The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 2011



   The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Sequels
by Frank Cottrell Boyce
First book: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again,

At the end of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, the fabulous car’s Chronojuster is jolted, taking them to the Jurassic and the start of the second sequel (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time) to Ian Flemming’s original story. In the third sequel (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon), the modern-day family that now has the car find themselves in 1966 where they need help from the original owners.

 Most cars don’t have a Chronojuster. It’s a special handle that allows you to drive backward and forward in time. That’s how special Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is—time travel is fitted as standard. 


a portion of a cipher code, which has a role in the story

   A Traveller in Time
adapted by Michael Johnston
First publication: 2011

Novelist and playwright Michael Johnston adapted Alison Uttley’s 1939 children’s book to the stage in this short three-act play with multiple transitions between the twentieth and the sixteenth century.

 The lights dim and the kitchen is “transformed” into how it was in the Spring of 1582 but many of the kitchen props, including the table and rocking chair remain. As the lights come up again, loud cock crows are heard suggesting that time has passed and it is the following morning. An offstage voice is heard calling out for Dame Cecily. Tabitha enters stage leading a puzzled Penelope by the hand. Penelope is wearing a green dress with wide sleeves. 


   “A Snitch in Time”
by Donald Moffitt
First publication: Analog, Jan/Feb 2011

In the same world as the Beethoven and Vermeer affairs, rogue policeman Francis Patrick Delehanty uses his own resources to travel back to the scene of the first homicide that he dealt with as a rookie cop.

 Have you thought this through, Lieutenant? You see a murder in progress. You’re a cop. Do you try to stop it? But you’re not a cop in that timeline, are you? Your lieutenant’s badge is no good there. Are you acting extra-legally? The only badge around belongs to a rookie cop name Delehanty who doesn’t have a clue about what’s going down. And what if you don’t try to stop it? Are you culpable? In that timeline or this one? 




   “12:02 P.M.”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2011

Maybe eternity isn’t as long as Myron Kastleman had feared.

 The same hour keeps happening over and over again. Only it isn’t an hour. Not really. It seems to be getting shorter. 




   Ticking Clock
by John Turman (Ernie Barbarash, director)
First release: 4 Jan 2011

Investigative reporter Lewis Hicks, who doesn’t trust cops, pursues a gory time-traveling serial murderer who’s tracking down all those people whom he thinks did him wrong in life.

I’m surpised that this movie never made it to the theaters in the states. It generated good tension for a Fugitive-type police-don’t-the-protagonist type of story.

On the other hand, the ending shows zero comprehension of the grandfather paradox or universes that split upon time travel, but never mind.

 Lewis: What if you could kill Hitler or Manson when they were a child?
Polly: No way. They’re children. They’re not Hilter or Manson, not yet. No. 


Trianon

   Time Travel Urban Legends
by The Wikipedia Editors
First posted on Wikipedia: 8 Jan 2011

The second sentence of this Wikipedia article saddens me.

 All of these reports have turned out either to be hoaxes or to be based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information, or interpretation of fiction as fact. 




   T.U.F.F. Puppy
created by Butch Hartman
First time travel: 15 Nov 2011

Dudley Puppy, a dog and a spy, together with his cat friend keep Petropolis safe from various baddies such as Snaptrap who, in one episode (“Watch Dog”), becomes ruler of Petropolis—now Snaptrapolis—when Dudley and his time watch inadvertently change the past in an attempt to snag the last chocolate donut away from Kitty.

 Or, I could set this watch back one minute and risk horribly altering reality to beat Kitty to that donut. 




   “The House That Made the Sixteen
Loops of Time”
by Tamsyn Muir
First publication: Fantasy Magazine, Feb 2011

Dr. Rosamund Tilly lives in a house that fights her every step of her life, including a day when it keeps resetting time to 8:14.

 She would have been excited if she hadn’t been so horrified: The house was probably destroying the space-time continuum right now and forming a thousand glittering paradoxes all because she hadn’t really cleaned the kitchen. Once she’d forgotten to weed the window boxes and the house had dissolved her feet right up to the ankle. 






