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You are here: Home / Guest Posts / Medium Cool with BGinCHI / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Time Travel

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Time Travel

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.

Tonight’s Topic: Time Travel

In this week’s return to Medium Cool, let’s talk time travel.

I’ll watch almost anything with time travel if it’s decent (Looper, Safety Not Guaranteed, Source Code, etc.). A twitter friend recommended a 2019 Norwegian series called “Beforeigners,” which is now on HBO. Just finished the first season last night.

Really fabulous show with an amazing premise: “Flashes of light appear in the sea, and people from the past emerge in the present; the so-called “beforeigners” struggle to integrate into modern society, then a woman with Stone Age tattoos is found murdered on a beach.” Great plot and characters, and fascinating exploration of immigration issues.

What other films/TV or books or comics do you like with time travel?

Reader Interactions

281Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    Ps. “Back To the Future” seemed too obvious to mention, but it’s the dean of time travel narratives.

  5. 5.

    zhena gogolia

    That show was strenuously recommended to me, but I guess I’m the opposite. Fantasy/sci fi is not my thing.

  6. 6.

    ShadeTail

    The novel Redshirts by John Scalzi. It’s a piss-take on Star Trek, and has some Star Trek style time travel in it. That’s all I’ll say to avoid spoilers.

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    @zhena gogolia: You should give it a try. It’s very realistic and doesn’t do much with the mechanism of how the TT conceit works. Though I think season 2 will do that.

  11. 11.

    BGinCHI

    @ShadeTail: The only thing I’ve read by him in the last few years are his extensive burrito-making tweets.

    Seriously, though, he’s a terrific writer. Prolific as hell.

  12. 12.

    gkoutnik

    “El Ministerio del Tiempo” (The Ministry of Time) – Spanish TV show – really awesome, but went on too long.  Was on Netflix – no longer?

  13. 13.

    debbie

    @ShadeTail:

    The concept of a parallel universe was my least favorite part of DS9.

    Also, those flashbacks, flash-forwards, and flash-sideways in Lost were maddening. Not quite the same as time travel, but close enough for me.

  18. 18.

    AliceBlue

    11/22/63 by Stephen King, about a man who travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination.  There was a TV miniseries as well, but the book was much better.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    It’s not really my genre, but I have always been fascinated by the 1941 novella By His Bootstraps by Anson MacDonald/Robert A. Heinlein.

    If you’ve never read it (it’s been anthologised about a million times), here’s a PDF: https://www.uky.edu/~mwa229/Bootstraps.pdf

    I’d probably better not even mention my very different kind of affection for the mawkish, maudlin, sentimental, Somewhere in Time. But I saw it at a particularly vulnerable time in my life, and I’ve always had a soft spot for this movie. Go ahead and mock me. I can take it.

  20. 20.

    RSA

    On the Tor Books Web site is an ongoing series called The Ursula K. Le Guin Reread, with reviews and commentary by Sean Guynes of pretty much everything Le Guin published (that’s the plan, at least). After covering her best novels, Guynes started through her publications in chronological order; this week’s entry is The Beginning Place.

    Anyway, I discovered Guyne’s review after having reread Rocannon’s World, Le Guin’s first novel; I was browsing around to find writing about it. Rocannon opens with a brief fantasy prelude in which a young woman goes on a journey through space that seems short to her but lasts a very long time on the world she left behind… (That counts as time travel, right?) I have more positive things to say about the novel that Guynes, but it’s still fun to read his take. And of course almost all of Le Guin is worth reading.

  23. 23.

    Brooklyn Dodger

    @jeffreyw: The Time Machine never gets old no matter what your revised self thinks of it now. First time I saw it was in lunchtime 40 min. installments in junior high. The nuclear war scenes still make me chilly. Worth reading the story though for the fabulous fast-forward to the end of the world, which isn’t covered in the film.

  25. 25.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Definitely have to give Back to the Future a mention. Awesome trilogy. Most fans don’t like the second movie, but even that is still pretty good. It gets points from me for having Biff Tannen be a parody of Donald Trump.

    Also, loved the film Primer. Actually only had a budget of a few grand, but definitely doesn’t look like it

    Primer is a 2004 American science fiction film about the accidental discovery of time travel. The film was written, directed, produced, edited and scored by Shane Carruth, who also stars with David Sullivan.

    Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure, philosophical implications, and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth, a college graduate with a degree in mathematics and a former engineer, chose not to simplify for the sake of the audience. The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, before securing a limited release in the United States, and has since gained a cult following

  27. 27.

    cope

    I can’t believe I am admitting this but I enjoyed “Somewhere in Time”.  It was sappy and the two romantic leads have never been on my list of admired actors. However, as I recall, it did a nice job of expressing intense longing and the TT aspect did not induce my usual eye-rolling. Also too, who amongst us has never fallen instantly in love with a person (or a car for that matter) in a single photograph?

  28. 28.

    AM in NC

    I really liked the German series Dark that is on Netflix.  Interesting premise and interesting story lines and characters. Generally very well done for a sci-fi premise.

  29. 29.

    billcinsd

    I will second Peabody and Sherman

    Also, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and

    Jodi Taylor’s “Chronicles of St. Mary’s”, which is, to quote Wikipedia, “Taylor’s flagship series follows the staff of St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, especially historian Dr Madeleine “Max” Maxwell, as they time-travel to “investigate major historical events in contemporary time”. It is fairly humorous and at least the early novels are quite good.

