
First publication: 23 Aug 2002

In the pilot show (called “Lowbrow” and aired on a Cartoon Network Weekend Summerfest), two video-game gearheads (Coop and Jamie) find a time-traveling robot in a junkyard and trick him out with a new engine, some new body work, a 671 jimmy huffer, and an eight-ball gear shift before realizing that they (along with the redhead, Kiva, from the future) must now protect present-day Earth from the evil aliens who enslaved the planet in the future and are now tracking the Megas back through time.

After the pilot, the Cartoon Network picked up the show for 26 new episodes.

 Listen! We need Megas to avert an alien invasion in the far future. He wasn’t meant to be a toy for a prehistoric yahoo and his pet monkey thing! 




   ¡Mucha Lucha!
created by Eddie Mort and Lili Chin
First time travel: 31 Aug 2002

Just one time-travel episode (“Woulda Coulda Hasbeena”) in this forgetable series when the three kids’ teacher heads back to the land-of-disco to right-a-wrong in his past, and the kids follow.

 Traveling back in time to change the outcome of a wresting match is so against the code of Mas Wrestling that it will rip our world apart at the seams! 


   “Posterity”
by Christopher Evans
First publication: Interzone, Sep 2002

A cynical innkeeper for time travelers whines.



   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. 




   Do Over
created by Kenny Schwartz and Rick Wiener
First episode: 19 Sep 2002

Thirty-something Joel Larsen, disappointed in his life, finds himself back in 9th grade with a chance to do things over again.

 That, young time traveler, is your first kiss. 




   The Chronology Protection Case (Radio)
adapted by Mark Shanahan, Paul Levinson and Jay Kensinger
First aired: Fall 2002

An enjoyable script based on the short story of the same name.

 But if you come across something you know to be true, one thing is certain: you can never go back to not knowing. 


   “At Dorado”
by Geoffrey A. Landis
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2002

Cheena’s husband comes back to the port around the wormhole—dead, though the death is in the future, and she doesn’t bother to tell him.

 The wormholes were the port’s very reason for existing, the center of Cheena’s universe. 




   “The Time Telephone”
by Adam Roberts
First publication: Infinity Plus, Oct 2002

A pregnant woman calls her future daughter at age sixteen (at a cost of nearly 18,000 euros) to find out whether the daughter was glad she was born—and she’s not the only one calling into the past.

 This is a call from the past, my darling. 




   Time Changer
by Rich Christiano (Christiano, director)
First release: 25 Oct 2002

Nineteenth-century biblical scholar Russell Carlisle is sent forward 100 years to see what the world will become of people’s morals if they are allowed to accept or reject Christianity willie-nillie.

 Stop the movie! You must stop this movie! The man on the screen just blasphemed the name of the lord! 




  Time Traders #7
Atlantis Endgame
by Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith
First publication: SFBC Time Traders III, Nov 2002

When one of Eveleen Riordan’s earrings is found on the island that once was Atlantis, she and her hubby Ross Murdock (plus Gordon Ashe, a few Russians, and a new agent or two) must investigate—and of course, clash with the Baldies.

 I put the variables together, wondering if you might be part of the equation, and last winter when I uncovered that earring in a place that had been sealed under volcanic ash since 1628 B.C. and saw that modern jeweler’s mark, I decided that maybe it was time to try again to dig you up. 




   Frasier
created by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee
First time travel: 19 Nov 2002

Under the influence of sedatives, Niles wonders whether a hospital has memories, a question that's answered as he is wheeled into the operating room. I suppose the scenes could just be flashbacks or even hospital memories, but the final scene in “Rooms with a View” (Season 10, Episode 8) might well be time travel.

 All these big dramatic moments, and the hospital just gobbles them up. Do you think a hospital has memories? 


   “Walk to the Full Moon”
by Sean McMullen
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 2002

Undergraduate linguist Carlos helps his uncle try to understand a pre-neanderthal girl who has appeared in present-day Spain.

 On a monitor screen was a girl in a walled garden. Crouching in a corner, she had a fearful, hunted look about her. I could see that she wore a blanket, that her skin was olive-brown, and that her features were bold and heavy. Oddly enough, it took a while for me to notice the most remarkable about her: she had no forehead! 




   Das Jesus Video
English title: Ancient Relic (translated from German)
aka The Hunt for the Hidden Relic
adapted by Martin Ritzenhoff and Sebastian Niemann (Niemann, director)
First aired: 5 Dec 2002 (made-for-tv)

Stephen Vogt, an archaeology student, uncovers a 2000-year-old skeleton and the man’s notes purporting to have taken a video of Jesus Christ on a camera that doesn’t yet exist. The result is a 3-hour blood-filled, melodramatic chase that, for me, detracted from the more interesting religious questions that the premise might have addressed.

The two-part German tv movie was based on the book Jesus Video by Andreas Eschbach with some significant changes to the ending. It was released in the US with a quality English dubbing in 2006.

 Gentlemen, sleep well tonight. And don’t forget that we are scientists and not science fiction writers. 




   “Time Loop”
by Sam Hughes
First publication: qntm.org, 14 Dec 2002

I first encountered Sam Hughes while desperately trying to figure out the ending to the remake of Planet of the Apes; in addition to excellent speculation on that count, he had this short-short story about a time loop (later made into a fun youtube video by Andrew Hookway).

 I am your future self, and I just traveled back in time to meet you. 



Romance Time Travel of 2002
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  MacKendimen 3: Once Forbidden by Terry Brisbin

  George & the Virgin by Lisa Cach

  Time after Time 3: Wild Highland Rose by Dee Davis

  Highlander 5: The Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Eternal Gangstas by D.A. Jackson [reincarnation ]

  “Time Bleeds” by Andrew Humphrey, Open the Box and Other Stories, Feb 2002 [despite title, no time travel ]

  Minority Report by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, 21 Jun 2002 [precognition ]

  “Some Other Time” by Ray Vukcevich, Sci Fiction, 17 Jul 2002 [despite title, no time travel ]

  “The Whisper of Discs” by John Meaney, Interzone, Oct 2002 [despite appearances, no time travel ]

  “The Trinity Paradox” by R.A. Jetter, Thirteen Stories, Dec 2002 [differing time rates ]



   “O. Henry’s Incredible Time-Travel Adventure”
by Lucas Gattuso
First publication: Gattuso’s English 127 Portfolio, circa 2003

Someone is killing those damnable authors who use only their initials, and only H.G. Wells and his time machine can save O. Henry and the rest.

 e.e. cummings at your service 




   The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
First publication: 2003

Due to a genetic disorder, Henry DeTamble reacts to stress by jumping to important and unimportant moments of his life, including many visits to his once and future wife.

To me, the story owes a lot to one of F.M. Busby's stories (“If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy”)—a debt that Niffenegger might be acknowledging in the quote below.

 Could I? Do I have kids, Henry? In 2006 do I have a husband and a house in Winnetka and 2.5 kids? 


   “Train of Events”
by James L. Cambias
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2003

Jeremy Calder has been told by time travelers that he will cause the release of a deadly virus. No one is allowed to stop him—for he hasn’t done anything yet—and he seems to accept his fate without believing that he can change future history.

 Since the history books all agreed that he was going to kill six hundred people on June 25, 2038, Jeremy Calder was careful to get up early that day. 


   “Legions in Time”
by Michael Swanwick
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apr 2003

Ellie Voigt’s job is to sit and watch a door, until one day she gets angry enough at Mr. Tarblecko that she steps through the door into a time war.

 One man with a sunstroker can be overwhelmed by savages equipped with nothing more than neutron bombs—if there are enough of them, and they don’t mind dying! 


John Allemand’s
interior illustration		   “The Day the Track Stood Still”
by John C. Bodin and Ron Collins
First publication: Analog, May 2003

Did I spot a smidgen of time travel in this delightful story of a race where Babs the car is certainly in love with the driver and vice versa, all in the tense context of knowing that if the race is lost, then the car will be forfeited?

 I tried not to think about what was at stake. The pressure was bad enough without telling her this was for all the marbles: if we lost this Indy 500, she was gone. Sayonara muchacha. Hasta la bye-bye, and good night, Babs. That’s the way it is when you race the B’arada. They put up a piece of tech, you put up a piece of tech. Winner takes all, Indy 500 style. 


   “Get Me to the Job on Time”
by Ian Randal Strock
First publication: Analog, May 2003

A man tells the story of his coworker who had a rather mundane use for his discovery of time travel.

 Wally didn’t need to see the pyramids getting built, or sail with Columbus, or even watch JFK’s assassination. What Wally wanted to do, more than anything, was get to work on time. 




   The Low Budget Time Machine
aka Space Babes Meet Monsters
by Buddy Barnett, Kathe Duba-Barnett, Brad Linaweaver, et. al. (Duba-Barnett, director)
First release: May 2003

The main question in my mind as I watched this was how destitute did Patrick MacNee become at the end of his life to be found in this movie telling us about his theory of time travel. I never did figure out what all that had to do with the subsequent story of a professor who owes big money to the mob. The professor’s solution is to send three patsies into the future to bring something back that will end all his monetary troubles. As it turns out, the future has ethereal, never-been-kissed babes from outer space with excellent bowling balls (no, not a euphemism), at least one two-headed mutant, and a monster named Gary. Eventually, they all make it back to the present (except for Two-Head) where they form a rock band that Howard Stern would approve of.

 First I should explain in layman’s terms the way time travel works. If you create an instrument that generates five billion electomagnetic transit vibrations per second—faster than the speed of light—one can hypothetically travel through time and space. 


   “3rd Corinthians”
by Michael F. Flynn
First publication: Analog, Jun 2003

This is the second Michael F. Flynn time-travel story that I’ve read set in O Daugherty’s Irish pub. This time, amidst philosophical discussion, Father McGinnity tells of a third letter from Paul to the Corinthians that simply couldn’t be genuine.

 Oh, the Bible is true, only it may not always be factual. 




   Static Shock Cartoon
created by Dwayne McDuffie and Michael Davis
First time travel: 7 Jun 2003

Based on the DC comic book, fourteen-year-old superhero Virgil Hawkins, aka Static, has power over electromagnetism, but it’s his friend Nina, aka Time-Zone, who takes him and another hero through time in their first trek through time, trying to save Virgil’s mother.
  1. Flashback (7 Jun 2003) Nina’s first travel
  2. Future Shock (17 Jan 2004)    forty years forward

 She can rewind herself through time like a tape through a VCR! 




   T3: Rise of the Machines
by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian (Jonathan Mostow, director)
First release: 02 Jul 2003

If they can’t get John Connor, then the machines from 2029 will send a T-X terminator for his lietenants in 2004, but they don’t count on John sending back another Model 101 to work with John and his future wife Kate.

 Get in! Do you wanna live?! Come on! 

—John Connor to Kate Brewster while fleeing the T-X




   Timeblazers
created by Wilson Coneybeare
First episode: 5 Jul 2003

When Shakira or Alex ask questions about life of yore, Sam and Jen take them back to see for themselves.

 And now they take me back in time to find out what life in the past was really like. 




   ぽぽたん
English title: Popotan (translated from Japanese)
by Jukki Hanada
First episode: 17 Jul 2003

Three young sisters—Ai, Mai and Mii—and their maid find themselves continually jumping from place to place and time to time.

 Why do we have to keep moving, over and over again? It’s so unfair! 


   “The Only-Known
Jump Across Time”
by Eugene Mirabelli
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep 2003

In the 1920s, Lydia Chase and her father’s tailor fall in love and jump across time.

 The only known jump across time produced by an apparatus, a so-called time machine, took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May of 1928. 




   Code Lyoko
English title: Code Lyoko (translated from French)
created by Tania Palumbo and Thomas Romain
First episdoe: 3 Sep 2003

As you watch the first few episodes of this French nearly-anime cartoon (dubbed in English), there’s a challenge in working out exactly what’s what in the group of young friends at a boarding school where the resident genius (Jeremy Belpois) interacts with a girl (Aelita) who's trapped in a virtual world which is terrorized by the evil Xana. I suspect I may have missed a few episodes at the start (I started with “Teddygozila”), but it seems that at the end of each successful adventure in the virtual world, the supercomputer take the adventurers back in time to a point of their choosing. It’s kind of cool that things aren’ fully explained, so I hope I don’t later run into the origin episode!

 Ready for a trip into the past, Yumi? 




   Timecop: The Berlin Decision
aka Timecop 2
adapted by Gary Scott Thompson (Steve Boyum, director)
First release: 30 Sep 2003 (direct to video)

Time Enforcement Commission agent (and martial arts expert) Ryan Chang chases through time after rogue agent Brandon Miller who’s off killing ancestors of other agents so there’ll be nobody to stop him from what he sees as a moral obligation to right the wrongs of past timelines (but no obligation to fill the holes in the current plotline).

Despite my reservations, my friend Tandy, a martial arts afficionada, enjoyed the movie a lot (only partly because she’s in love with Jason Scott Lee), and it is true that even my favorite time-travel movies have some of the same plot holes as this one, all of which yeilds an extra star in my subjective rating!

 Drop the gun or your timeline is over. 




   Tru Calling
created by Jon Harmon Feldman
First episode: 30 Oct 2003

From time to time, a dead guy asks morgue worker Tru Davies for help, which causes her day to rewind and gives her a chance to save the dead person with the help of her shy boss Davis and her neer-do-well brother Harry.

Hannah gave me the dvd of the first season for Christmas, and it took a few episodes for the show to grow on me. I was hooked about halfway through the season, with the introduction of Jack Harper and the suggestions of an overarching plot.

 Have a little faith in your sister. 




   “It’s All True”
by John Kessel
First publication: Sci Fiction, 5 Nov 2003

In 2048, washed-up film maker Det Gruber is a time-traveling talent scout hired to recruit young, bitter Orson Welles from 1942.

 Welles clenched his fists. When he spoke it was in a lower tone. “Life is dark.” 




   Timeline
adapted by Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi (RIchard Donner, director)
First release: 26 Nov 2003

The book was interminably slow, and so was the movie—and I’m only talking about the battle scenes in 1357 France. The actual time-travel mechanism is cool, though.

 It means the camera was taking pictures in the wilderness near Castlegard, France, in the year 1357. 




   Kim Possible
by Bill Motz and Bob Roth (Steve Loter, director)
First time travel: 28 Nov 2003

Buffy has nothing on high school cheerleader Kim Possible, who fought time-traveling badies and their time monkey in a special one-hour episode (“A Sitch in Time”).

 “So, what’s the sitch?” 


   “The Chop Line”
by Stephen Baxter
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 2003

In the future wars between man and Xeelee, Ensign Daxx meets the time-traveling future Captain Dakk who must try the younger Dakk for the future crime of disobeying orders in a combat situation.

 I don’t know many captains, but she immediately recognized me. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #16
Dragon’s Kin
by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey
First publication: Dec 2003

Oh, the sad life of the underappreciated watch-whers, the minor-league cousins of the mighty dragons of Pern. Still, they have their story, too, and like dragons, they can travel between places. The story also includes minor time travel, although the lowly watch-whers have to leave that to the big lizards in this tale.

 “Watch-whers don’t go between,” Nuella declared.
“Yes, they do, I saw Dask do it,” Kindan corrected. 