   Where No Sheldon Has Gone Before
by Sheldon Cooper
First rehearsed in: “The Thespian Catalyst” on The Big Bang Theory, 3 Feb 2011



Despite buying George Pal’s original time machine on ebay, Sheldon, Leonard, Penny and their gang have never traveled in time, but in “The Thespian Catalyst,” it was revealed that Sheldon had written a one-act play (Where No Sheldon Has Gone Before) in which Spock comes to take him to the 23rd century.

 Oh, Shelly, a man’s here to take you away to the future. Be sure to pack clean underwear. 




   Kia Optima Commercial
First aired: Superbowl XLV, 6 Feb 2011

 One epic ride. 


   “Do Over!”
by Jeff Kirvin
First publication: Kindle E-Book, 13 Feb 2011

Our hero, Rick “Richie” Preston, is ten years out of high school and doing nothing but flipping burgers when a fight with his father (and bargain landlord) tosses him back into his senior year of high school where he gets a chance to redo everything so long as he agrees to not alter other people’s lives.

Even though I didn’t see this released until 2011, it is set in 1998 and 1988, and I think the writing predated the identically named and similarly plotted 2002 TV show. In any case, I’m glad that Denver resident Jeff Kirvin released this story on Kindle.

 As I stood gaping at the rows of ten-year-old magazines, a fortyish, balding man sidled up next to me. ”Pretty cool, huh, Preston?” 




   Flashback
aka Time Lord
by Brendan Rogers and Will Phillips (Rogers, director)
First release: 15 Feb 2011

I can’t believe that I watched this long enough (24:30) to verify that Flashback, a future movie studio that robotically remasters the classics, uses time travel to retrieve props from the past.

 Now pretend that this urinal cake is me, alright? 


   “Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in the Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms”
by John G. Hemry
First publication: Analog, Mar 2011

Ninety-year-old Jim Jones is sent back into his 15-year-old body in 1964 to help Betty Knox (who is already back in her 15-year-old body and doesn’t expect him) because all the time-travel agents (sent back to that time to avert the world’s toxin disasters) have disappeared with no discernable effect on history.

 And I know that after Johnson, Richard Nixon is elected president. Then comes Ford. Who comes next? 




   “Meet Me at the Grassy Knoll”
by Lou Antonelli
First publication: 4 Star Stories, Issue 1, Spring 2011

A man pays $20 million to a Russian to be taken back in time to discover who was really on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas that day in November 1963.

 You can’t change anything. You certainly can’t tell anyone. 




   No Ordinary Family
created by Greg Berlanti and Jon Harmon Feldman
First time travel: 22 Mar 2011

In this family of superheroes, Mom time travels at the end of Episode 18 (“No Ordinary Animal”) and in Episode 19 (“No Ordinary Future”).

 Time travel, Stephanie! We’re talking the big leagues! The Flash! Silver Surfer!! Doc Brown’s DeLorean!!! 

—Katie in “No Ordinary Future”




   Time Travel Tales
by Jay Dubya
First story: Time Travel Tales, 31 Mar 2011

Jay Dubya notes that these 21 stories share similar anachronistic plots and themes dealing with movements or shifts in time. I read the first one—“The Music Disk”—about the nostalgic music experts Chad and Jeremy who long for the 50s and find themselves taken to the times sung about in the war songs on a CD from Satan Records. Two of the stories (“The Music Disk” and “Batsto Village”) are part of the free Kindle sample at Amazon.

 “And look! There’s an abnormal fog cloud up ahead right near the entrance to Atlantic Blueberry’s packing house!” the history teacher alerted the already distressed and bewildered driver. 

—The Music Disk


   The Ian’s Ions and Eons Stories
by Paul Levinson
First story: Analog, Apr 2011

In the first story (“Ian’s Ions and Eons”), a man travels back to December 2000, hoping to alter the momentus Supreme Court decision of that month.

