The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1998



   Discworld
by Terry Pratchett
First time travel: 1998 in The Last Continent

Discworld humor either bites you or it doesn’t—not so much for me, but my friend Jim Martin talked me into reading The Last Continent (1998) for its send-up of “The Sound of Thunder” and the grandfather paradox. And I did laugh. I can’t guarantee that that book is the first time travel in Discworld, but it does precede the other time travel that I know of in Night Watch (2002).

 “It’s not just that things in the future can affect things in the past,” he said. “Things that didn’t happen but might have happened can . . . affect things that really happened. Even things that happened and shouldn’t have happened and were removed still have, oh, call ’em shadows in time, things left over which interfere with what’s going on.” 

—The Last Continent


   The Incredible Journey to the Beginning of Time
by Nicholas Harris
First publication: 1998

I thought it worthwhile to include this one example of a nicely illustrated non-fiction children’s book to show how ubiquitous time travel machines have become in our culture (Chinese authorities notwithstanding).

 This book is like a time machine. Starting from now, you are about to travel back through time. 




   Sphere
adapted by Kurt Wimmer, Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio (Barry Levinson, director)
First release: 13 Feb 1998

For me, this adaptation of Crichton’s novel was slow and unscarey.

 I borrowed from good writers, You know: Isaac Asimov, Rod Serling. 


   “I Am a Fine Musician . . .”
by Roberta Rogow
First publication: Don’t Open This Book!, Mar 1998

When Judy’s genius husband goes off to a conference, he leaves a machine on in his lab that keeps bringing musical geniuses from the past to the present.

 I could hear music all the way through the house. From the sounds drifting down, I could tell that Schubert was strumming the guitar, Haydn had formed his string quartet, Bach must have figured out how to turn on the Moog, and Handel had Vivaldi and Corelli working on a motet (or maybe the Italians were working with Handel). 




   Lost in Space
by Akiva Goldsman (Stephen Hopkins, director)
First release: 5 Apr 1998

The Robinsons hope to open up a new planet for colonization—and if they fail there is always Dr. Smith’s time machine to let them try again, unless perhaps Smith goes back even further and . . .

 Will Robinson, I will tell you a joke. Why did the robot cross the road? Because he was carbon bonded to the chicken. 


   “Cosmic Corkscrew”
by Michael A. Burstein
First publication: Analog, Jun 1998

A science fiction writer goes back to 1938 to make a copy of Asimov’s first story before it is lost.

 I looked at the copy of “Cosmic Corkscrew” I held in my hand, and I looked at the Chronobox. 




   Twice Upon a Yesterday
aka The Man with Rain in His Shoes, aka If Only
by Rafa Russo (Maria Ripoll, director)
First release: 30 Aug 1998

A year after he left his long-time girlfriend for a fling, actor Victor Bukowski hits rock bottom and desperately wants her back on the eve of her wedding to another. So, when two Spanish rubbishmen find him falling down drunk into a trash bin, they send him back in time for a second chance.

 And then I tried to go back to Sylvia, but it was too late. If only I could go back. 


   “Time Gypsy”
by Ellen Klages
First publication: Bending the Landscape: Original Gay and Lesbian Writing, Sep 1998

Thirty-year-old Dr. Carol McCullough, a physics post-doc at Berkeley, worships Sara Baxter Clarke, a rare woman physicist who died in 1956 before she could present her paper giving an argument for a practical tempokinetics.

 I'm offering to send you back in time to attend the 1956 International Conference for Experimental Physics. I need a copy of Clarke’s last paper. 




   “The Truth about Weena”
by David J. Lake
First publication: Dreaming Down-Under, Sep 1998

David Lake is a noted scholar on Wells and author of Darwin and Doom: H.G. Wells and the Time Machine wherein he notes that Wells knew of the paradoxes involved in time travel, but didn’t want to address them in what he saw as a serious story about social trends. So, Lake says, his own Weena story is a shot at showing “what really happens in backward time travel,” which in this case is a model where backward time travel causes the universe to split. Lake handles the idea consistently, although for me, Lake’s afterward to the story fails to fully acknowledge the history of the split-universe idea, and the afterward does not give sufficient credit to single timeline alternatives.

On the other hand, I love stories that tell us what truly happened in another well-known story, and Lake handles that well, telling us in the voice of the original narrator about what truly happened to the Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) after he first returned to 1891 and subsequently set out to rescue Weena.

 Well, in its hitherto published form it was partly fiction, because at the time—1895—I could not write the full truth. The full truth was even more fantastic than the fiction—too fantastic, surely, to be believed; or if believed, too disturbing to received notions of Time. And besides, there were living people to protect: in particular, one young person who was very dear to us. 




   Flint,the Time Detective
by Hideki Sonoda and Akira Yamauchi (original manga)
First episode: 1 Oct 1998

Flint, a none-too-bright cave boy, is defossilized in the 25th century and applies his remarkable strength and bravery to protecting the world from the time-changing machinations of the Dark Lord. The 39 Japanese anime episodes were dubbed in English and broadcast in 2000.

 Crossing the time barrier to save the world! 




   Seven Days
created by Christopher Crowe and Zachary Crowe
First episode: 7 Oct 1998

Navy Lt. Frank Parker is the mentally unstable operative for government missions that can travel back in time exactly one week.

 Someday I’m gonna form a chrononauts’ union. 




   A Knight in Camelot
adapted by Joe Wiesenfeld (Roger Young, director)
First release: 8 Nov 1998 (made-for-tv)

Not even Whoopi (as Vivien Morgan, Ph.D., the Connecticut Yankee) or Michael York (King Arthur) could save this adaptation, even though it did bring many of the basic ideas and characters of Twain’s original. But it fell down on poor dialogue, forced melodrama, and strained moralizing.

 This evilness of yours must be avenged, so I’m gonna blot out the sun. 



Romance Time Travel of 1998
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  MacKendimen 1: A Love through Time by Terry Brisbin

  Time Travelers 3: Prisoner of Time by Caroline B. Cooney

  Time Travel 1: Reflections in the Nile by Suzanne Frank

  Time Travel 2: Shadows on the Aegeon by Suzanne Frank

  Viking II 1: The Last Viking by Sandra Hill

  The Very Thought of You by Lynn Kurland

  Stolen Brides 3: His Captive Bride by Shelly Thacker




No Time Travel. Move along.
  Dragonriders of Pern #14: The Masterharper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, Jan 1998 [no time travel ]

  Berkeley Square (BBC) by Deborah Cook, et. al., 10 May 1998 [despite title, no time travel ]

  Pleasantville by Gary Ross, 23 Oct 1998 [secondary world ]

 

22 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)