Romance Time Travel of 2003
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Highlander 1: Charming the Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Highlander 2: Loving the Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Highlander 3: Wedding the Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Time after Time 4: The Promise by Dee Davis

  Knight Errant 2: Lady Robyn by R. Garcia y Robertson




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Emma” by Kyle Kirkland, Analog, Apr 2003 [simulacrum or similar ]

  Cube²: Hypercube by Sean Hood (Andrzej Sekula, director), 15 Apr 2003 [surreal ]

  Paycheck adapted by Dean Georgaris, 25 Dec 2003 [visions of possible futures ]



   “Tune Out of Time”
by Philip E. High
First publication: Step to the Stars, 2004

Philip E. High was a prolific author, although not well known in the states. This story, first published when he was 89, tells the tale of the miraculous Mottram’s organ, which unexpectedly sends Alan Stapleton to the past (or is it the future?) on an obscure fragment of matter called Earth—and he may find himself in several other locations before he finds his way home.

 I deduce that this device was locked on the past—who’s past, yours or ours? Time is relative, our future could be in your past or vice versa. 




   The Ulysses Moore Books
language: Italian
by Pierdomenico Baccalario
First book: 2004

I read the English translation of first of thirteen books in which three kids explore a house—once occupied by Ulysses Moore and his wife—and the surrounding cliffs and town of Kilmore Cove. Despite the title of that first book, La porta del tiempo, the door doesn’t manage to take the characters through time until the final chapter, ’Inizia l’avventura.”. That particular door can take intrepid travelers whenever they wish, but the other books in the series have doors that lead to only one particular time and place.

 “We’re not in Kilmore Cove anymore,” he said aloud. 


The story also appeared in this 2008 collection.   “Decisions”
by Michael Burstein
First publication: Analog, Jan/Feb 2004

Astronaut gets put in a time loop by aliens.

 Aaron snorted. “I remember that conversation from over six months ago.”
    Gabe shook his head. “It happened this morning.” 


   “The Dragon Wore Trousers”
by Bob Buckley
First publication: Analog, Jan/Feb 2004

A dinosaur scientist time travels to the middle ages.

 The bizarre beast that rounded the bend in the road made Maker’s mouth drop in surprise. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, a top-heavy, lopsided creature having four legs, a narrow head atop a long neck, and a huge shiny lump on its back. 




   Primer
by Shane Carruth (Carruth, director)
First released: 16 Jan 2004

Some guys invent a time machine and use it to go back in time to prevent the artsy author of this film from ever writing a coherent plot.

 I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon. 




   The Butterfly Effect
by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber (Gruber and Bress, directors)
First release: 23 Jan 2004

Scary, dark, disturbing, sick and violent—but captivating—psychological thriller about how things keep going further and further astray when Evan tries to fix things by changing key moments involving the sociopaths and child molesters of his troubled childhood.

 Hey man, I’d think twice about what you’re doing. You could wake up a lot more fucked up than you are now. 


   “Scout’s Honor”
by Terry Bisson
First publication: Sci Fiction, 28 Jan 2004

An autistic paleontologist receives a series of messages from a time traveler who is studying a band of Neanderthals in prehistoric Europe, although his one friend, Ron, thinks that the messages are an amateur sf story.

 Heading down for the NT site. More later. 




   “Century to Starboard”
by Liz Williams
First publication: Strange Horizons, 2 Feb 2004

Sometime around the publication of this story, Tim and I saw a ship called The World docked on the Willamette in Portland. The ship is privately owned by the occupants of its 165 residences, and as a group they vote on their itinerary every year. It’s a nice fantasy to think about leading such a life, so long as the ship doesn’t run into the kind of storms that Liz Williams’s similar ship hits in this story.

Each of those storms take the entire ship, including Italian citizen Vittoria Pellini, further and further into the future.

 I finally got my head together and told Julio what I thought—that maybe, just maybe, we’ve gone through some kind of slip in time, like the Bermuda Triangle, only in the Pacific. I know other people sometimes say—just to be spiteful—that I’m maybe a little bit of a bimbo, and Julio tends to laugh at me sometimes. Affectionately, of course. But this time I really thought he’d laugh, and he didn’t. 


   “Draft Dodgers Rag”
by Jeff Hecht
First publication: Analog, Mar 2004

Time travelers come back to 1969 Berkeley to help Tom, a Vietnam draft dodger.

 They want to be heroes. They think war brings glory and makes them men. I think they’re crazy. Our society up then thinks they’re crazier than your society thinks you are. 




   Smallville
created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
First time travel: 3 Mar 2004

Ten seasons with at least 9 time-travel episodes:
  1. Crisis (3 Mar 2004) phone call from the next day
  2. Reckoning (26 Jan 2006) back in time to save Lana
  3. Sleeper (24 Apr 2008) Kara and Brainiac back to infant Kal-El
  4. Apocalypse (1 May 2008) Clark back to stop Kara and Brainiac
  5. Legion (15 Jan 2009) The Legion (plus Persuader) from 31st century
  6. Infamous (12 Mar 2009) Clark back to stop Lois from writing a story
  7. Doomsday (14 May 2009) Lois to the future
  8. Savior (25 Sep 2009) Lois returns, persued by Alia
  9. Homecoming (15 Oct 2010)    Clark to his own past and future

 Chloe: When you were a baby. Clark, if you really are in trouble on Krypton, you’d better find a way to get there, and soon, or . . .
Clark: I’ll never have existed. 

—from “Sleeper”




   Tripping the Rift
created by Chris Moeller and Chuck Austen
First time travel: 4 Mar 2004

What if Star Trek/Wars were an adult cartoon with time travel on demand, including travel back to the start of the universe in the broadcast pilot, “God is Our Pilot”?
  1. God Is Our Pilot (4 Mar 2004) to beginning of universe
  2. Roswell (14 Sep 2005) 1940s New Mexico
  3. Chode Eraser (6 Sep 2007) Terminator parody

 Chode: Hey, you know what the best part of being able to go back to the beginning of time means?
Whip: Yeah. Not having to remember what you did yesterday.
Chode: Yeah, that. And we’re gonna know once and for all how the universe was created. 


   “The Aztec Supremacist”
by Sheralyn Schofield Belyeu
First publication: Analog, Apr 2004

Dr. Harvey takes a posse back to 1492 to pursue an Aztec descendant who plans to stop Columbus’s voyage.

 Gentlemen, this person tells me that in many years, the Almighty will allow men to journey through time. He says that he has come from the far future with a message for me. 




   The Winning Season
adapted by Steve Bloom (John Kent Harrison, director)
First aired: 4 Apr 2004 (made-for-tv)

Eleven-year-old Joe Soshack finds a priceless 1909 baseball card (never mind that it belongs to that little old-lady down the street) that takes him back to the 1909 World Championship Series where he becomes a not-very-loyal sidekick to the Pittsburgh Pirate’s Honus Wagner in a face-off against the Detroit Tigers and the vicious Ty Cobb.

 You know I’ve had people come from all over the world to see me play baseball, but I’ve never had someone come from the future. 




   “This Tragic Glass”
by Elizabeth Bear
First publication: Sci Fiction, 7 Apr 2004

In a world where time travel can retrieve past historical figures, Dr. Satyavati Brahmaptura (now a colleague of poet John Keats) receives permission from the History Department to nab Christopher Marlowe in order to prove that he was really a she.

 The genderbot still thinks Kit Marlowe was a girl. I reentered everything. 




   13 Going On 30
by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa (Gary Winick, director)
First release: 23 Apr 2004

Everything that could go wrong is going wrong for 13-year-old Jenna Rink. If only she could be already grown up in the future!

 There are six of them, Jenna, that’s the whole point. There can’t be a seventh Sixth Chick. It’s just mathematically impossible. Besides you’re way cooler than they are, they’re totally unoriginal. 




   “A Taste of Time”
by Abby Goldsmith
First publication: Deep Magic, May 2004

A bottle of wine mysteriously appears inside Jane’s apartment on her 29th birthday with the cryptic message Tabula Rasa—Warning: There Is No Return. So since she is suicidal and drunk and other things associated with country music songs, Jane swallows a mouthful, figuring that the worst it could be is a dignified poison.

 Jane gagged on the sour taste in her mouth. She was so dizzy, she’d fallen . . . but she was sitting in an office chair, with no memory whatsoever of leaving her dark and quiet apartment.
Florescent lights beat down on her, and the familiar voices of a call center surrounded her. None of this was possible. She was back at her old workplace. It was a workday, late afternoon, judging by the angle of light. Ultimata Insurance had laid her off months ago, yet here she was. 




   Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
created by Michael Ouweleen and Erik Richter
First time travel: 16 May 2004

After failing as part of a 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, Harvey Birdman is revived as an attorney whose clients are typically other hard-done-by Hanna-Barbera characters, including at least one episode where the Jetsons travel from the far future (that’d be 2002) to the present (2004), but my favorite is when Harvey has to defend Quick Draw “Eastwood” McGraw’s 2nd Ammendment rights.

 Ah, that’s okay, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad. 

—George Jetson to Harvey




   “The Lost Pilgrim”
by Gene Wolfe
First publication: The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age, Jun 2004

Gene Wolfe has such subtle plots and such perfection of word choice that he lulls you into a story without your ever realizing that you are in a story—even his titles are perfection. In this case, the story of an apparant time traveler who finds himself on a journey with Greek gods and mortals, but cannot remember who he is or why he was sent to this far past.

 I have been hoping to speak privately with Amphiareaws about Time’s enmity. I know that I will not be born for many years. I know also that I have traveled the wrong way through those many years to join our crew. Was that in violation of Time’s ordinances? If so, it would explain his displeasure; but if not, I must look elsewhere. 


   “Time Ablaze”
by Michael Burstein
First publication: Analog, Jun 2004

Lucas Schmidt, time-traveler, goes back to 1904 to witness New York City’s most deadly tragedy: a ship full of German Americans on fire.

 A small piece of paper fell out of the book and onto the table. Adele picked it up and examined it. It bore one line: “http://www.general-slocum.com.” She had no idea what it meant; “http” was clearly not a word, although she presumed she knew what the “general-slocum” part referred to. 




   Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
adapted by Steve Kloves (Alfonso Cuarón, director)
First release: 6 Apr 2004

As much as I fall completely into the Harry Potter books, I find all the movies drawn-out and boring, even this one which:
  • comes from my favorite of the books,
  • has a monster class taught by Hagrid,
  • has my favorite adult character, Sirius,
  • has time travel,
  • and (as always) has the perfectly cast Rupert Grint

 Hang on! That’s not possible. Ancient Runes is at the same time as Divination. You’d have to be in two classes at once. 




   Phil of the Future
created by Tim Maile and Douglas Tuber
First episode: 18 Jun 2004

Phil Duffy and his family, on vacation from the 22nd century in a rented time machine, are keeping it together just as best as they can now that they’ve ended up trapped right here in our time zone.

 ♫Meet a boy named Phil and his family
On vacation from the 22nd century
They got a rented time machine and they’re on their way
To a time way, way, way back in the day♫ 


   “To Emily on the Ecliptic”
by Thomas R. Dulski
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2004

As part of a therapy to overcome writer’s block, poet Maleus Taub uses an alien artifact Healing Chair to visit Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson.

 We don’t know how it works. Or even what its energy source is. When the field is on we’ve detected minor fluctuations in certain astronomical objects. 




   5ive Days to Midnight
by Robert Zappia, David Aaron Cohen, et. al. (Michael Watkins, director)
First aired: 7-10 Jun 2004

In this SciFi Channel miniseries, J.T. Neumeyer (physics professor, widower, and single dad) receives a briefcase from decades in the future containing a police file with the details of his murder five days hence. Once he accepts it as real, he has some success at changing fate by saving a woman from an accident—and then fate starts pushing back by killing her in a different accident, putting J.T. is on a track to meet his own fate.

 The future is not immutable—you can print that! 




   The 4400
created by René Echevarria and Scott Peters
First episode: 11 Jul 2004

Over the years, people of all ages and walks of life have been abducted. Now, 4400 of them have returned to a glen outside of Seattle, all at the same time and without any aging or memory of where—or when—they’ve been. We get to see how they fit back in or don’t, how they react to hostilities, how they use their powers such as young Maia Skouris who sees the future, 17-year-old bio-phenom Shawn Farrell who now has an eye for Nikki (not so young any more), and Richard who no longer has his life threatened for loving a white woman whom he’s managed to impregnate without sex.

 History tells us this is where the path to oblivion began. 


   “Delhi”
by Vandana Singh
First publication: So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sep 2004

Aseem, a sometimes suicidal man in Delhi, sees and interacts with past and future versions of the city while he searches for the woman whom a computer says is his purpose in life.

 A computer is like a beehive. Many bits and parts, none is by itself intelligent. Combine together and you have something that can think. 


   “The Hat Thing”
by Matthew Hughes
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 2004

A nameless man tells another how to spot time travelers.

 Sure. Researchers. Tourists. Criminals altering their present by manipulating the past. Religious pilgrims. Collectors. Who knows what motivates people a million years from now? 




   Retrograde
by Christopher Kulikowski, Tom Reeve and Gianluca Curti (Kulikowski, director)
First release: 2 Nov 2004

Two centuries after a meteor lands in Antarctica, the deadly bacterial plague that it brought has spread around the world and threatens to wipe out all life. The solution: Go back in time and stop the meteor from ever being dug up, but John Foster, the leader of the expedition, will have to cope with his traveling companion’s vices as well as ice and bacteria.

I suppose the military uniforms of 2204 all look like Axis Powers uniforms because the movie was originally made in Italy. It was first released in Russia in 2004 and made it to the states by 2009. Of course, none of that explains why the timeship looks like a 1978 Battlestar Galactica castoff.

 Under your command, you will pilot the Porsifol back 200 years and track the cutter’s movement to the meteor field. Alter the timeline. Eradicate the scourge. 




   “Time’s Swell”
by Victoria Somogyi and Kathleen Chamberlain
First publication: Strange Horizons, 15 Nov 2004

When a woman awakes with no memory, she finds herself being taken care of by another woman who says that they have come from the future and cannot get back, so they prostitute themselves in various forms to make money and hesitantly take each other as lovers.

 And then there are the days when she tells me that we’ve traveled through time, that we have come from the future and are trapped here. She tells me that she was a temporal scientist, that I was her project. That I am modified and enhanced for survival, for time travel, for perfection. Those are the bad days. 


   “Small Moments in Time”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Dec 2004

A time traveler seeking lost seeds in the past finds a man who may have started the worst influenza of the 20th century.

 The odd truth of working as a temporal interventionist is that some there-and-thens are better than others. 




   Time and Again
by Jason J. Tomaric (Tomaric, director)
First release: 31 Dec 2004

No, not Jack Finney and not Clifford D. Simak either. This one is all Jason J. Tomaric.

Fourteen years ago (or maybe sixteen, the director’s not quite sure), teenaged Bobby Jones was convicted of a murder that he remembers nothing about. Fortunately, he escapes, and during the escape he finds himself transported back to his hometown on the day of the murder.

By the way, I interpret the story as more than just a dream because of the incident where young Bobby is injured and old Bobby immediately develops a scar (although I suppose that could be part of a dream, too).

 Look, Awanda, if you could go back in time and change anything—I mean anything at all—would you? 



Romance Time Travel of 2004
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Highlander 4: Tempting the Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Knight Errant 3: White Rose by R. Garcia y Robertson

  Viking II 4: Wet & Wild by Sandra Hill

  Until Forever by Johanna Lindsey

  Highlander 6: The Immortal Highlander by Karen Marie Moning




No Time Travel. Move along.
  A Wrinkle in Time by Susan Shilliday, 10 May 2004 [despite title, no time travel ]



   Das Cusanus-Spiel
English title: The Cusanus Game (translated from German)
by Wolfgang Jaschke
First publication: 2005

In an alternate Europe where isolationism is enforced by towering walls and the world is crumbling around them, a secret project aims to save the present by harvesting the past.