Ian and his cohorts have a reprise in “Ian, Isaac and John” (Nov 2011), where a descendant of David Bowe comes back to 1975, purportedly to improve the mix on a Bowe track, but quite possibly with additional motives involving John Lennon. And there are more stories to come, all in Analog.
  1. Ian’s Ions and Eons (Apr 2011) The 2000 election
  2. Ian, Isaac and John (Nov 2011) David Bowe and John Lennon
  3. Ian, George and George (Dec 2013) Orson Welles to the 1970s

 The Supreme Court will announce its decision the day after tomorrow. Gore’s people want the recount to proceed in Florida. Bush’s do not. 


   The Time-Traveling Fashionista Series
by Bianca Turetsky
First book: Apr 2011

Twelve-year-old Louise Lambert has a passion for vintage fashions from the turn of the century through the 70s, although when she wakes up as a seventeen-year-old actress on the Titanic, she’s worried about more than just fashion.

I found this book in the ship library on a cruise of my own (no, not the Titanic, though we did see some icebergs. The first book, on the Titanic, was followed by two others.
  1. The Time-Traveling Fashionista (Apr 2011) on the Titanic
  2. The Time-Traveling Fashionista (Sep 2012) at the Palace of Marie Antoinette
  3. The Time-Traveling Fashionista (Dec 2013) and Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile

 It seemed as though on the inside she was Louise Lambert, but to everyone else she was this Miss Baxter, a gorgeous teenage actress. Definitely rich. Probably even famous. She smiled and unconsciously began twirling a strand of hair between her thumb and index finger. That was how she did her best thinking, and none of this made any sense. Somehow she had woken up in the body of a woman who was taking a first-class trip on the White Star Line, with her own personal maide and her uncle/manager, from England to New York City. 




   Judas Kiss
by Carlos Pedraza and J.T. Tepnapa (Tepnapa, director)
First release: 1 Apr 2011

Filmmaker Zachary Wells (née Danny Reyes) totally flopped when he dropped out of the first year of film school to head to Hollywood after winning a college festival award. Years later, he reluctantly returns to the college to be a festival judge, but somehow after making love to a student, he finds that the student is his very own younger self entered in the very same contest—only now he’s the judge. Hard to tell whether he’s in the past or his younger self is in the future, but the question either way is whether he’ll he let himself win, causing him to head down the same failed path as the first time.

 Wise Father Figure: Danny Reyes went to school here fifteen years ago.
Zach: That was me.
W.F.F.: Huh! What happened to him?
Zachary: I . . . he’s gone.
W.F.F.: Just like that? You think changing your name added IQ points? How many times you done rehab now? You’re getting a second chance! Zachary . . .
Zach: Okay. We’re done here! W.F.F.: This is the key to your future. [mysterious hugging and electricity] Change his past. Change your future.  




   Source Code
by Ben Ripley (Duncan Jones, director)
First release: 1 Apr 2011

Spoiler alert! I usually try to keep my spoilers mild, but I am irresistibly drawn to spoil Source Code, since the inventor of The Source Code in the movie explicitly says, “Source Code is not time travel. Rather, Source Code is time reassignment. It gives us access to a parallel reality.” But what does the inventor know? Go watch the movie (which I enjoyed) before reading on!

A common form of time travel is when the traveler goes back in time and a new reality branches off. That’s the form of time travel that I see in Source Code, and from my reading of an interview, perhaps the director sees it that way, too. This view fits better than the parallel worlds postulate of the inventor, because each time the captain goes back, he is in exactly the same moment, with the same passengers, same comment coming from future girlfriend, same woman about to spill coffee, etc. If he were shifting to a parallel universe, then perhaps some things would differ before he arrives. So, I see it as branching worlds time travel, with the twist that the mechanism to do the time travel is to pop the traveler’s consciousness inside the head of a dead person at about eight minutes before the death. I believe that the original world where the traveler came from (and usually returns to) continues along its original path (as evinced by the fact that after one return in which he saved girlfriend, there was no record of her being saved).

