The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 2008



   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 ]

 

54 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)