 Only on the basis of his theoretical work and predictions did Folkert Jensma and Koos van Laere the following year at the Christian Huygens Institute in the Hague prove the existence of so-called time solitons, which Thilawuntha had predicted. These disturbances traverse the flow of time in both directions, that is, they bring about with their passage momentary damming and acceleration in the temporal dimension. They thereby deform the structure of space-time, but are eo ipso not directly detectable by an observer situated within this strugture—that is, within our universe. Their existence can, however, be indirectly demonstrated, because their passage is accompanied by gravitational waves of various strength. 




   “The Destruction of Sennacherib”
by Bryn Sparks
First publication: Robots and Time, 2005

Lady Ada Lovelace, who has traveled through time via a Wells-type machine in a steampunk world, tells her story to an enamored compatriot who is 50 years older than when they last shared a conversation.

 It seemed the original analytical engine, the mechanical computer designed and built by my friend and mentor, the great Charles Babbage in the 1830s, had a lethal configuration that could lock up an entire engine if it were ever presented with the right sequence of calculations. The article went on to describe how all the miniaturized analytical engines at the heart of the empire’s technology were just small versions of the original analytical engine. No one had ever changed the fundamental arrangement of cogs and gears and drive trains and clutches. They had just been made smaller and linked together in greater numbers, so here at the turn of the century, I could be driven in a cab by a man whose very thoughts were determined by the workings of beings of microscopic versions of Babbage’s original design, all operating in parallel. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #17
Dragonsblood
by Todd McCaffrey
First publication: Jan 2005

Two sick fire-lizards—the progenitors of Pern’s dragons—fall from the sky where the geneticist Wind Blossom and her protégé set out to cure them and in the process determine that they are from the future.

 “Don’t do it!” the first M’hall shouted to the other.
Somber M’hall startled at the sound of his own voice coming to him. “You’re from the future?” 


   “A Few Good Men”
by Richard A. Lovett
First publication: Analog, Jan/Feb 2005

Time travelers from a future without many men come back to our time to import what they need most, but they accidentally snatch Tiffany Richardson as well.

 There were eight good prospects back there, and I’d have had them all if this bitch hadn’t shown up. 


   The Time Hackers
by Gary Paulsen
First publication: Jan 2005

Twelve-year-old Dorso Clayman lives in a future where viewing the past is commonplace, but he and his friend Frank are being unpredictably pulled into the past!

Janet found this for me at the library in 2010.

 They might see a vision of a dinosaur one time and on the second try get an image of a man who might be Julius Caesar getting ready for a bath, or Anne Boleyn getting her head chopped off. 




   Slipstream
by Louis Morneau and Philip Badger (David van Eyssen, director)
First release: 4 Feb 2005

Sean Astin plans to use his 10-minute time machine to repeatedly withdraw the same money from a bank teller that he’s chatting up, but a violent gang of other bank robbers throws a wrench into his plan.

 Did you ever wish you could keep doing the same thing over and over again? 




   The Jacket
by Tom Bleecker, Marc Rocco and Massy Tadjedin (John Maybury, director)
First release: 4 Mar 2005

Committed to the Alpine Grove asylum for a murder he didn’t commit, brain-damaged war veteran Jack Starks is subjected to sensory deprivation in a straightjacket, which sends him 15 years into the future for several hours at a time where he meets the adult version of Jackie, a small girl whom he briefly met and was kind to shortly before being incarcerated. He learns from Jackie that back in the asylum he has only a few days to live, and together, he and Jackie try to figure out a way to escape that fate.

The story is loosely based on Jack London’s The Star Rover, although London’s protagonist travels through the stars and into past lives. Using future information to change the present was never part of London’s story.

 No, no you didn’t. Jack Starks did, and Jack Starks is dead. He’s dead. His body was found New Year’s Day, 1993, Alpine Grove. He’s dead. 


   “Letters of Transit”
by Brian Plante
First publication: Analog, Apr 2005

A scientist on the first near-lightspeed ship to Centauri A exchanges letters with his underaged girlfriend back on Earth through a wormhole for which time passes at the same rate on both ends. When the ship returns to Earth with its end of the wormhole, the hole will act as a time machine for messages, but the clichéd paradox police won’t let scientist send girlfriend any information about the future.

 You wouldn’t want to cause any of those nasty paradoxes, would you? 


   “Message in a Bottle”
by Nalo Hopkinson
First publication: Futureways, 1 Apr 2005

An artist named Greg, who never wanted to have children, becomes close to Kamla, an adopted daughter of a friend; the situation works out fine, even when Greg does have an unexpected child with his girlfriend, and even when Kamla turns out to be one of the thousands of children with extremely slow-growing bodies and minds from the future.

 I'm from the Future, Says Bobble-Headed Boy. 




   “The Apotheosis of Martin Padway”
by S.M. Stirling
First publication: The Enchanter Completed: A Tribute for L. Sprague de Camp

Some 50 years after Martin Padway was thrown back to Byzantine times, a group of holy men and scientists travel back to the supposed date when the Great Man ascended to godhood.

 “It’s definitely a past with Martinus of Padua in it. There are no other lines within several hundred chronospace-years that show a scientific-industrial revolution this early. Quantum factors make it difficult”—fucking meaningless—“to say if it’s precisely the line that led to us.” 




  Reggie Rivers #10
“Gun, Not for Dinosaur”
by Chris Bunch
First publication: The Enchantor Completed, 1993

Chris Bunch’s gave a nod to the Reggie Rivers stories, and the result was published as part of the L. Sprague de Camp tribute anthology. The narrator, who isn’t named, tells the story of how Peter Kilgrew nearly wiped out humanity in an indirect fashion during a time safari to the Jurassic.

 The stupid git was trying to wipe out all of humanity, though he was too stupid to realize it. 




   Almost Normal
by Marc Moody (Moody, director)
First release: 26 May 2005

After a car accident, forty-something, gay, college professor Brad Jenkins who has never felt normal in Nebraska is thrown back to his high school days in an alternate universe where being gay is the norm and hetrosexuals are outcasts.

For me, the premise is original and was explored in a thoughtful (though sometimes farcical) way.

 Brad: I hate to sound like Michael J. Fox, but I’m from the future.
Terry: Who’s Michael J. Fox? 


   “Working on Borrowed Time”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Jun 2005

Tom and his implanted AI Jeannie (from “Small Moments in Time”) are back again, this time trying to stop future Nazis from destroying Edwardian London.

 What? The British Empire started coming apart in the 1920s? 




   “The Starry Night”
by Barry Malzberg and Jack Dann
First publication: Sci Fiction, 22 Jun 2005

A visage of the universe exploding bounces back and forth between a space-faring priest, an epileptic six-year-old in our day, and Vincent Van Gogh.

 For the first time she is a little scared. She wishes that she were in her room, not in this space car with the stars glowing and exploding like the stars in Mr. Gogh’s painting. 




   Bewitched
by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron (Nora Ephron, director)
First release: 24 Jun 2005

Not only does Isabel the witch want to live just like any normal woman, she also gets talked into playing the role of witch Samantha who wants to live just like any normal woman in a remake of Bewitched—and like the original Samantha, she has some trouble constraining her powers. Yes, she’s also an occasional failure at constraining her power to rewind the hands of time.

 No breakfast after eleven. 




   “Scream Quietly”
by Sheila Crosby
First publication: Farthing, Jul 2005

In 1849 England, Sophie’s abusive husband abuses her and beatys their one-year-old son, so at the first opportunity, she and her son flees to a friend’s house where they are visited by apparent faeries.

 They said they were not faeries, but men, “even as yourselne,” from the far distant future, and they were journeying in time! They were most astonished to hear this was the year of our Lord 1849, for they had believed themselves in 1343 and were in great fear of being burned as witches. 


   “The Time Traveler’s Wife”
by Scott William Carter
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2005

No, we’re not talking about that wife; we’re talking about Scott William Carter’s version—Yolanda Green, an even-keeled, mostly content wife of a university professor time traveler—and the story of what she does when he goes off into the future, failing to return for dinner.

 “We’ve done it,” he said. “Three times with a mouse and five times with a monkey. The university has approved my request for a manned test run. We’re going into the future! 




   “What’s Expected Of Us”
by Ted Chiang
First publication: Nature, 7 Jul 2005

A warning comes from the future about a toy that flashes a green led exactly one second before you press a button. I wonder whether it’s powered by thiotimoline.

 The heart of the Predictor is a circuit with a negative time delay—it sends a signal back in time. 




   Time Warp Trio
adapted by Kathy Waugh, et. al.
First episode: 9 Jul 2005

Ten-year-old Joe and his two mates Fred and Sam travel back and forth in time in these 22-minute Discovery Kids cartoons based on Jon Scieszka’s story series.

 Ever wonder how three kids from Brooklyn got their hands on a time-traveling book? 


I have no image for the story, but here’s the first book in Colorado author Tobler’s series, The Rings of Anubis.

   “Gauging Moonlight”
by E. Catherine Tobler
First publication: Sci Fiction, 20 Jul 2005

The alien narrator loves Alice Oxbridge, although the word love does not capture the feeling any more accurately than space travel captures climbing into a vehicle capable of carrying you off-planet. And our narrator has the power to erase the the moments of tragedy in Alice’s life, he cannot do so without breaking his one unbreakable tenet and becoming the prime example of sentient idiocy.

 Alice’s was not the first birth I witnessed, nor even the most unusual. The first time I saw Alice’s birth, I bypassed the event, skimming ahead to the advent of the automobile. Gears fascinated me more. But on reflection, something drew me back to Alice in the garden, newborn on the rain-wet grass. The world seemed to move beneath her. 




   “Fleet of Ages”
by Jared Axelrod
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 5 Aug 2005

Axelrod is one of the founders of 365 Tomorrows, which presents a piece of flash fiction every day of the year, and this was their first time travel story, a story in which ships bring items from the future with unpredictable consequences.

 I used to think that, more than any man, I understood the consequences of what those ships were supposed to bring back. 


Kat Beyer’s
illustration for her story

   “The Strange Desserts of
Professor Natalie Doom”
by Kat Beyer
First publication: Strange Horizons, 22 Aug 2005

For Natalie, it isn’t easy growing up as the only human creation of a mad scientist (including a time machine, of course) and his gorgeous, shapely wife—especially when you have the name of Natalie Doom and a leaning toward feminism).

 Apparently I inherited Mama’s looks and Papa’s brains. Again and again in my life I’ve gotten the best of a bad bargain. 


   “Paradox & Greenblatt, Attorneys at Law”
by Kevin J. Anderson
First publication: Analog, Sep 2005

Marty Paramus and his partner specialize in legal nuances arising from the new time-travel technology.

 So you figured that if you kept Franklin’s biological mother and father from meeting, he would never have been born, your parents’ marriage would have remained happy, and your life would have remained wonderful. 


The story also appeared in this 2007 collection.   “Triceratops Summer”
by Michael Swanwick
First publication: Amazon Shorts, Sep 2005

An incident at the Institute for Advanced Physics brings a herd of Triceratops to present-day Vermont, which is certainly a worry, but according to Everett McCoughlan of the Institute, that will be the least of our worries by the end of the summer.

 Everything ends eventually. But after all is said and done, it’s waht we do in the meantime that matters, isn’t it? 




   Hyams’ Sound of Thunder
adapted by Donnelly, Oppenheimer, Poirier (Peter Hyams, director)
First release: 2 Sep 2005

The time safari is not improved by 90 minutes of melodramatic nonsense.

 A butterfly caused all this? 




   “Who Forever Belongs To”
by Jared Axelrod
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 4 Oct 2005

In his second time-travel story, 365 Tomorrows founder Jared Axelrod has a rummage sale aficionado stumble across a time machine and philosophically discuss why the owner would let it go for five dollars.

 So when I unearthed the device from under a seriously disturbing collection of polyester sweaters, I knew it was something to treasure. I just didn’t know what. 


   The Diving Universe Series
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 2005

I haven’t followed all of the stories in Rusch’s Diving Universe, so I can’t tell you which of the stories and novels have a significant time-traveling aspect caused by the space-folding anacopa. But in “Becoming One with the Ghosts” (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov 2010), the starship Ivoire gets folded 5000 years into the future. Later, while trying to shut down an anacapa drive gone bad in “Encounter on Starbase Kappa” (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov 2013), Captain Jonathan “Coop” just might have a chance to return the ship and the crew to their own time.
  1. A. Diving into the Wreck (Dec 2005) Asimov’s
  2. B. Room of Lost Souls (Apr/May 2008) Asimov’s
  3. The Spires of Denon (Apr/May 2009) Asimov’s
  4. Diving into the Wreck (Nov 2009) includes parts of A and B
  5. Becoming One with the Ghosts (Oct/Nov 2010) Asimov’s
  6. Becalmed (Apr/May 2011) Asimov’s
  7. City of Ruins (May 2011)
  8. Stealth (Oct/Nov 2011) Asimov’s
  9. The Spires of Denon (Apr/May 2009) Asimov’s
  10. Boneyards (Jan 2012)
  11. Skirmishes (Apr 2013)
  12. Strangers at the Room of Lost Souls (May 2013) Asimov’s
  13. The Application of Hope (Aug 2013) Asimov’s
  14. Encounter on Starbase Kappa (Oct/Nov 2013) Asimov’s
  15. The Runabout (May/Jun 2017) Asimov’s

 Later, he learned that the anacapa malfunctioned, buringing him and his crew five thousand years into their future. 




   Chasing Christmas
by Todd Berger (Ron Oliver, director)
First aired: 4 Dec 2005 (mad-for-tv)

Jack Cameron, a Christmas grump, is taken back to 1965 by the ghost of Christmas Past who then decides to stay there, putting Jack and the cosmos at risk. It’s then up to Christmas Present to save the day, although in the end it’s dues ex machina rather than Present who fixes things.

 Past: Charles Dickens was a former target of ours who chose to write a book about his experiences even though we explicitly told him not to.
Jack: But it was a great book—
Past: It was crap, like everything he did! Did you ever read A Tale of Two Cities? ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst . . .’ Make up your mind, Mr. Dickens! 



Romance Time Travel of 2005
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Highlander 5: Only with a Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Outlander 6: A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

  Viking II 5: Hot & Heavy by Sandra Hill

  Blackthorn 1: Risk Everything by Sophia Johnson

  Highlander 7: Spell of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Terminós” by Dean Francis Alfar, Rabid Transit: Menagerie, 2005 [time issues, but no time travel ]

  “Stitching Time” by Stephanie Burgis, Fortean Bureau, Mar 2005 [despite title, no time travel ]

  The Man Who Met Himself by Ben Crowe and Preti Taneja, 20 May 2005 [despite title, no time travel ]

  “Understanding Space and Time” by Alastair Reynolds, Novacon 35 Program, Nov 2005 [despite title, no time travel ]

   “Written in Plaster”
by Rajnar Vajra
First publication: Analog, Jan/Feb 2006

Thirteen-year-old Danny Levan is a bullied, half-Jewish boy in 1938 Surrey when he discovers strangely colored bits of plaster that can reform into what can only be described as his own protective time-traveling golem.