 What is the Source Code? 




   My Future Boyfriend
by James Orr and Jim Cruickshank (Michael Lange, director)
First release: 10 Apr 2011 (made-for-tv)

From a utopian world without love or passion, 497 goes back to 21st century New Orleans to learn of these things from romance writer Elizabeth Barrett.

 I really shouldn’t be telling you this, 497, but ancient legends have it that this love condition was like some kind of virus which apparently made people act in strange and illogical ways bordering in some extreme cases on obsessive dementia. It is now also thought to be one of the root causes of all the suffering in the world. 




   Repeaters
by Arne Olsen (Carl Bessai, director)
First release: 22 Apr 2011

Recovering adicts Kyle, Sonia and Mike are caught in a time loop in a day away from the recovery facility when they are supposed to make amends with those they hurt; a wild spree ensues on the first few loops, and then one of them spirals off into ever-increasing violence.

 Sonia: Doesn’t part of you wonder if maybe he’s right? I mean, every good thing we do gets erased; every bad thing we do gets erased. What does it really matter what we do?
Kyle: I guess . . . I just need for it to matter. 


Another of Friedman’s story appeared in this 2013 anthology.

   “Unveiled”
by Ron S. Friedman
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 9 May 2011

Itami invents the first time machine.

 If time travel is possible, then why didn’t we see tourists from the future taking pictures of Neil Armstrong on July 20th 1969, when he took his first step on the Moon? 




   “Time Considered as a Series of Thermite Burns in No Particular Order”
by Damien Broderick
First publication: tor.com, 25 May 2011

This time, Bobby and Moira are in 2073 Melbourne with a mission that could get Bobby arrested, but will save millions if successful.

 On the tram, I had a different kind of hassle, the usual sort. Other passengers stared at me with surprise, disdain or derision. You couldn’t blame them. For obvious reasons, we’d found no reliable records in 2099 or later of the fashions in 2073. 




   “The Mighty Peculiar Incident at
Muddy Creek”
by Ian Thomas Healy
First publication: 28 May 2011

In the old west town of Muddy Creek, Sheriff Jesse Hawkins and the hasily deputized barber Angus come across a train that’s frozen in the midst of a robbery by a strangely dressed man and woman.

 How could ye make time stop? 




   “Just Enough Time”
by Douglas K. Beagley
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 31 May 2011

A guy and his 20-something Friends are visited in a coffee shop by a time traveler with limited time to tell them about the futility of fusion, how to cure autism, the solution to cancer, and other things that they are not so interested in.

 Just listen, please—peanut allergies are a virus. 




   “Apology”
by Sam Ferree
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 3 Jun 2011

A 26-year-old redheaded woman comes back in time to kill the one man in all history who has no effect on anything.

 “At no point in the past or future will your life have any bearing on anything, at all,” the redheaded, twenty-something time traveler with a sleeve of tattoos tells me. “That’s why it’s okay to kill you.” 




   Midnight in Paris
by Woody Allen (Allen, director)
First release: 10 Jun 2011

Would-be novelist Gil Prender is in Paris with his fiancée who doesn’t understand why he would want to live in Paris or hang out with Hemingway and his pals in the 1920s.

 I was trying to escape my present the same way you’re trying to escape yours—to a golden age. 


from Bellet’s website

   “Love at the Corner of Space and Time”
by Annie Bellet
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 23 Jun 2011

The boyfriend of a time traveler finds himself stranded in a nevertime after yet another minor argument with his girlfriend.

 But he knew that in a long-term relationship with a Time Traveler, things got sticky on occasion. 


from Penguins and Steelers fan Barrett’s twitter page

   “Something Famous”
by Samantha L. Barrett
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 29 Jun 2011

Dan can’t figure out why dozens of people are staring at him during the month that scientists announce the discovery of time travel.

 Was I on America’s Most Wanted or something? 


   “The Messenger”
by Bruce McAllister
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jul 2011

Fifty-year-old Tim goes back to the time before he was born with two important questions for the woman who would become his mother.

