The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 2000

   “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 ]

 

26 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)