 A pack of chips was constantly pursuing and reuniting with the giant, but moonlight glinted off of one largish piece that seemed in danger of being left behind, lodged in a groove between cobblestones.
   “Wait,” Danny called out softly and although the creature was obviously too far off to hear, and lacked ears besides, it immediately paused long enough for the chip to free itself and join the others. 




   Life on Mars [UK]
created by Matthew Graham, Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah
First episode: 9 Jan 2006

While working on murder case that has drawn in his girlfriend, Manchester Police Detective Sam Tyler is hit by a car and thrown into 1973 where DCI Hunt, WPC Cartwright, and everyone else in the district believes him to be a detective on loan.

 I had an accident, and I woke up 33 years in the past. Now that either makes me a time traveler or a lunatic or . . . I’m lying in a hospital bed in 2006 and none of this is real. 




   The Plot to Save Socrates
by Paul Levinson
First book: Feb 2006

Young doctoral student Sierra chases back to ancient Alexandria after her professor who seems to be chasing after a time traveler who is trying to get Socrates to abandon Athenian death row for the future.

Although I haven’t seen a second novel, a sequel novella called “Unburning Alexandria” featured Sierra chasing around 410 A.D. Alexandria.

 If I, today, had finished constructing a device, in this room, which allowed you to travel even a day into the past, and you used it to travel into the past to kill or otherwise distract me from completing the device, how would you have been able to travel in the first place into the past, with no device then constructed? 




   Lost
created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof
First time travel: 8 Feb 2006

Sadly, I never bonded with Lost, the six-season story of plane crash survivors on a supernatural island, but Tim assures me that I must list it with at least four stars.

 Sayid: Radio waves at this frequency bounce off the ionosphere. They can travel thousands of miles. It could be coming from anywhere.
Hurley: Or any time . . . 




   Fetching Cody
by David Ray and Carolyn Allain (Ray, director)
First release: 24 Feb 2006

Druggie Art finds his girlfriend in an overdose coma, so he gets in a time-traveling chair to go back and set things right—like The Butterfly Effect, but with no horror-flick tension.

 Okay, okay, take me back before Cody got sick, before she got all fucked up, when there were bullies and shit. 




   Snuffbox
created by matt berry and rich fulcher
First episode: 27 Feb 2006

Rich and Matt wend their way through 28 minutes of dark, f-bombed weirdness in six episodes, each of which includes a trip in time through a door marked 1888. My own preference in British comedy is for Basil Fawlty, but sadly, he never traveled through time.

 Not that one! It’s out of order. Use the other door. 




   Always Will
by Michael Sammaciccia (Sammaciccia, director)
First release: Mar 2006

Will, a high school senior, discovers how to use a stolen time capsule to go back in time and relive moments over and over until he gets it right.

 Seriously, it lets me, like, revisit a moment in the past. 


Kachelries’s early stories appeared in this 2007 collection.

   “Dropping a Pebble in a Dry Well”
by Kathy Kachelries
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 13 Apr 2006

Demetri Thornwick is pissed by the D- he received on a term paper that computes the MDZC for changes made even when DT>200 years.

 The arguments always center on the Maximum Disruption with Zero Consequences (MDZC). You know, what’s the most I can change without screwing up the primary timeline. 




   Throg
by Matt Power and Dana Lee (Power, director)
First release: 25 Apr 2006

Medieval boy Throg becomes immortal after Urshag the Destroyer chops off his arms and Hades gives him the power of regeneration, after which he lives a long time through badly written Monty Python imitations until the touching end. Granted that immortality is not time travel, but Hades does manage a moment of time travel for Throg along the way.

 Get that fire started yet, boy? 




   xkcd
by Randall Munroe
First time travel: Comic 103, 15 May 2006

Nerdy Randall Munroe’s quirky stick figures don’t shy away from the difficut time-travel tropes.

     
  1. Comic 102 (15 May 2006) Back to the Future
  2. Comic 239 (23 Mar 2007) Blagofaire from the Future
  3. Comic 567 (10 Apr 2009) Ben Franklin Urgent Mission
  4. Comic 630 (31 Aug 2009) Megan’s Time Travel
  5. Comic 652 (21 Oct 2009) Come with Me If You Want . . .
  6. Comic 656 (30 Oct 2009) Doc Brown on Oct 30
  7. Comic 657 (2 Nov 2009) Primer Time Chart
  8. Comic 716 (19 Mar 2010) Time Machine
  9. Comic 730 (21 Apr 2010) DeLorean flux capacitor
  10. Comic 887 (3 Sep 2014) Rowling’s Time Turners
  11. Comic 935 (8 Aug 2011) Babe Ruth & the Tardis
  12. Comic 1063 (1 Jun 2012) Kill Hitler
  13. Comic 1177 (22 Feb 2013) More Terminator
  14. Comic 1191 (27 Mar 2013) The Past Oil Reserves
  15. Comic 1203 (24 Apr 2013) Useless Time Machines
  16. Comic 1256 (26 Aug 2013) Why Are There Two Spocks?

 Why are you so obsessed with this Hitler guy? 




   “Suspension of Disbelief”
by B. York
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 31 May 2006

According to young Aaron’s buddy Hamel, once people get time machines, there’s no telling which descendants are going to bite the dust.

 If, forty years ago, some madman had come and swiped our parents, neither of us would be around. So forty years ago, we could stop existing. 




   The Lake House
by David Auburn (Alejandro Agresti, director)
First release: 16 Jun 2006

Letters—eventually love letters—pass back and forth between Dr. Kate Foster and architect Alex Wyler who are two years apart in time.

Based on the Korean movie, Il Mare.

 It’s kind of a long distance relationship. 




   Click
by Mark O'Keefe and Steve Koren (Frank Coraci, director)
First release: 23 Jun 2006

Michael Newman falls asleep on a store mattress, and when he awakens, he is given a universal remote control that lets him fast forward through the boring parts of his life.

 It’s an advanced piece of equipment like TiVo. 


Broeck Steadman’s interior illustration   “Environmental Friendship Fossle”
by Ian Stewart
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2006

A contract investigator who tracks down crimes against endangered species finds a mammoth tusk that’s only 30 years old according to radiocarbon dating.

 “Mammoth ivory,” the old man said, as if it was a proposition put up for debate. “I have hunt mammoth.” 


   “The Teller of Time”
by Carl Frederick
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug 2006

You get one guess what happens when you juxtapose these circumstances:
  1. As a boy, Kip Wolverton’s best friend is crushed in a tragic accident in a bell tower.
  2. Then, because Kip is too shy to ever approach the bell-ringer of his dreams, the girl goes and marries his other best friend, so Kip goes off to America to drown his sorrows and become an expert physicist studying time.
  3. Finally, 25 years later, Kip returns to England to do time experiments in bell towers where he finds girl grown and unhappily married.

     “Research money is difficult to come by these days,” said Neville. “There is a lot of good science lanuishing because more meretricious projects get the funds.” 




   時をかける少女
English title: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (translated from Japanese)
adaptation by Satoko Okudera (Mamoru Hosoda, director)
First release: 15 Jul 2006

In this loose anime adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s story, young Makoto Konno is thrown into a train crossing on her bike and unintentionally travels back in time to avoid being hit; that leads her to experiment with her ability—yes, with teenaged concerns, but still with charm.

 And then, when you came to, you’d gone back a few minutes in time. 




   American Dragon
created by Jeff Goode
First time travel: 12 Aug 2006

Like all American teens, Asian-American Jake Long skateboards—oh, and he’s also the wise-cracking American Dragon, guardian of all magical creatures. In one episode (“Hero of the Hourglass”), Jake travels back to when his dad was a teen in order to get his mom to reveal the truth about magic and dragons.

 Or, I can change things for the better . . . ooh, there’s a whole side of my family that my dad doesn’t doesn't know about. I have the chance to change that, the chance to reverse the last twenty years and redo everything without the lies, the secrets, the being grounded every other week. 




   Scrat in No Time for Nuts
by Cris Renaud (Renaud and Mike Thurmeier, directors)
First release: 14 Sep 2006

Each time the machine of an unfortunate time traveler zaps Scrat’s Precious into an unknown time, the famed ice-age rat faithfully follows.

 Here stood . . . 

—[You’ll have to watch yourself to find out what stood here, ’cause I’m not spoiling.]


   “Doxies”
by Brandon Alspaugh
First publication: Apex, Fall 2006

Angela’s mother takes her to a support group—Children of the Post-Contemporary, aka the Doxies—where the children reluctantly talk about what it’s like to have various futuristic features and a father from the future.

 She was a walking paradox, her mother said. And she must never make waves, never draw attention, never accomplish something or participate or pop her head out, for even a second. If she changed the future, her father might not exist, and neither would she. 




   Heroes
created by Tim Kring
First episode: 25 Sep 2006

Hiro Nakamura reads comic books, wants to be a hero, and believes that his will power is enough to move him through time and space (and, yes, it is).

I enjoyed talking about this show with my friend John Kennedy before he died of cancer on 18 Mar 2009.

 Save the cheerleader, save the world. 




   The Butterfly Effect 2
by John Frankenheimer and Michael D. Weiss (John R. Leonetti, director)
First release: 10 Oct 2006

 There’s this entire other version of my life without you. I went through this whole year of my life believing you were dead. 


   “Prevenge”
by Mike Resnick and Kevin J. Anderson
First publication: Analog Science Fiction, Nov 2006

Kyle Bain, a member of the Knights Temporal, goes on a mission to prevent a murder in the past because that’s what the Knights do—regardless of whether the murder may be just or not.

 Thou shalt UN-kill, whenever possible. 




   Day Break
created by Paul Zbyszewski
First episode: 15 Nov 2006

Detective Brett Hopper keeps waking up at the same time on the same day, but each day he learns more about who's trying to frame him.

 Maybe. We’ll see how the day goes. 




   Happy Tree Friends
by Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro and Warren Graff
First time travel: 20 Nov 2006

Cute forest animals mutilate and maim each other with at least one time machine in “Blast from the Past” where Sniffles vainly tries to save his friends from playground death and mayhem.

 Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children or big babies 




   Déjà Vu
by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio (Tony Scott, director)
First release: 24 Nov 2006

While investigating the burning death of a young woman who washed up on shore a few minutes before a bomb demolished a New Orleans ferry, ATF Agent Doug Carlin gets pulled into an FBI investigation that can view happenings four days and six hours into the past.

Oh, who’s kidding whom? We all know these scientists never stop at mere viewing. I would have given more stars to this action movie if I could have figured out how Doug could live in a world where after the girl washes up dead, she is there to bandage him and answer the phone.

 Danny: Whatever you did, you did it already. Whether you send this note or you don’t, it doesn’t matter. You cannot change the past. It’s physically impossible.
Agent Carlin: What if there’s more than physics? 




   Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Mario Puzo, et. al. (Richard Donner, director)
First release on dvd: 28 Nov 2006

Richard Donner, the original director of Superman II, was replaced partway through the production. Almost 30 years later, a dvd the movie was put together with mostly his footage and a time-travel ending that was pretty much identical to the end of Donner’s first Superman movie (and equally lame).

 Jeepers, I have seen some faraway looks in my time, but with that look, you might as well be on the North Pole or someplace. 




   Wonder Pets
created by Josh Selig
First time travel: “Save the Dinosaur”, 6 Dec 2006

When the kindergardeners leave for the day, three kindergarden pets—a hamster, a duck and a turtle, of course—save various different animals from perils, including one episode when the trio traveled into a classroom poster to save a trapped triceratops.

 Look! There’s there are dinosaurs in that poster! Let’s go there! 




   Christmas Do-Over
by Trevor Reed Cristow and Jacqueline David (Catherine Cyran, director)
First release: 16 Dec 2006 (made-for-tv)

Kevin, a grump of a divorced father, reluctantly visits his ex-wife’s house on Christmas Day causing his son to wish it were Christmas every day. As in other repeat-Christmas stories (or repeat-a-certain-February-holiday), Kevin wakes up again and again on Christmas Day until he gets it right. And of course, only he knows the day is repeating.

 Dad, it’s so fun having you here. Go ahead and stay: I wish it was Christmas every day. 




   American Dad!
created by Seth MacFarlane, Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman
First time travel: 17 Dec 2006

Typical patriotic American family fare with Dad, Mom, two kids, an alien, a man trapped in a goldfish body, and the occassional romp through time.
  1. Best Christmas Story Never Told (17 Dec 2006)    to the 70s to kill Jane Fonda
  2. May the Best Stan Win (14 Feb 2010) Cyborg Stan from the future
  3. Fart-Break Hotel (16 Jan 2011) Steve travels to find a beauty
  4. The Kidney Stays in the Picture (1 Apr 2012) back to discover Hayley’s dad

 Getting Scorsese off drugs means he never did all the cocaine that fueled him to make Taxi Driver, which means he never cast Jodie Foster, which means John Hinkley never obsessed over her, and he never tried to impress her by shooting President Reagan, which means Reagan was never empowered by surviving an assassination attempt—he must have lost to Mondale in ’84. Bingo! Forty-seven days into his presidency, Mondale handed complete control of the U.S. over to the Soviet Union. 

—from “The Best Christmas Story Never Told”



And Still More Time Travel of 2006
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “A Lighthouse Through Time” by Kathy Kachelries, 365 Tomorrows, 31 Mar 2006
—a renter disappears

  “Fate of Our Futures” by Michael “Freeman” Herbaugh, 365 Tomorrows, 3 Aug 2006
—3m year-old human skull found

  “Paranoia” by Michael “Freeman” Herbaugh, 365 Tomorrows, 12 Sep 2006
—time-travel researcher being watched

  “Time and Again” by Steven Perez, 365 Tomorrows, 23 Sep 2006
—team hunts time travelers

  “Say Again?” by Steve Smith, 365 Tomorrows, 12 Oct 2006
—Stan argues that he can time travel

  “One of a Kind” by Megan Hoffman (as by Pyai), 365 Tomorrows, 22 Oct 2006
—little brother time travels

  “Once in a Lifetime” by Matt Brubeck, 365 Tomorrows, 25 Nov 2006
—time-traveling rich kids

  “Einstein’s Last Words” by J.S. Kachelries, 365 Tomorrows, 19 Dec 2006
—traveler visits Einstein’s death




Romance Time Travel of 2006
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Creole 2: Sweeter Savage Love by Sandra Hill

  Creole 3: Desperado by Sandra Hill

  Viking II 6: Rough and Ready by Sandra Hill

  Blackthorn 2: Always Mine by Sophia Johnson

  Highlander 8: Into the Dreaming by Karen Marie Moning




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Dragonriders of Pern #18: Dragon’s Fire by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey, Aug 2006 [no time travel ]

  Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson, Sep 2006 [time dilation ]

  The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky (Aronofsky, director), 22 Nov 2006 [surreal ]

  Night at the Museum by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, 22 Dec 2006 [despite appearances, no time travel ]



   Cinderella III: A Twist in Time
by Dan Berendsen, et. al. (Frank Nissen, director)
First release: 6 Feb 2007

Cinderella’s nasty stepmother uses the Fairy Godmother’s wand to turn back time and enlarge the slipper to fit one of the nasty stepsisters.

Computer animation has produced some nice stories, particularly as done by Pixar, but even the best computer animation can’t live up to the early Disney artists who produced the original Cinderella, and reasonably competent computer animation such as this Cinderella fare, can’t survive a weak storyline, lame dialogue, and tuneless songs.