 If you actually wanted to change things—say, to tell your mother lies about your father so she’d marry someone else, so you wouldn’t be born because you hate your life in the present—you wouldn’t be able to do it. 


The story also appeared in this 2012 anthology.   “Pug”
by Theodora Goss
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jul 2011

In the time of Napoleon, a sickly English girl discovers a dog in her garden, and the dog leads her through a door to other times and places.

 (Imagine our relief to learn of Waterloo.) 




   Stealing Time
by Alex Calleros and Michael Tucker (Calleros, director)
First release: July 2011

It does irk me when an otherwise fun time-travel plot is hijacked by a waving-of-the-hands explanation of how, during the time-travel, the Earth continued to rotate or orbit the sun or orbit the Milky Way or whatever, but never mind: The emphasis is on the word fun in this 17-minute short that was written based on the following constraints submitted by the filmmakers’ fans (but—dammit!—where’s Dinosaur Kid?):
  • Cannot take place entirely in one location.
  • Someone must say the words “time travel.”
  • Two characters must have a long-standing rivalry.
  • When one character was a kid, he/she used to wish he/she could travel back in time to see real-life dinosaurs.
  • One character is a wine lover and is very picky/elitist about their wine.
  • One character prefers bubble baths to showers.
  • Someone has to say: “I have to go back.”

     Howard [looking at dead self]: What happened? What did you do?
    Jim: I didn’t do anything. You disappeared, two more of you burst in, one of you shot the other one, then you jumped in the box and disappeared again. 




   Penn and Teller’s Fool Us
starring and created by Penn & Teller
First time travel: 16 Jul 2011

I love Penn and Teller’s friendly and praise-filled personalities as much as the magic of the magicians who are trying to fool the most renowned magicians (Penn and Teller themselves). One episode included the time traveling pair of Reece Morgan and Robert West.

 And not only are we magicians, time travelers, and all-around spiffy chaps, we are also tourists—fourth-dimensional tourists. 


The story also appeared as a podcast on Toasted Cake.

   “Deathbed”
by Caroline M. Yoachim
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 18 Jul 2011

I don’t always consider living life backwards to be time travel. It depends on whether or not the person in question is experiencing time in a normal forward fashion—which is not the case in this time travel story.

 I could save my past self some trouble if I told him the ingredients, but I cherish those early memories of failed soup, and I worry that giving him the recipe would change the past. 




   “Only Backwards”
by Kenneth S. Kao
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 26 Jul 2011

Just as Mason is leaning in for his first kiss, he finds himself naked and decades in the future.

 We rewound your biology. 


   “We Were the Wonder Scouts”
by Will Ludwigsen
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Aug 2011

As an old man, Harald recounts the days of 1928 when he was one of Mr. Fort’s original Wonder Scouts, seeking out the true explanations for inexplicable phenomena in the woods of upstate New York.

 At worst, we’ll be absorbed into the super-consciousness, learning and seeing all knowledge at once in a single stupendous flash. More likely, we’ll find a tunnel to an underground civilization of pygmies or a portal through time. 




   “A Gentlewoman’s Guide to Time Travel”
by Alice M. Roelke
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 11 Aug 2011

More precisely: a guide for time travelers headed to a future of scrofulous morals.

 . . . be certain several of your numbers keep smelling salts handy. 




   “No Time”
by Andrew Bale
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 13 Aug 2011

A battlefield plunderer meets his own dead self.

 You get attacked, you have no backup, so you become your own. 




   “Restoring the Great Library of Georgia”
by Patricia Stewart
First publication: 365 Tomorrows, 15 Aug 2011

Anthony and Lamar travel back to find copies of Stephen Hawking’s lost papers

 That’s why the government gave us the two trillion dollar grant, so we could travel back in time and get hard copies of the monumental technical papers, and rebuild the database from the ground up, similar to what the Greeks did for the Ancient Library of Alexandria. 




   Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
in 4D Aroma-Scope
by Robert Rodriguez (Rodriguez, director)
First release: 19 Aug 2011

Perhaps this would have been better had I smelled it in the theater. As it was, though, retired spy Marissa Wilson and her family chasing the evil Timekeeper didn't grab or hold my interest long enough for me to get to the time travel parts.

 At this rate, we’ll be out of time in no time. 


   “The Observation Post”
by Allen M. Steele
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 2011

In 1962, Ensign Floyd Moore is the communications officer for the blimp Centurion patrolling the Caribbean for Russian shipments of nuclear missles to Cuba. But what he and his lieutenant stumble upon on the larger Inagua island couldn’ possibly be Russian technology.

 The world was on the brink of nuclear war, and no one knew it yet. Almost no one that, is. 


from the Anderson Institute’s page on wormholes

   “Shadow Angel”
by Erick Melton
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 2011

No, I won’t vouch for this one having time travel, but it might—I just never fully understood what was happening to pilot Emil as he tries to steer(?) his dive-dreamship through a wormhole(?) while being haunted by his ex and being pulled back and forth by different possible futures vying for their existence.

 “There are several futures, Emil,” Real Haneul said. ”Each one is trying to reach back to shape the past so it can be.” 


from Stasik’s website

   “Spiral”
by Sarah Stasik
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 14 Sep 2011

Nadia wishes for more time from a man with a silver finger, and she gets it in a way that causes her to relive her past in a confusing pattern.

 Time is only a line, a curve, a wave of the hand, and its course is moved. 




   Terra Nova
created by Kelly Marcel and Craig Silverstein
First episode: 26 Sep 2011

I finally had a free Saturday morning, so I hulued the pilot, but couldn’t get through the melodramic story of a family from 2149 that goes back to an alternate prehistoric time stream as part of the 10th pilgrimage.

 That wasn’t a very nice dinosaur. 

—Zoe in Episode 2




   “Regret Incorporated”
by Andy Astruc and RJ Astruc
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 27 Sep 2011

Marcus hopes that the time-travel office will see his application as having a low-risk of creating a major change so that he can go back and make things right with his choice of a career.

 Reason for traveling back in time: He had heard this was the big one. That if you didn’t get this one right it was all over. 


   “The Sock Problem”
by Alastair Mayer
First publication: Fiction, Oct 2011

The narrator’s explanation to his preteen son pretty much sums it up.

 Okay, a spacetime warp. It’s formed by the interaction of the complicated magnetic field from the motor, and the rotation of the drum. The metal drum picks up an induced field and right in the center, a spacetime vortex forms. Any sock falling through disappears. 




   “This Petty Pace”
by Jason K. Chapman
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2011

Theoretical physicist Kyle Preston is getting garbled visitations from a hologramish future descendant who carries dire warnings, which Kyle wishes did more for him and his girlfriend Anna.

 It’s like Schroedinger’s Subway Rider. He’s both here and twenty minutes away at the same time and you don’t know which until he meets his girlfriend. 




   “Some Fortunate Future Day”
by Cassandra Clare
First publication: Steampunk!, 6 Oct 2011

In a war-torn, fable-like, Victorian kind of world, Rose’s father goes off to war leaving her various inventions: talking dolls, a garden robot, a mechanical cook, and a time device that comes in handy when a wounded soldier makes his way to her doorstep.

 When he said that, he looked at Rose’s mother’s portrait, hanging over their fireplace mantel. He had invented his time device only a few short months after she had died. It had always been one of his greatest regrets in life, though Rose sometimes wondered whether he could have invented it at all without the all-consuming power of grief to drive him. Most of his other inventions did not work nearly as well. The garden robot often digs up flowers instead of weeds. The mechanical cook can make only one kind of soup. And the talking dolls never tell Rose what she wants to hear. 




   Time Ship
by Gary Cottrell
First publication: 9 Oct 2011

I was excited when I read that the book was intended to “challenge the reader to consider the difficult subject of predestination and free will,” but the story itself (of two time-machine-making scientists, one of whom as a boy watched to murder of his parent) was too bogged down in exposition and repetition for me to recommend.

 Just think of it—time travel! If we pull this off, it will mean the Nobel Prize for sure! 




   Shuffle
by Kurt Kuenne (Kuenne, director)
First release: 21 Oct 2011

Each time he wakes up, photographer Lovell Milo finds himself in a different piece of his life in seemingly random order. It’s hell, and he wants it to stop—and then, around the time that he learns he’s married to his childhood best friend, he also learns from a little girl that his traveling is “a present” which he’s supposed to use to save someone in trouble.

 I’m 28. The day before that I was 15. The day before that I was 30. The day before that I was 8. One day, recently, I was past 90. Every day I wake up at a different age and a different year on a different day of my life, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I want it to stop. I need help. I’ve been awake for the past 48 hours because I don’t know where I’m going to be once I fall asleep. Can you help me? Have you ever heard of this before? Anywhere? 




   “Shall I Tell You the
Trouble with Time Travel?”
by Adam Roberts
First publication: Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction, Nov 2011

Professor Hermann Bradley has managed to have his time travel device last seventeen seconds in various past times before spectacularly exploding. Now he’s on the verge of cracking that seventeen second barrier (and, according to the narrator, possibly the wiping out of the dinosaurs as well as hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tunguska), but the damnable Professor Notkin is blocking him, claiming that Bradley has committed crimes against humanity (and perhaps against dinosaurity).

 He steps through into a room and his beaming, grinning, smiling, happy-o jolly-o face shouts to the world: “We’ve done it, we’ve cracked it—thirteen seconds!” 






   11/23/63
by Stephen King
First publication: 8 Nov 2011

Jake Epping's dying friend Al points him toward a rabbit hole that always leads to the same moment in 1958, so what can he do other than live in the Land of Ago, fall in love with Sadie, stalk Oswald and become America’s hero?

 Save him, okay? Save Kennedy and everything changes. 




   Hoops&Yoyo Ruin Christmas
created by Bob Hold and Mike Adair
First aired: 25 Nov 2011

Cheaply animated Hallmark greeting card icons Hoops and Yoyo (and their dog Piddle) travel through a wormhole to the days of Santa’s youth where they endanger Christmas for all time.

 I think that kid in there . . . is Santa Claus. 


An audio version of the story is available on
Escape Pod.

   “‘Run,’ Bakri Says”
by Ferrett Steinmetz
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 2011

Irena is sent back in time to rescue her brother from a prison, all the time trusting that if things go fatally wrong, she’ll be rewound for another attempt.

 It was supposed to trigger a rewind when her heart stopped. If he’d misconfigured it, Irena’s consciousness would have died in an immutable present. 


   “Strawberry Birdies”
by Pamela Sargent
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 2011

Maerleen Loegins travels back to the 1950s where she becomes a physics student and live-in help for a family where both parents are overwhelmed by young Addie, an even younger austistic Cyril, and two newborn twins.

 The reason her parents had put an ad in the paper offering free room and board and a small stipend to a college student was to have someone around to look after their children, especially Cyril, who wouldn’t be ready to go to school that fall, not even to kindergarten, and might never be. 




   Juko’s Time Machine
by Kai Barry (Barry, director)
First release: 8 Dec 2011

When the wife of Juko’s lifelong friend Jed gets fed up with Juko living in their garage, Jed comes up with his best plan yet, to build a time machine so Juko can go back in time and win the heart of the girl whom he's waited twenty years for, even if Juko isn’ cool like her finance is.

Lauren Struck, one of the producers, sent me a press kit and an invitation to stream the film in May of 2012, precisely 35 years after my first press-kit-and-invitation-to-a-fan-to-see-an-sf-movie-preview—that other one being from a little-known producer named George something, of course, so Lauren is in excellent company. (Thank you, Lauren.)

 Jed? Are you Jed Four? I think you’re Jed Four. 