In any case, here’s a relevant cost comparison in 2015 dollars:
  1. Cinderella (1950) $29 million
  2. Cinderella III (2007) $9 million
  3. Inside Out (2015) $175 million

 The wand is not a toy! 




   Primeval
created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines
First episode: 10 Feb 2007

A time anomaly is allowing beasties from the past and future into present-day England. Oh, and Professor Cutter goes through the anomaly, too, because he’s searching for his lost wifey.

 Miss, oh Miss!! There’s a dinosaur on the playground. 




   Dreamland
by James P. Lay, Kenny Saylors and Kyle Saylors (Lay, director)
First release: 27 Feb 2007

Meghan and Dylan stop at a desert diner near Area 51 where they hear UFO and time travel stories. On the road again, their radio starts picking up Patsy Cline songs, they get separated, and Meghan has various scarey encounters including a spooky 8-year-old girl and newspaper clippings about top secret time travel experiments in the 60s.

I watched to the end (where there is about five minutes of song that tries to explain it all), but I won’t claim to understand the movie. One reviewer says that the spooky girl was abducted and subjected to government time travel experiments, and that the movie is populated by characters who are only in her mind as she travels through time (possibly people from the clippings). If so, then perhaps Meghan is the little girl’s imaginings of her own older self.

 Don’t you get it? There’s no such thing as time, there’s no such thing as this place, and there’s no such thing as you. Meghan is a figment of her own imagination. 




   Premonition
by Bill Kelly (Mennan Yapo, director)
First release: 16 Mar 2007

In a troubled marriage, Linda Hansen finds herself skipping back and forth in time during a week that ends with one of her daughters scarred from running through a plate glass door and her husband dead in a car accident.

The title suggests that the things Linda sees are just premonitions, but to me they felt more like travel through time with no ability to alter events.

 I’m sorry to tell you this. Your husband was in a car accident. He died on the scene yesterday. 




   The Last Mimzy
by Rubin, Emmerich, Hart, Skilken (Bob Shaye, director)
First release: 23 Mar 2007

The people of the future are dying, so they send time-traveling dolls back to 2007 where they can communicate only with sappy Seattle children.

 They’ve been sending other Mimzies to the past to look for it, but none of them have come back. 




   Meet the Robinsons
by Jon A. Bernstein, Michelle Spritz and Nathan Greno (Steve Anderson, Director)
First release: 23 Mar 2007

Twelve-year-old orphan genius Lewis along with his 13-year-old buddy Wilbur Robinson from the future mangle every time-travel trope while fighting a clichéd villian with a clever hat.

 Remember, I’ve got a time machine. You mess up again, and I’ll just keep coming back ’til you get it right. 






   According to Jim
created by Tracy Newman and Jonathan Stark
First time travel: 4 Apr 2007

Jim uses a porta-potty as a time machine to get repeated chances at being a successful dad at his son’s t-ball game (“The At-Bat”). Janet and I watched the time-travel episode on a happy summer evening.

 All right, we’ve established that you can play for the Cubs. 




   The Forbidden Kingdom
by John Fusco (Rob Minkoff, director)
First release: 18 Apr 2007

Modern-day martial-arts-obsessed teen Jason Tripitikas falls off a building with a golden staff and finds himself in fuedal China fulfilling the legend of the seeker who will return the staff to The Monkey King.

 Jason: Is this a dream?
Lu Yan: No, where you come from is the dream, through the gate of no gate. 




   Panic Time
by John Carstarphen (Carstarphen, director)
First release: 1 May 2007 (limited)

Elisa figures time travel can provide the perfect alibi for murdering her scumbag husband. Sadly, though, if you watch this movie with another person, neither one of you will have an alibi for those lost seventy minutes, since you’ll both be asleep.

 The police said that the killer left behind no evidence at all. 




   “Swing Time”
by Carrie Vaughn
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2007

Carrie Vaughn lives just down the road from me, and I met her once at a reading. Her voice captured me, and her stories do too, although this tale—of time traveling theives, Madeline and her nemesis Ned, who gain their ability from dancing—did not grab me as much as a non-time-travel story, “The Librarian’s Daughter.”

 With a few measures of dancing, a charge of power crept into Madeline's bones, enough energy to take her anywhere: London 1590. New York 1950. There was power in dancing. 


   “A Zoo in the Jungle”
by Carl Frederick
First publication: Analog, Jun 2007

Arthur Davidson decided to become an astronaut when his father disappeared on the moon twenty years ago. Now, Arthur and a cosmonaut are exploring the very crater where the father disappeared when they come across an alien-built planetarium that may have the power to reunite Arthur with his father.

 A planetarium on the Moon. It’s like a zoo in the jungle, or building a swimming pool under water. What’s the point? 


   Against Time
aka All Over Again
by Cleve Nettles (Nettles, director)
First release: 12 Jun 2007 (direct-to-dvd)

This movie was made in 2001 and made the film festival circuits, but it wasn’t released until it appeared on dvd in 2007 (the dvd cover says that it won an award at the International Family Film Festival, but that’s not listed on the IFFF website); there was a warning sign that I might not take to it (the writer and the producer were one and the same), even though the hero (Z.T.) is a high school shortstop and budding inventor with a pretty, doting girl (Delena) and his own future self come back to warn him about becoming an old drunk.

 From the future? A wino from the future?! 




   “Darwin’s Suitcase”
by Elisabeth Malartre
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, Jul 2007

In the 22nd century, Sister Solange uses a time viewer to watch the forbidden Charles Darwin who, much to Solange’s surprise, has an encounter with a less-devout 22nd century man.

 He looked ordinary enough for such an evil man.
She wondered what he was thinking. Was he plotting his terrible attack on the Church? 




   Discipline
by Paco Ahlgren
First publication: 1 Jul 2007

Ahlgren melds the multiverse, quantum mechanics, the mysticism of the East, horror worthy of Stephen King, a little “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” and the violence of addition into a skillfully woven story of young Douglas Cole: his dog dies, he loses his family and moves to Texas, his friend kills himself, and his girlfriend leaves him (though, admitedly, the dog came back to life), all before reaching a time-travel-infused turning point.

Many small things were just that little bit off for me, such as the initial introduction of the uncertainty principle. I wish Ahlgren had taken the bull by the horns and stated that the reason we cannot know both the position and movement of a particle simultaneously is because those two properties simply don’t simultaneously exist.

 Unfortunately, while I was becoming more adept at making the business decisions that repeatedly benefited my shareholders, I had also been informed by my mentors and closest friends that the proliferating global acts of terrorism—along with the economic catastrophe which had ended only a few years earlier—had been engineered by a power-hungry madman whose sole objective was to become a diety, thereby ruling the entirety of space and time. 




   Magic Wagon’s The Time Machine
aka Graphic Classics The Time Machine (Graphics Planet)
adapted by Joeming Dunn and Ben Dunn
First publication: 1 Jul 2007

The Dunns present a 26-page comic book adaptation of the classic with large, block-colored panels and a blonde Weena with an anime look.

 That was three years ago. I wait every day for the return of the time traveler. 


   “Sweep Me to My Revenge”
by Darrell Schweitzer
First publication: Talebones, Summer 2007

An aging English professor has had it once and for all with the young Professor Cranchberger, so he borrows his brother’s time machine to disprove the upstart’s ridiculous theory that Edward De Vere wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

 It’s at times like this when I have to either sell my soul to the Devil or go see my brother Francis. I chose the latter because he was closer. He worked at the same university, just across campus, in the Physics Department. I walked into his office and said without any formalities, “I want to borrow your time machine.” 




   The Accidental Time Machine
by Joe Haldeman
First publication: Aug 2007

A faulty part changes a calibration device into a time machine that takes dropout student Matt Fuller further and further into the future including a theocracy of 2252 (where Martha, a sexually spontaneous vestal virgin, joins the adventure) and an AI-tocracy some 24,000 years later.

 So he had to plan. The next time he pushed the button—if the simple linear relationship held true—the thing would be gone for over three days. Next time, over a month; then over a year. Then fifteen years, and way into the future after that. 


   Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
by Laurie Viera Rigler
First publication: Aug 2007

A modern-day L.A. woman wakes up in the body of a thirty-something spinster in 19th century England and, until the right man appears, refuses to believe it’s anything more than a dream.

 I’m still here. Shit. It’s morning. Birds singing. The scent of roses wafting through my window. Mrs. Mansfield in my doorway. 




   Unholy
by Sam Freeman and Daryl Goldberg (Goldberg, director)
First release: 4 Sep 2007

After Martha’s witnesses her daughter kill herself, she seeks answers in nazis, government cover-ups, occultism and (fortunately) time travel.

 Kraus’s experiments dealt with the evolution of warfare, what is referred to as the unholy trinity: time travel, invisibility, and mind control! Many believe, to this day, the experiments continue to exist using unwilling subjects 




   Hirsute
by A.J. Bond (Bond director)
First release: 9 Sep 2007

Some guy invents a time machine and uses it to go back in time to make a 14-minute, half-hairy, half-gory film.

 If I can make this work, I’ll just come back here right . . . right now: seven forty-two P.M., Friday, June 13, 2008. 




   Los cronocrímenes
English title: Timecrimes (translated from Spanish)
by Nacho Vigalondo (Vigalondo, director)
First release: 20 Sep 2007

Cuando Héctor (1) sigue una chica desnuda en el bosque, entre en un silo y un cientifico le envía en el pasado.

No, I won’t write any more one-sentence summaries in Spanish, but I wanted to practice. In English, I’ll tell you that this movie is full of wonderful contortions, horror and fatalism.

 Has viajado en el tiempo. 




   Journeyman
created by Kevin Falls
First episode: 24 Sep 2007

Reporter Dan Vasser’s life is thrown into disarray when he starts jumping backward in time to help others in peril.

 What’s going on? That game was eight years ago. 


   “A Bridge in Time”
by Joseph P. Martino
First publication: Analog, Oct 2007

Tom Carson merely fixes time gates from nine to five, while others worry about whether stock pickers (such as his curvacious running partner, Jennifer Campbell) might be passing information to their past selves while they take a detour over a bridge in the past during construction of a new bridge.

 Don’t ask me to explain time travel paradoxes. All I do is fix the time gates when something goes wrong. Paradoxes are argued over at a much higher pay grade than mine. 


   Countdown to Armageddon
by Edward M. Lerner
First publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, Oct 2007 - Oct 2008

 Einstein showed that gravity is only a manifestation of mass, a curvature of the space-time continuum caused by the presense of mass. No mass, no gravity. Time is similar—it passes only in relationship to . . . stuff. Each astronomical object, each planet, has a single achievable time transfer influenced by—and that can be calculated from—net local gravitation effects. That interval depends on its own mass, its sun’s, and the galaxy’. 


   “Wikihistory”
by Desmond Warzel
First publication: Abyss and Apex, Oct 2007

The time-travel bulletin board has a recurring problem.

 Haven’t you noobs read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler?! 




   The Seeker
aka The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
adapted by John Hodge (David L. Cunningham, director)
First release: 5 Oct 2007

Birthdays in the U.K. are a big deal for young boys: Just ask Harry Potter, or (in this case), ask Will Stanton, an American whose family is visiting England. On his fourteenth birthday, Will is told of his destiny as the last of the time-traveling warriors called the Old Ones who wield their ancient powers of The Light against those who follow The Dark.

According to those who know, the movie doesn’t follow the book that it’s based on (the second book of Susan Cooper’s, The Dark Is Rising Sequence), but I got some enjoyment from the innocence and soppiness of Will, his sister Gwen, his infatuation with the town’s pretty girl, and even Will’s stereotypical brothers. But the horror and fantasy parts of the film were as formulaic as the fact that Will is the seventh son of a seventh son; and Will’s ability to step through time is incidental to the story.

 Merriman: Walk with us, Will.
Will: Where?
Merriman: Through time. 


from Petrie’s website

   “Afar”
by Simon Petrie
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 21 Oct 2007

A man with an Ethiopian alias plans a seemingly impossible time travdel escapade in humanity’s far past.

 Anyone wanted to change the past, badly, far enough back, things shift so that person didn’t exist, or time travel hadn’t been invented. 


   “These are the Times”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Nov 2011

Temporal Interventionish Tom and his implanted assistant Jeannie are at the start of the American Revolution, a decidedly TI-crowded time, when they run into Tom’s love interest Pam, another TI from Tom’s future who is trying to figure out who fired the first shot.

 The steath-suited TI leveled a weapon, then droped as a stun charge hit. Moments later the other TI weo’d fired the stun charge fell, then two more TIs appeared and took out whoever had nailed the second TI. But then the stealth-suited TI reappeared, having recovered somewhen in the future and jumped back to try to finish the job. 




   Southland Tales
by Richard Kelly (Kelly, director)
First release: 14 Nov 2007

After terrorists destroy Abilene and El Paso with nuclear bombs, the patriot act dominates the U.S. and the world is engulfed in World War III. Unfortunately, the U.S. seems to be more engulfed in the next presidential election and finding an alternative to oil, which somehow (don’t ask me how) combine to create a rift in space-time that doesn’t really play much of a role in the self-important plot, but does serve to send two monkeys (or maybe two of the movie’s characters) back in time 69 minutes.

You’d think by now that I would have learned not to rent movies where the director and writer are one and the same, but I keep holding out hope.

 And what did we do when we discovered a rift in the fourth dimension? We launched monkeys into it. 




   Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
by Matt Groening, et. al. (Dwayne Carey-Hill, director)
First release: 27 Nov 2007

The oddest thing about the Futurama movie is that in the end all the back and forth in time by Bender and Fry very nearly holds together without paradox, even the origin of the time travel code.

 What’s the secret of time travel doing on Fry’s ass? 


   “Anything Would Be Worth It”
by Lesley L. Smith
First publication: Analog, Dec 2007

Physics grad student Abigail thinks that because waves go back through time in one interpretation of quantum physics, she might be able to go back in time, too.

 I just went back in time to save Sophia’s girls, so I should be able to save my girls! I concentrated with all my might on waves that went back in time, and then I felt a Herculean wrench. 


   “Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics”
by C.A. Gardner
First publication: Challenging Destiny, Dec 2007

The noble Englishman William Morris travels through time hoping to finally set the world right for socialism via the time machine of his friend Bertie.

 I suppose you remember that young writer, H.G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with News from Nowhere, my vision of the future. 


Jerry Oltion’s
trackball telescope

   “Salvation”
by Jerry Oltion
First publication: Analog, Dec 2007

Physicist William Winters asks the church for money to build a time machine to take him and the Reverend Billy back to the time of Jesus.

 “I’m talking time travel,” William went on. “You could go back in time and meet Jesus. Assuming he existed.” 


   Stuck in the Past
by Owen Smith (Greg Robbins, director)
First release: 15 Dec 2007

I did discover one fact while watching this film: Adding time travel and musical aspects to the story of an aging, lonely actress who gets to be 17 again cannot rescue an otherwise miserably written movie.

 Kinda like I did live my life, but now I gotta live it all over again. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #19
Dragon Harper
by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey
First publication: 26 Dec 2007

Another epidemic hits Pern right smack in the middle of Kindan’s coming of age at Harper Hall. Meanwhile, J’lantir’s riders claim he told them something that he very well knows he did not—a definite harbinger of time travel in the dragon series.

 “Where were you all this time?” J’lantir growled. K’nad dropped his head, shaking it slowly. ’lantir pursed his lips sourly and peered along the rest of the line of men that comprised his missing wing. “Where were all of you?”
He scanned the line, looking for someone who might answer.
“We were on an important mission,’ J’trel said finally. The others looked at him and nodded in relief.
“Very important,” K’nad added with a confirming nod.
“So important that I didn’t know about it?” J’lantir asked in scathing tones.
K’nad gave him a confused look and was about to answer when J’trel nudged him, shaking his head.
“He said he wouldn’t believe us, remember?” J’trel whispered to K’nad in a voice not so quiet that J’lantir didn’t hear him. 



And Still More Time Travel of 2007
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “The Metaphorical Car for the New Generation” by Idan Cohen, 365 Tomorrows, 28 Jan 2007
—I want that car!

  “Temponaut” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 14 Feb 2007
—drunken scientists travels forward

  “Relative” by T.J. Moore, 365 Tomorrows, 22 Feb 2007
—travel to abandoned world

  “A Perfect Alibi” by J.S. Kachelries, 365 Tomorrows, 11 Mar 2007
—rivals at a temporal physics conference

  “Time Enough for a Wedding by Grady Hendrix” by Grady Hendrix, 365 Tomorrows, 26 Sep 2007
—time traveler misses own wedding

  “Before the Previous Crunch” by Patricia Stewart, 365 Tomorrows, 5 Nov 2007
—to before the big bang

  “Moore’s Law” by Gavin L. Perri, 365 Tomorrows, 30 Dec 2007
—an old man tells how it used to be




Romance Time Travel of 2007
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Challenge 1: Highlander's Challenge by Jo Barrett

  Viking II 7: Down and Dirty by Sandra Hill

  Blackthorn 3: Midnight's Bride by Sophia Johnson

  Masters of Time 1: Dark Seduction by Brenda Joyce

  Masters of Time 2: Dark Rival by Brenda Joyce

  When I Fall in Love by Lynn Kurland

  Daughters of the Glen 1: Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband by Melissa Mayhue

  Daughters of the Glen 2: Highland Guardian by Melissa Mayhue




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Missives from Possible Futures #1” by John Scalzi, Subterranean Press, Winter 2007 [alternate history ]

  Idiocracy by Mike Judge and Etan Cohen, 25 Jan 2007 [long sleep ]

  “Domine” by Rjurik Davidson, Aurealis, Mar 2007 [time dilation ]

  The Adventures of Teddy P. Brains by Gerard Brown and Lea Henry, 24 Apr 2007 (direct-to-video) [prequel ]

  Next by Gary Goldman et al. (Lee Lamahori, director) [just precognition ]

  Transformers by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and John Rogers (Michael Bay, director), 3 Jul 2007 [long sleep ]

  Afghan Knights by Brandon P. Hogan and Christine Stringer (Allan Harmon, director), 31 Jul 2007 [ghost story ]

  “In the Beginning, Nothing Lasts” by Mike Strahan, Intergalactic Medicine Show Oct 2007 [odd entropy ]

  CSI: NY (“Time’s Up”) by Trey Callaway, 17 Oct 2007 [despite appearances, no time travel ]



   Campfire’s The Time Machine
adapted by Lewis Helfand and Rajesh Nagalukonda
First publication: 2008

Campfire Graphic Novels, based in New Delhi, is producing an adventurous series of long graphic adaptations of classic novels with vivid colors and striking artwork. Nagalukonda’s work on “The Time Machine” jumps out at you with an exagerated perspective and an original interpretation of the Eloi and the Morlocks.

 We did not know the man standing before us, but he spoke with much excitement and passion. Over time, we came to know him as the Time Traveler. 




   Ctrl
by Robert Kirbyson and Bob Massey (Kirbyson, director)
First released: Jan 2008 (internet serial)

Nerd’s revenge with a keyboard, including ctrl-z which takes him back in time. The original 6-minute film took honors at the 2008 Sundance Festival, and then NBC picked it up for ten short webisodes.

 Just hit control-z. 




   Chilly Beach: The World Is Hot Enough
by Daniel Hawes and Doug Sinclair (Edin Ibric, director)
First aired: 2 Jan 2008

When Dale’s attempt to warm up Chilly Beach lead to an environmental disaster, he and his pal Frank go back in time to set things right, hopefully without destroying all the hilarious stereotypes of Canadians and Americans. Bonus points if you can guess what kind of vehicle the time machine is. Hint: Not a Delorean.

 Even now, while millions of Amercans are tannin in the warm sunshine of Calfornia and Texas, millions more in the snows of Minnesota and Alaska must pay for artificial tannin machines and synthetic foul-smellin creme to achieve a similar but not entirely convincing effect. I feel your pain. 




   The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything:
A Veggie Tales Movie
by Phil Vischer (Mike Nawrocki, director)
First release: 11 Jan 2008

This movie loses a full star for the line “Why would a blind guy come to the dinner theater anyway?” The three main vegetables in the movie are cabin boys (i.e., servers)—Ellit, Sedgewick and George—at the aforementioned dinner theater, when a magic ball comes to take them back in time to rescue another vegetable, Eloise, from the pirate Robert the Terrible.

 Now we’re headed someplace. We’ve got a metal ball. 




   The Sarah Connor Chronicles
created by Josh Friedman
First episode: 13 Jan 2008

After the events of the second movie, Sarah and teenaged John are trying to lay low when Cameron, a beautiful young terminator, arrives from 2027 and tries to take them away from their problems with a jump to 2007; other terminators follow and violence ensues.

 Come with me if you wanna live. 

—Cameron Philips to John while fleeing Cromartie




   Hamlet 2
by Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming (Fleming, director)
First release: 21 Jan 2008

Dana Marschz, a high school drama teacher whose theater program is on the cutting block, writes a sequel to Hamlet in which a time-traveling Hamlet forgives his father. Oh, time-traveling Jesus forgives his father, too.

Advice to time-travelers who may have come back for an authentic dvd experience with this comedy: For an exquisite and moving high school teacher movie, try Mr. Holland’s Opus instead; for a wonderful and funny Elisabeth Shue movie, go for Adventures in Babysitting, with a bonus of the Mighty Thor; nevertheless, Hamlet 2 has some amusing moments of its own.

 Brie: Hamlet 2? Doesn’t everybody die at the end of the first one?
Dana: I have a device. 




   Minutemen
by John Killoran, David Diamond and David Weissman (Lev Spiro, director)
First aired: 25 Jan 2008 (direct-to-tv)

When 14-year-old Charlie invents a time machine, he gets together with his nerdy friend and the school biker to fix the social embarrassments inflicited upon fellow outcasts.

 Stop! [Flashes badge] Bureau of Weights and Measurements! 


   “Inside the Box”
by Edward M. Lerner
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Feb 2008

After foiling a murder attempt by his time-traveling grandson, Professor Thaddeus Fitch tries to explain Schrödinger’s cat to his class of undergraduates.

 Some assert that the realm of quantum mechanics is so removed from the realm of our senses we’re unequipped to judge. 


   “Knot Your Grandfather’s Knot”
by Howard V. Hendrix
First publication: Analog, Mar 2008

While sorting through the attic, elderly Mike Sakler finds a note from himself detailing how he must go back in time to save his grandfather from a mugging near the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

 Indeed the notes from that page on were most curious. “Planck energy for opening gap in spacetime fabric = 1019 billion electron volts,” read one, but then that was crossed out with a large X as the writer of the notes took a different tack. 




   Phineas and Ferb
created by Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh
First time travel: 1 Mar 2008

Stepbrothers Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher foil their sister Candace and undertake grand projects during their summer vacation, including some travel through time.
  1. It’s about Time (1 Mar 2008) to prehistoric times
  2. Quantum Boogaloo (21 Sep 2009)    Candance travels to future to bust brothers

 Mom, it’s me, Candace from the past. I came here in a time machine that Phineas and Ferb borrowed from a museum. You’ve gotta bust them! 




   Tripping the Rift: The Movie
by Amato, Goin, Laney, Minnis and Sweeney (Bernie Denk, director)
First release: 25 Mar 2008 (straight-to-video)

A mash-up of third season cartoon episodes (hence, all the writer credits) including the Terminator parody.

 So, it’s agreed: You and Babette travel back, decline the invitation to Chode’s party, and Bernice will shut down the Arnie-1000. 


   “The Beethoven Affair”
by Donald Moffitt
First publication: Analog, Apr 2008

In a world where music companies use time travel to plumb the past for new new pop hits, junior account executive Lester Krieg (no relation to my favorite Seattle Seahawk quarterback) comes up with the idea of getting Beethoven to write a tenth symphony—regardless of the cost.

 Everybody and his brother Jake knows that Beethoven wrote nine symphonies and stopped there. And even the dimmest of music lovers has wish fulfillment fantasies about what a tenth would have sounded like. 


   “Lost Continent”
by Greg Egan
First publication: The Starry Rift: Tales of Tomorrow, Apr 2008

The north of Khurosan, not part of our world, lies the site of a bloody battle between the Warriors and the Scholars, both of whom have come through time to take Islamic boys and turn them into soldiers in their war, but one boy’ uncle gives him to a man who promises to take him to a safe place or possibly a safe time.

 I haven’t just been to Mecca. I’ve been there in the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him. 


Wismer’s fiction also appeared in this anthology.

   “Vis Insita”
by Asher Wismer
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 17 May 2008

Professor Rudnicki sits in a bar, bemoaning the particular mode of failure of his latest time travel.

 Time is relative to our senses, space doubly so. What we perceive to be real is in fact the simple accumulation of expectation; we expect the glass to hold the whiskey, and we expect the whiskey to get us drunk, but only AFTER we drink it. 




   “Back”
by Susan Forest
First publication: Analog, Jun 2008

Alan and Victor are carrying out a careful sequence of time-travel experiments with slips of paper, flatworms, stray cats, a potted palm and chimps, with the only problem being getting the time traveler back from the past.

 It was while Alan and Victor were touring the warehouse with the real estate agent tht a slip of paper bearing the words, “It worked,&rdqup; materialized on a desk in the office. 


   “Finalizing History”
by Richard K. Lyon
First publication: Analog, Jun 2008

In early 1960, Perry Mason author Earl (not Erle) Stanley Gardner and his wife host John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, Douglas MacArthur and Jackie Kennedy to discuss a shared dream in which a time-traveling alien requires them to pick one person to eliminate from history as a prerequisite to a final revision of mankind’s history.

 If one of these people dies young, that will pay your debt. 




   9th Wonders!
by Isaac Mendez
First publication in our world: 10 Jun 2008

You, too, can read some of these fictional comics from Heroes in the two volumes published in pleasant hardback books (transcribed by mortal artist Tim Sale).

 I did it! 




   Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox
by Eoin Colfer
First publication: 5 Jul 2008

In book six of the series, Artemis Fowl’s mother contracts a terminal disease for which the only possible cure lies in a species of lemur that Artemis made extinct eight years ago. The series is popular, but for me, the condescending tone of the series is its downfall.

 Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers. 




   Termination Point
by Peter Sullivan (Jason Bourque, director)
First release: 20 Jul 2008 (made-for-tv)

A scientist at a top-secret weapons facility creates a weapon that he then regrets. So he steals it and gets on a plane to Mexico with the head security agent’s family, hoping that having the family along will restrict the agent’s options. But the response is out of the agent’s hands when the president orders the plane shot down. Fortunatly, the scientist activates the weapon just before the missles strike the plane—well, partly fortunate: One copy of the plane and most of the passengers are blown into yesterday, while the scientist and the agent’s family survive in a null space that will first eat all of California and then the rest of the universe.

So, why were the dead passengers and one copy of the plane blown into yesterday? I never did figure that out; it had no bearing on the movie, except perhaps the filmmakers were Donnie Darko wannabes, and it provided a cheap wrap-up at the end.

 Hunky Farm Boy at the Beginning of the Movie: What’s the date today?
Curvaceous Farm Girl: September second. Why?
H.F.B.: This [crashed] plane boarded tomorrow! 




   100 Million BC
by Paul Bales (Griff Furst, director)
First release: 29 Jul 2008 (direct-to-dvd)

After discovering a 64-million-year-old message written on a cave wall, Dr. Frank Reno, a scientist on the original Philadelphia Experiment, leads a group of modern-day Navy SEALs back to the Cretaceous to rescue those who were lost back in that 1949 experiment leading to machine-guns-vs-dinosaurs, a t-rex in Los Angeles, and potential paradoxes for the original travelers.

 FRANK IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT 




   Stargate: Continuum
by Brad Wright (Martin Wood, director)
First release: 20 Jul 2008

The Stargate crew (including Captain O’Neill, of course) have tracked down the last of the clones of the infamous Goa’uld System Lords and are ready to kill him off to make the many universes safe, but in his last words, he reveals the the original Lord still lives. Indeed, he does! And he’s traveled back to 1939 to sink the ship that was bringing the artifact that created the Stargate program in the first place. Even though his plan doesn’t fully succeed, various crew in the present start disappearing while others end up back in 1939 where they are rescued by a Stargateless Captain O’Neill from the future.

That’s just for starters. Yet to come are changes to the past and subsequent changes to change those changes back, all with no sensible model of time travel.

 Samantha: Guys, I hate to interrupt, but the temperature’s falling. We just passed minus forty.
Daniel: Celcius or Fahrenheit? 




  
 Spider Webb #1
Time Machines Repaired While You Wait
by K.A. Bedford
First publication: Aug 2008

In the first half of the twenty-first century, time machine repairman Spider Webb meets a ready-to-blow time machine with a dead body inside, so naturally he isolates it in the Bat Cave—i.e., a little walled-off universe where nothing can affect the real universe. I wonder how that worked out.

 That’s why we need the Bat Cave. We put the unit in there, and we stand outside, teleporting various tools, and if the thing does explode, nobody gets hurt. 




   Eureka
created by Andrew Cosby and Jaime Paglia
First time travel: 19 Aug 2008

Sheriff Jack Carter is not the brainiest person in the top-secret government enclave of Eureka (though his daughter Zoe might be), but even so, he gets his share of solutions to the zany science project problems that arise, including bouts with a time-loop wedding (“I Do Over” on 18 Aug 2008), a trip to 1947 (“Founder's Day”), a series-ending anomoly for Jack and Zoe (“Just Another Day” on 16 Jul 2012), and other time anomolies.

 Zoe: Dad, did you just see . . .?
Carter: Yeah, I’ll deal with that tomorrow. 

—from the series finale




   Lost in Austen
by Guy Andrews
First episode: 3 Sep 2008

Amanda Price, a young 21st-century Englishwoman and devotee of Jane Austen, swaps places with the heroine of Pride and Prejudice.

Unfortunately, the U.S. DVD movie mash-up omitted the bit where Amanda Price serenades Mr. Darcy, Mr. Binley, and Miss Bingley with Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” Damn those cheapskates who won’t pay for music rights! So, head straight for the full miniseries on Hulu!

 ♫Just listen to the misic of the traffic in the city.
La la la la, la la la and the neon lights are pretty.
How can you lose?♫ 




   The Tomorrow Code
by Brian Falkner
First publication: Oct 2008

Australian teenager Tane Williams and his best friend (and genius) Rebecca Richards use university lab equipment to detect messages from the future which include a lottery number and a possible route to change Rebecca’s tragic past.

 “Try to think logically,” Rebecca said firmly but not unkindly. “How could you transport a live human being through a pinhole of any kind?” 




In the U.S. pilot,
Colm Meaney was cast as Gene Hunt.