   “A Time to Kill”
by Melanie Rees
First publication: Daily Science Fiction, 12 Dec 2011

Jonah sometimes gets too close to the targets that he must kill for the good of the timeline.

 The Time Agency knows what they’re doing. Future terrorists, dictators . . . it’s justified. 




   12 Dates of Christmas
by Aaron Mendelsohn, Janet Brownell and Blake J. Harris (James Hayman, director)
First release: 11 Dec 2011 (made-for-tv)

After the requisite bump on the head, Kate Stanton finds herself reliving Christmas Eve over and over, whereupon the romantic hijinks ensue.

 That ship has sailed. You blew your chance. You can’t go back and change it. 



And Still More Time Travel of 2011
The story pilots haven’t yet taken these adventures out for a test drive.
  “The Third Millennium” by Laura E. Bradford, 365 Tomorrows, 1 Feb 2011
—teen time travelers

  “No One Ever Considers the Unforeseen Consequences” by Patricia Stewart, 365 Tomorrows, 16 Feb 2011
—killing a despot’s ancestor

  “Time Travel” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 22 Feb 2011
—amateur time traveler

  “Traveler” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 17 Mar 2011
—traveler emerges from alley

  “Serial Killer” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 26 May 2011
—serial killer targets travelers

  “Coincidences” by K. Clarke, 365 Tomorrows, 23 Jun 2011
—Why so many travelers at my house?

  “So the Guy at the Bar Turns to Me and Says . . .” by Macpherson, 365 Tomorrows, 23 Aug 2011
—dead authors sign books

  “Introdus” by Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 16 Nov 2011
—700,000 burning time travelers

  “Grandfather Clock” by Duncan Shields, 365 Tomorrows, 19 Dec 2011
—grandfather paradox twist




Romance Time Travel of 2011
Bodice rips are a more workaday mode of time travel than time ships.
  River of Time 1: Waterfall by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  River of Time 2: Cascade by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  River of Time 3: Torrent by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  Highlander 8: Highlander for the Holidays by Janet Chapman

  Civil War Brides 4: The Bride Ransom by Tracey Jane Jackson

  Civil War Brides 5: The Rebel Bride by Tracey Jane Jackson

  Civil War Brides 6: The Bride Star by Tracey Jane Jackson

  The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

  The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

  Daughters of the Glen 7: Healing the Highlander by Melissa Mayhue

  Daughters of the Glen 8: Highlander's Curse by Melissa Mayhue

  Timeless 1: Timeless by Alexandra Monir

  Time Spirit 1: Golden Blood by Melissa Pearl

  Time Spirit 2: Black Blood by Melissa Pearl

  A Knight in Central Park by Theresa Ragan

  Tennessee Waltz 1: Kiss Me, I'm Irish by Bella Street

  After Cilmeri 0: Daughter of Time by Sarah Woodbury

  After Cilmeri 1: Footsteps in Time by Sarah Woodbury

  After Cilmeri 2: Prince of Time by Sarah Woodbury




No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Most Important Thing in the World” by Steve Bein, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar 2011 [no definitive time travel ]

  In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds by Michel C. Nachoff, 3 Apr 2014 [secondary worlds ]

  “Eleven Minutes” by Gareth L. Powell, Interzone, Jul 2011 [despite title, no time travel ]

  “Hand and Space” by Dean Wesley Smith, Self-Published, Aug 2012 [fountain of youth ]

  “Thief of Futures” by D. Thomas Minton, Lightspeed, Sep 2011 [surreal ]

  “Thirty Seconds from Now” by John Chu, Boston Review, 1 Sep 2011 [precognition ]

  “The Little Bear” by Justina Robson, Lightspeed, Oct 2011 [parallel universes ]

  “Time to Go” by Erin M. Hartshorn, 3 Nov 2011 [despite title, no time travel ]

  “A Stitch in Space-Time” by Nicky Drayden, Daily Science Fiction, 14 Dec 2011 [despite title, no time travel ]

 

96 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)