   Life on Mars (US)
adapted by Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg
First episode: 9 Oct 2008

I watched this show when it first came out, but it never engaged me, and somehow the casting seemed off. Not until seven years later did I watch the original U.K. version: Surprise! I was drawn in, partly because the characters appealed to me more, and partly because of a softer sell—still melodramatic, but not often over the top.

 It goes like this, Spaceman. We live on a rock, there ain’t no rhyme, there ain’t no reason. We live on a rock, just one of many. Hurling around in some big cosmic jumbalaya. Now you wanna get questiony, that’s your prerogative. My ma took me to a loud church every Sunday. She squeezed her eyes shut, she pressed her rosary beads to her lips and she prayed for good things for those she loved. But, cancer took two of her sisters. Her husband couldn’t make a move without a belly full of gin, her youngest son turned to a life of crime, and her oldest, me, is a nasty son of a bitch who can’t get out of third gear without a snarl. So, who was she talking to every Sunday and why wasn’t he answering? I will tell you why, because we live on a rock, just one of many. There ain’t no answers! There’s just this! And all you can really hope to do is to find a couple of people who make the seventy or eighty odd years we get to live on this sweet swinging sphere remotely tolerable.
I gotta take a leak. 


Mark Evan’s
interior illustration

   “Greenwich Nasty Time”
aka “Wizards of Science”
by Carl Frederick
First publication: Analog, Nov 2008

An experiment causes Great Britain to swap with a century-old version of itself, but fortunately, physics student Paul and his girlfriend Vicki were with their bicycles on the nearby Isle of Wight, so they make the crossing back to the main island and pedal to the rescue.

 The experiment could result in an alternate Great Britain being swapped with ours—one displaced backward in time from the instant of the experiment. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #20
Dragonheart
by Todd McCaffrey
First publication: 11 Nov 2008

You’d think that the people of Pern had suffered enough plagues—but no!—the dragons must now face an infection as well. You’d also think that the people of Pern would eventually catch on and start quickly realizing whenever time travel might be a help. But no! It seems to come as a complete revelation each time.

 K’lior’s face grew ashen. “Fort is lucky. We don’t have another Threadfall in the next three sevendays. We’ll probably be able to fight that,” he answered, adding a shake of his head, “but I can’t say about next Fall.”
The despair that gripped the Weyrleader was palpable. Egremer looked for some words of encouragement to give him but could find none. It was K’lior who spoke next, pulling himself erect and willing a smile back on to his face.
“We’ll find a way, Lord Egremer,’ he declared with forced cheer. “We’re dragonriders, we always find a way.” He nodded firmly and then said to Egremer, “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
“Certainly!” Egremer replied. “I’ll see you out. And don’t worry about those weyrlings, if it’s too much bother. Having them would only save us time.”
K’lior stopped so suddenly that Egremer had to swerve to avoid bumping into him.
“Time!” K’lior shouted exultantly. 










   Fringe
created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci
First time travel: 2 Dec 2008

When smart and beautiful FBI Agent Olivia Dunham is recruited by Homeland Security to investigate strange happenings on the fringe of science, she’s given free rein to choose any colleagues she wishes, which leads her to the slightly mad (but kindly) scientist Walter Bishop and his jaded son Peter.

I didn’t get around to watching this until it appeared on Amazon Prime after the series finale. It’s a little too violent for my taste, but the three main characters have become favorites of mine just as much as Myca, Pete and Artie on that other show; and as I watched into the first half of Season 3, it became more and more addictive. By the time it reached the middle of Season 4, it became my favorite long love story ever.

The first glimpse of time travel was in Episode 10, when Walter tells of the time travel machine that he built to save Peter as a boy, although that episode didn’t see any actual traveling.
  1. Safe (2 Dec 2008) Walter tells of machine
  2. Ability (10 Feb 2009) Jones uses machine to escape jail
  3. August (19 Nov 2009) we learn the Observers time travel
  4. The Bishop Revival (28 Jan 2010)   possible Nazi time traveler
  5. Peter (1 Apr 2010) Observers time travel in alt univ
  6. White Tulip (15 Apr 2010) Dr. Alistair Peck loops thru time
  7. The Firefly (21 Jan 2011) Doc Brown’ son thru time
  8. The Day We Died (6 May 2011) Peter to future / machine to past
  9. Subject 9 (14 Oct 2011) short jumps back for Olivia
  10. Novation (4 Nov 2011) another short Olivia time loop
  11. And Those . . . Behind (11 Nov 2011)   events from four years in past
  12. An Origin Story (2 Nov 2012) a shipping corridor through time
  13. The Boy Must Live (11 Jan 2013) Windmark visits 2609
  14. Liberty (18 Jan 2013) still in 2609

 After all, I was the scientist; and my only son was dying and I couldn’t do anything about it . . . I became consumed with saving you, conquering the disease. In my research, I discovered a doctor, Alfred Gross—Swiss, brillant physician, he’s the only man that had ever successfully cured a case of heppia. But there was a problem: he had died in 1936. And so, I designed a device intended to reach back into time, to cross the time-space continuum, and retrieve Alfred Gross. 




   Extreme Movie
by Adam Jay Epstein, et. al. (Epstein, director)
First release: 5 Dec 2008

The saddest part is how my opinions of Frankie Muniz (Chuck) and Beverley Mitchell (Sue) dropped just because they accepted parts in this series of silly teen sex vignettes centering around a high school sex class (no, not really a sex-ed class). There are better time travel movies for both of these favorite child actors! As for time travel in this movie, one teen’s sexual obsession is with Abraham Lincoln, so of course he builds a time machine and heads to the 19th century.

 Well . . . I got to get ready for the theater. 


All good time machines must have crytals, including Napoleon Dynamite’s machine (shown above) and the machine in this story.

   “Sufficiently Advanced”
by Sam Clough
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 14 Dec 2008

A man’s time machine takes him to the far future where he’s given the choice of which of four collectors to ally with.

 My instruments detected his arrival—he’s mine by right. 



And Still More Time Travel of 2008
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “Chronolicide, She Wrote” by J.S. Kachelries, 365 Tomorrows, 8 Jan 2008
—Angela Lansburyfield time-travel murder

  “The Yellow Room” by Seth Koproski, 365 Tomorrows, 2 Feb 2008
—time-travel philosophy

  “The Incomprehensible Being” by Cal Glover-Wessel, 365 Tomorrows, 20 Jul 2008
—free movement thru time only

  “Unforeseen Consequences” by Luke Chmelik, 365 Tomorrows, 16 Aug 2008
—AIs and time machines don’t mix

  “Time and Space” by Rayne Adams, 365 Tomorrows, 4 Sep 2008
—thief to ancient Egypt

  “A Study in Logic” by Patricia Stewart, 365 Tomorrows, 29 Sep 2008
—Homes and Wattson

  “The Old Man and the Sea Redux” by Andy Bolt, 365 Tomorrows, 30 Sep 2008
—crowdsourcing the classics

  “The Collector” by Tom Manzenec, 365 Tomorrows, 7 Dec 2008
—sliding sideways and forward in time

  “The Time Traveller” by Gavin Raine, 365 Tomorrows, 18 Dec 2008
—miscalculation going forward




Romance Time Travel of 2008
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  Challenge 2: Rogue's Challenge by Jo Barrett

  Highlander 6: Secrets of the Highlander by Janet Chapman

  Viking II 8: Viking Unchained by Sandra Hill

  Masters of Time 3: Dark Embrace by Brenda Joyce

  Slains #1 The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

  With Every Breath by Lynn Kurland

  Daughters of the Glen 3: Soul of a Highlander by Melissa Mayhue

  Highlands 1: Master of the Highlands by Veronica Wolff

  Highlands 2: Sword of the Highlands by Veronica Wolff

  Highlands 3: Warrior of the Highlands by Veronica Wolff




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Yesterday Was a Lie by James Kerwin, 17 Jan 2008 [surreal ]

  Turok, Son of Stone by Evan Baily and Tony Bedard, 5 Feb 2008 [secondary worlds ]

  “The Vortex of Youth” by Patricia Stewart, 365 Tomorrows, 17 Dec 2008 [bizarre physiological aging ]

  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by Eric Roth, 25 Dec 2008 [backward aging ]

   The Secret Life of Suckers
directed by Juanma Sánchez-Cervantes
First episode: circa 2009

The eponymous suckers of this 13-episode no-dialog Spanish cartoon are the beasties who live on car windows with suckers for hands and feet. Each episode shows snippets of the life of one such beastie (Travis), including a gag in the 12th episode where he visits caveman days and spaceman days, and various Travises keep appearing next to each other.

 Travis [drinks milk from the baby bottle from his own baby self]: Berurrrrp! 




   Being Erica
created by Jane Sinyor
First episode: 5 Jan 2009

Everything seems to go wrong for Erica Strange, the “cute young woman with a great educaiton and great friends.” Why can’t she get it together? Maybe therapist (so to speak) Tom Wexlar can help her figure it out, especially given that each time she sees him, she gets a chance to redo one of her bad past decisions.

 Erica: What about paradoxes, huh? Butterfly effects? Back to the Futures?
Dr. Tom: I love that movie.
Erica: If I change the past, if I don’t get drunk, won’t that cause, like, World War III in the present?
Dr. Tom: Or is it possible that your alcohol consumption, though very important to you, might not play a role in influencing world events? 




   College Humor Originals
First time travel: 26 Jan 2009 (internet serial)

I haven’t completely figured out what collegehumor.com is all about, but they do have at least three amusing short films with time travel.
  1. Time Gun (26 Jan 2009)
  2. Back to the Future Sex Scenes (9 Feb 2012)
  3. Hardly Working / Killing Hitler (11 Oct 2012)

 I invented a time machine to make the world a better place, which is why I’m going to travel back to kill Adolf Hitler. 




   “The Boogie-Woogie, Time-Traveling, Cyborg Blues”
by Barton Paul Levenson
First publication: Electric Spec 1 Feb 2009

Cliff Robinson—a black, piano playing cyborg soldier in the 39th century—escapes back to depression-era Pittsburgh where he is tracked down by a time-travel cop.

 Hosin Tau was Minister of Internal Security in the Silver Republic, a nation-state carved out of the Grand Union of the American South in World War VIII. 


Dunesteef Audio Magazine’s story illustration

   “This Must Be the Place”
by Elliot Bangs
First publication: Strange Horizons, 2 Feb 2009

At a bar, Andrea meets a loopy man who seems to already know her; he leaves a mysterious message on a napkin, which turns out to be a hint about their next meeting where the man is younger and no longer knows her.

 If I had the power to decide never to meet him again, I reasoned, surely I had the power to change the course of the relationship for the better. 


The story also appeared in Hart’s 2012 collection.

   “Time’s Arrow”
by Geoff Hart
First publication: geoff-hart.com, 10 Feb 2009

Physicist Tim with a dead girlfriend experiences various precognition episodes leading up to his attempt to travel to the past to undead the girlfriend, or at least plant the seeds for the precognition.

 I’m certain I didn’t send myself any mail recently, but then again, I have plans to do so in the near future—or near past, I suppose. 




   Before You Say ‘I Do’
by Elena Krupp (Paul Fox, director)
First release: 14 Feb 2009

Using a wish (followed by a car crash), George Murray travels from 2009 back to 1999 to stop his girlfriend Janie from marrying her no-good ex-husband.

 I wish I’d met Jane before she was married. 


from Fishbone’s website

   “Caesar’s Secret Weapon”
by Greg R. Fishbone
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 23 Feb 2009

A Roman general tests a maxim propounded by a time traveler.

 Your gods have abandoned you, Romanus. Your weapon has no power against us. 




   “I, Lensman”
by Adam Zabell
First publication: 365 Tomorrows 15 Mar 2009

A science-fiction-reading pilot of a time ship doesn’t mind that a lot of missions end up in the early-mid 1900 CE.

 They know I read golden age sci-fi and they think my Fix is interstellar travel, so they won’t assign me to anything after 2500CE. 




   “We Haven’t Got There Yet”
by Harry Turtledove
First publication: tor.com, 19 Mar 2009

Some 360 years before Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead was first performed in Edinburgh, Will Shakespeare himself attends a performance.

 His mind races faster than a horse galloping downhill. Try as he will, he can’t mistake her meaning. If Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is dead itself—a century dead!—then Hamlet must be older yet. But his head had only a little more hair, and that only a little less gray, when he wrote it. An impossibility—an impossibility he has just seen staged. 


   “Come-From-Aways”
by Tony Pi
First publication: On Spec, Spring 2009

I am a sucker for a soppy, romantic time-travel story. In this case, linguist Kate Tannhauser is one of the members of a team that’s assembled to deal with the arrival of a man who can be nothing but Prince Madoc of Gwynedd—a twelfth-century Welsh seafarer who seems to be skipping through time at 75-year intervals—and Kate intends to be with him on the next skip.

 Based on the linguistic evidence, I must conclude Madoc is truly a man out of time. 




   “Grandfather Paradox”
by Katherine Mankiller
First publication: Electric Velocipede, Spring 2009

Ann, who was abused by her father as a child, uses a time machine to break the cycle.

 “You may have free will,” Ann said, “but not me. I am a product of causal determinism.” 


   “Caveat Time Traveller”
by Gregory Benford
First publication: Nature, 2 Apr 2009

The mind comes up with story ideas in all kinds of roundabout ways. In this case, Benford notes that his 2009 story must have boiled up from a childhood memory of Mack Reynolds’ nearly identical 1952 story, “The Business, As Usual.”

 Yes, I learned that later. I must’ve read it as a kid (was 11 then).
I must look it up sometime. I knew Mack, too, visited him in Mexico in 1966. Odd how the mind works. 

—Gregory Benford on his website, responding to a fan’s question




   FAQ about Time Travel
aka Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel
by Jamie Mathieson (Gareth Carrivick, director)
First release: 24 Apr 2009

In a pub, nerd Ray meets beautiful time traveler Cassie who fawns over him before departing with a kiss. Of course Ray’s mates Toby and Pete don’t believe a word of it until Pete finds himself thrown through a time leak as he emerges from the loo.

 How many times . . . it’s not sci-fi, it’s science fiction or sf, which can also stand for speculative fiction. 




   Mac vs PC Commercial
First aired: May 2009

 I’m a PC, and I’m headed to the future. 


   The Princess and the Bear
by Mette Ivie Harrison
First publication: May 2009

An enchanted king (now a bear) and a wolf (who was a princess for a while) are sent back in time to stop the spread of unmagic in this second book of Harrison’s Animal Magic Universe.

Although I didn’t connect strongly with this book, I did enjoy meeting Mette, a friendly young mother who reads and writes all the time when she isn't spending time with her family. That meeting was at Orson Scott Card’s writing bootcamp in Orem, Utah, in the summer of 2002.

I suspect that the title of this book is a nod to one of my favorite Card stories, also called “The Princess and the Bear,” although there is no other connection between the two stories.

 Yet your kingdom needs you to return, so I held time open for you to go back and be king once more. If you so choose. 




   Star Trek (the reboot)
by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Gene Roddenberry (J.J. Abrams, director)
First release: 8 May 2009

Young Kirk and Spock meet future Ambassador Spock who has come back in time to stop Nero from destroying Vulcan.

Tim and I saw the reboot in the theater on opening day.

 You know, coming back in time, changing history . . . that’s cheating. 




   Dino Dan
created by J.J. Johnson
First episode: 11 May 2009

Young Dino Dan is a boy who sees dinosaurs in his world. Sometimes others see the dinosaurs, too, and from time to time, time traveling occurs back to the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous. It could just be a boy’s overly active imagination, but that’s okay by me.

 Unfortunately, the time machine ain’t working right now. We gotta get some new space-time capacitors. 




   “Time Machine”
by Simon Rich
First publication: Free-Range Chickens, 12 May 2009

Just one of many fun gags in Simon Rich’s second collection, Free-Range Chickens.

 As soon as my time machine was finished, I traveled back to 1890, so I could kill Hitler . . . 


   “The Affair of the Phlegmish Master”
by Donald Moffitt
First publication: Analog, Jun 2009

Given the title, I figured I might run into comedy or puns, but that wasn’t the case for this story of Dutch historian and translator Peter Van Gaas who travels back to an alternative timeline with a billionaire to commission a Vermeer portrait of the billionaire’s wife while trying not to run afoul of the thug hired by those who have a financial interest in not seeing more works of art from past masters.

 Harry’s going to upset a multibillion dollar applecart. I don’t know what strings he pulled to get an import license for a priceless artifact from another timeline, but it’s not going to be worth what he thinks. 


from Ian Rennie’s blog, showing his NaNoWriMo award

   “Contraband”
by Ian Rennie
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 5 Jun 2009

A Chronology Enforcement agent is after archaeologist Lloyd Fry for bringing something other than his body back to a pre-unity time.

I wish that it had been clear at the end whether Lloyd remembered anything of the encounter, but even without that, there were pieces I enjoyed.

 And I wanted to get a hologram of the eiffel tower before it was wrecked by the earthquake. My mother asked me to. 






   Land of the Lost
by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas (Brad Silberling, director)
First release: 5 Jun 2009

The 70s tv show (which had no actual time travel, but did have dinosaurs from another dimension) is updated as paleontologist Rick Marshall propounds time warps, as embodied in his tachyon amplifier, as the solution to today’s energy problems. Even though everyone else thinks he’s crazy, one beautiful graduate student, Holly Cantrell, encourages him to finish the device (her confidence coming from a fossil of a 265-million-year-old cigarette lighter, and together with souvenir hawker Will, they set off to “another dimension where past, present and future all meet.”

The movie has a high enough silliness quotient that it can only be truly appreciated en español (especially preferable if you are not a Spanish speaker).

 Rick: It’s the only real solution to solving this fossil fuel crisis we’re experiencing, and it boils down to two simple words.
Matt Lauer: Renewable biofuels.
Rick: Close . . .: time warps. 


   “In the Cracks of Time”
by David M. Alexander (as by David Grace)
First publication: Sci Fi Storiesk Vol. 4, 8 Jun 2009

Mark needs to travel 1000 years into the future because he is the only one capable of ensuring a successful restart of the human race after a millennium-long plan to exterminate the alien, invading Ants. But the only way to make that trip is for him to spend 1000 (non-aging) years in various alternate history pasts, after which he can head back to his own future.

 Mark had been supplied with a thousand names and bank account numbers, identities of organizations and individuals throughout the Twentieth Century together with details of various winning lottery numbers, sporting events and stock market fluctuations plus a handful of gold coins. Luckily the field was strong enough to encompass his clothes and a few personal effects. Mark often fantasized about how much more difficult his life would have been had he been forced to arrive naked like the time travelers in the Terminator movies. 




   “Palimpsest”
by Charles Stross
First publication: Wireless, Jul 2009

As much as I love Asimov’s The End of Eternity, I’ve also always wondered about the logistics of Eternity’s access to the different centuries. Stross stated that his story, which begins with a clever hazing ritual for Agent Pierce to join the Stasis organization, was a rewrite of Asimov’s story, and I’d hoped that it would address the questions in the back of my mind. Did it? No, although it did take the ideas to a trillion-year span of history hacking and solar system engineering.

 They’ll have no one to remember their lives but you; and all because you will believe the recruiters when they tell you that to join the organizaton you must kill your own grandfather, and that if you do not join the organization, you will die.
(It’s an antinepotism measure, they’ll tell you, nodding, not unkindly. And a test of your ruthlessness and determination. And besides, we all did it when it was our turn.) 


   “Turning the Grain”
by Barry B. Longyear
First publication: Analog, Jul/Aug to Sep 2009

By the halfway point of the story, Gordon Redcliff (angry, jaded ex-military sniper and bodyguard) is stranded in a primitive civilization 140,000 years in the past, and he must face the question of whether the widow he’s falling in love with is enough motivation to violate his directive to not interfere with “one hell of a disaster coming in just a matter of a few months.”

 Three weeks in prehistory, Mr. Redcliff. Aren’t you excited? 




   S. Darko
by Nathan Atkins and Richard Kelly (Chris Fisher, director)
First release: 3 Jul 2009

Seven years after Donnie Darko’s death, his sister has even more artsy adventures in death and time travel.

 It’s like everybody knows everything about me, but I’m invisible at the same time. 




   The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations
by Holly Brix (Seth Grossman, director)
First release: 31 July 2009

Lots of blood and gore in this third of the butterfly horror movies, wherein Sam Reide uses his time travel ability to pose as a psychic for police, all of which is fine until he breaks the rules to try to prevent the murder of his first girlfriend.

 There’s two big rules: You never jump back to alter your own past, and you never jump unsupervised. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #21
Dragongirl
by Todd McCaffrey
First publication: Aug 2009

At the end of Dragonheart, Fiona took a band of merry dragons and their riders back in time to train for the next Threadfall. Now it is time for their return, but even with their addition, there are not enough dragons to fight the fall.

 “Because there wasn’t time,” Fiona said. He glared at her. “I had just enough time to realize that I would have to time it myself, not enough time to explain.” 




   The Time Traveler’s Wife
adapted by Jeremy Leven and Bruce Joel Rubin (Robert Schwentke, director)
First release: 14 Aug 2009

I thought the book suffered from not exploring the consequences of Henry’s travel on free will and determinism, but the movie had even less depth.

I watched this one with Harry on my short visit to Scotland in the summer of 2010.

 And after she gives him the blanket she happens to be carrying, he explains to her that he’s a time traveler. Now, for some reason I’ll never understand, she believes him. 




   “First Flight”
by Mary Robinette Kowal
First publication: tor.com, 25 Aug 2009

When time travelers want to create a film of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, their only choice is to send Louise because she’s the only living person who speaks English and was also alive in 1905.

 Louise hesitated. “The Good Book promises us free will.” 




   “Nix Nix”
by Paul E. Holt
First publication: Aoife’s Kiss, Sep 2009

Sra and Cork travel from five centuries in the future back to 1963 where they hope to be the first to succeed in actually changing history for the better despite the Fillagian principle. Ah, you think, must be presidential history that they’ve set their hearts on, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

And speaking of long periods of time, more than a quarter century passed between this Paul Holt time-travel story and his previous one in a 1983 issue of Asimov’s, which is a feat that deserves high congratulations!

 She was strectched out on one of the deck chairs on the balcony of their apartment. They had rented it temporarily until they could cash in a few more diamonds, pretty much worthless in their own time but extremely valuable here, and buy a house. They were rich of course. Why would they come back poor?

Cork was standing at the railing pointing at his bell bottoms. “People are looking at me funny,” he said. “Nobody else is wearing these.” Their pre-migration research indicated people did, but they could have been a couple of years off. 




   “The Solid Men”
by C.J. Henderson
First publication: Nth Zine, Sep/Oct 2009

Somebody is using Gravty Wells to steal people’s souls from the past, which creates a dire threat to Proven Time (or sometimes Perfect Time). Time Patrol agent Rick Rambler is determined to bring the murderous theifs to a halt.

 I mean, the first thing they all want you to do is explain Proven Time, as if anyone could. The accident that set man’s sight on the One True Timeline from which all others spring was no blessing. 




   Dinosaur Train
created by Craig Bartlett
First episode: 7 Sep 2009

Buddy, a tyrannosaurus rex, is being raised by a pteranodon family who has access to a dinosaur train that can travel through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.

 See kids, in the Jurassic period, there’s no grass or flowers. 




   “Augusta Prima”
English title: “Augusta Prima” (translated from Swedish)
by Karin Tidbeck
First publication: Mitrania, 3rd quarter, 2009

A curious story about a curious girl, Augusta Prima, who lives in the most perfect of the eight lands, a land where places and time (and other abstractions, I would say) float in an unmeasurable way.

After its original Swedish publication, this story was translated to English and widely reprinted, including Weird Tales, Lightspeed and The Time Traveler’s Almanac. Artistic stories tend to be hit-or-miss with me (mostly miss). This one hit, but I never seem to be able to say why.

 The hands are moving now. Time is passing now. 




   From Time to Time
adapted by Julian Fellowes (Fellowes, director)
First release: 24 Sep 2009

At his granny’s house during World War II, 13-year-old Tolly sees ghosts from the 19th century and then finds that he can travel there, interact with those who believe, and solve a family mystery.

This one had several British actors that Janet likes including Maggie Smith, Pauline Collins and Alex Etel.

 Rose: Are you a ghost?
Tolly: I don’t think I can be. I’m not dead. 




   Dark Adventure Radio Theatre
First time travel: “The Shadow Out of Time,” 27 Oct 2009

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, produced by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, does audio dramatizations of Lovecraft’ stories including a nice 77-minute production of “The Shadow Out of Time.”

 Tales of intrigue, adventure, and the mysterious occult that will stir your imagination and make your very blood run cold. This is Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, with your host Chester Langfield. Today’s episode: H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time! 


   “Joan”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Nov 2009

It’s comforting to know that when you open a science fiction story named “Joan,” your expectations will be met—as in this story of our heroine Kate, time travel, and Joan of Arc.

 I realize I may seem a little obsessive, but is it so wrong to wish I could have saved her from being burned? She was such a remarkable person and it was such a horrible fate. 


   Time Travelers Never Die
by Jack McDevitt
First publication: Nov 2009

Early in the novelization of the story, Shel has a conversation with his dad about the chronological integrity principle. There is only one timestream, and if we try to do anything to change what is already known about the stream, then time will stop us. On the other hand, if we can arrange for an event to happen that meets the known facts without being quite what we thought it was . . .

 What did you try to do? Post somebody at the Texas School Book Depository? 




   Misfits
created by Howard Overman
First episode: 12 Nov 2009

Five teens, trapped in a freak storm, acquire superpowers, including Curtis who can rewind time. More graphic and less intense than Heroes (Season One)—and nobody can fly.

Later, in Season 2, another of the misfits travels back from the future.

 There's always someone who can fly. 




   Turtles Forever
by Rob David, Matthew Drdek and Lloyd Goldfine (Roy Burdine and Goldfine, directors)
First aired: 21 Nov 2009

Some goofier-than-the-real-turtles turtlebodies seem to be impersonating the real Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and what’s more they seem younger than today’s turtles, young enough to have come from 1987.

The younger shellheads come from an alternate 1987—the original incarnation of the cartoon—but I figure it’s still the past. In addition, perhaps all the turtle universes are splinters from the original Turtle Prime which that bad guy targets.

 I’ve already got four turtles to worry about. These are . . . superfluous. 


   “A Flash of Lightning”
by Robert Scherrer
First publication: Analog, Dec 2009

High school student Terri Bradbury and her high school class take a field trip to the distant past where Mr. Schoenfield sets off a nuclear explosion to experimentally study three theories of time travel’s effect on the future.

 We’ll discuss the ethics of time travel in the spring semester. 




   “Inside Time”
by Tim Sullivan
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 2009

On returning from the future via the Arrowhead mechanism that he invented, Herel Jablov finds himself trapped in a small station between universes along with a pretty woman named Mae and a criminal named Conway.

 This is going to sound odd to you, Herel, but the reason for the blank spot in your memory is that you’ve just come from the future. 








   How I Met Your Mother
created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas
First time travel: 7 Dec 2009

While Ted once again pursues some girl, Marshall does the more important task of writing a letter to his future self, and future Marshall comes back to anonymously deliver a plate of hot buffalo wings (in “The Window,” Episode 10 of Season 5).

And in an episode that Janet called me in to watch just before Hannah’s wedding (“The Time Travelers,” Episode 20 of Season 8), Ted goes down to the bar where he meets Barney, Twenty-Years-from-Now Barney, Twenty-Years-from-Now Ted, Twenty-Hours-from-Now Ted, and Twenty-Minutes-from-Now Barney—not to mention two versions of Twenty-Months-from-Now Coat-Check Girl.

 Okay, guys, I’ve been waiting twenty years for this. Just like we practiced, one, two, ah one-two-three-four: ♫ Whooooa, ooooooh, ooooooh, oooh, for the longest time . . . ♫ 



And Still More Time Travel of 2009
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “Visits” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 12 Jan 2009
—visits from a future self

  “Temp Agency” by Paul Starkey, 365 Tomorrows, 12 Apr 2009
—working temp jobs in past

  “Presque Vu” by Debbie Mac Rory, 365 Tomorrows, 2 May 2009
—escape artists exiled in time

  “Trains” by Jacob Lothyan, 365 Tomorrows, 11 May 2009
—ancient telegram warns time traveler

  “Instruments of War and Peace” by John Logan, 365 Tomorrows, 13 Jun 2009
—preventing the human scourge

  “P is for . . .” by Steven Odhner, 365 Tomorrows, 12 Jul 2009
—I don’t know what P is for

  “The Future Was What We Made It” by Adam Zabell, 365 Tomorrows, 21 Jul 2009
—time-travel lecture

  “The Jump” by Apollyn, 365 Tomorrows, 15 Aug 2009
—time travel/bungee cord analogy

  “The Accident” by Iva K., 365 Tomorrows, 13 Sep 2009
—time-travel bigwig and guide get stuck

  “Please Pick Up Your Bread Crumbs” by J.E. Moskowitz, 365 Tomorrows, 16 Sep 2009
—time cops to Biblical times

  “Time Net” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 8 Oct 2009
—a net to catch time meddlers

  “Spotted” by Ryon Moody, 365 Tomorrows, 17 Oct 2009
—old man finds traveler

  “Through the Hoop” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 26 Oct 2009
—time machine with no receiver

  “Archived” by Bryan Mulholland, 365 Tomorrows, 31 Oct 2009
—archivist interviews scientists

  “Cogito, ergo sum” by Jacob Lothyan, 365 Tomorrows, 1 Nov 2009
—mind travelers . . . or not?




Romance Time Travel of 2009
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  MacCoinnich 1: Binding Vows by Catherine Bybee

  Highlander 7: A Highlander Christmas by Janet Chapman

  Outlander 7: An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon

  Viking II 9: Viking Heat by Sandra Hill

  Scottish Highlands 2: Before the Fire by Tia Isabella

  Masters of Time 4: Dark Victory by Brenda Joyce

  Masters of Time 5: Dark Lover by Brenda Joyce

  Till There Was You by Lynn Kurland

  Daughters of the Glen 4: A Highlander of Her Own by Melissa Mayhue

  Blue Bells 1: Blue Bells of Scotland by Laura Vosika

  MacGregor 1: Timeless Mist by Terisa Wilcox

  Highlands 4: Lord of the Highlands by Veronica Wolff




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Greetings from Kampala” by Angela Ambroz, Strange Horizons, 12 Jan 2009 [differing time rates ]

  17 Again by Jason Filardi, 17 Apr 2009 [fountain of youth ]

  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian by Thomas Lennon, 22 May 2009 [despite appearances, no time travel ]

 

463 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)