  30. 30.

    divF

    Asimov’s The End of Eternity, about an organization of Eternals (ordinary human beings actually) who change the time line in order to protect humankind. As well as having a number of interesting conceits – “minimum necessary change” required to achieve a desired change in the timeline – it is a pointed commentary on the sickness of an all-male hierarchy that reflected academic life at the time (Asimov was coming up for tenure in 1955, around the time he wrote this).

  32. 32.

    Tony Jay

    Well, y’know, Doctor Who. Time-travel is pretty much the premise of the show, though I suppose an argument could be made that time-travel is actually only the maguffin necessary for the real action to happen.

    I’ve got a real fondness for ‘modern folks dumped into the past’ narratives. S M Stirling’s ‘Island in the Sea of Time‘ trilogy is a long lasting favourite, despite the author’s (possibly financially inspired) wingnut credentials.

  35. 35.

    scottinnj

    Outlander (series and books). Quantum Leap (TV Show). It is (somewhat) a time travel show but Russian Dolls was an excellent show.

    Beforeigners was excellent, and thrilled to hear they will have a season 2.

  38. 38.

    Gin & Tonic

    Years ago there was a sci-fi writer named Keith Laumer, whose books I enjoyed. He went in a direction that didn’t appeal to me with a series called Bolo, I think, but some of his books from before that were very good. One called Dinosaur Beach was multiple layers of time travel; I really liked it, read it more than once. Now I don’t know where the book is, and I think most of his stuff is out of print.

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    Quickie and far from complete list, in no particular order.

    Movies:
    41
    Predestination
    Donnie Darko
    Primer
    Star Trek IV
    Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
    A Day
    Leon Must Die
    Shuffle
    .
    TV:
    El Ministerio del Tiempo
    The Time Element
    Travelers
    .

  40. 40.

    Pappenheimer

    I’d recommend Connie Willis’s time historians novels, the best being Doomsday Book (very dark) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (very funny).

  42. 42.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    I think a commenter (NotMax?) mentioned a Spanish tv series about time travel, called the Ministry of Time. Haven’t watched it personally, but it sounds interesting

    The Ministry of Time is the best kept secret of the Spanish government: an autonomous government institution that reports directly to the Prime Minister. Its patrols watch the doors of time so that no intruder from other eras can change history for their own benefit.

    The series follows the assignments of the Ministry’s newest patrol: the one formed by Army of Flanders soldier Alonso de Entrerríos, 19th century student Amelia Folch and 21st century SAMUR paramedic Julián Martínez.

    Although, it sounds sort of silly that the Spanish government could’ve kept this a secret for so long. Also, apparently there was a lawsuit alleging that Timeless was a copy of Ministry of Time

  45. 45.

    Wakeshift

    Not exactly Time Travel, but for a novel twist on the structure and presentation of time in a narrative I have to point to Memento as a unique and gripping premise.

    I was also fascinated by By the Light of Other Days.

    Not sure if it holds up now, but I remember it being an exploration of privacy and accessibility of information as well as looking at history and future trajectory.
    Good premise and fertile ground; I’ll have to re-read it to recall the execution.

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Oh — just thought of another romantic time-travel movie I really liked: The Lake House, with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Also Christopher Plummer. Also, fantastic Chicago architecture (Chicago should have been credited as a co-star, not a location.) Haven’t seen it in years, though, and wondering if it would hold up.

  49. 49.

    David Evans

    Jack McDevitt’s Time Travellers Never Die is a good novel. Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol short stories are also interesting.

  54. 54.

    Scout211

    @MomSense: Have you read or watched The Outlander series?

    I read the whole series and loved the first 4 books. The rest of the books in the series were okay but seem to be in dire need of an editor.
    I don’t have Starz but I have watched some of the episodes in all of the seasons when I visit family and have been very impressed with the production quality and acting. The books seem a bit heavier on the romance and the Starz series seems heavier on the adventure.

  56. 56.

    daize

    An author who has been mentioned here just recently — Connie Willis.  She has a series of time travel novels set at Oxford.  To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, etc.  I adore her.  I think it was Dorothy Windsor who took an intense speculative fiction workshop hosted by Ms. Willis?

  59. 59.

    dexwood

    Slaughterhouse Five

    Donnie Darko, as mentioned.

    Les Visiteurs, as mentioned.

    Peabody and Sherman, definitely.

  63. 63.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Looked him up. This series he did caught my eye:

    Books set in the Imperium mythos: a continuum of parallel worlds policed by the Imperium, a government based in an alternate Stockholm. In the science fiction novel Worlds of the Imperium, the Imperium is formed in an alternate history where the American Revolution did not occur, and the British Empire and Germany merged into a unified empire in 1900.

    Alternate history and parallel universes? Sign me up!

    For that Dinosaur Beach book, if you’re interested, it’s on Amazon

  64. 64.

    David Evans

    @Gin & Tonic: Dinosaur Beach is in the Kindle store along with various collections of his novels and short stories. One collection includes A Trace Of Memory which I think is my second favourite of his (not about time travel).

  65. 65.

    divF

    Also, William Tenn had some time-travel stories: Child’s Play, The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway, and Brooklyn Project.

    Hell, read anything by William Tenn.

  66. 66.

    MomSense

    @BGinCHI:

    I made it through part of season 2 and then I stopped.  Honestly I liked the costumes and the hand knits more than the story.

  70. 70.

    dnfree

    @AliceBlue: my brother convinced me to read it last year. It was better than I expected, particularly the ending. But not the sex scenes. I’ve never previously read any Stephen King because I’m not a horror fan.

  72. 72.

    cope

    @SiubhanDuinne: Good pick, I didn’t think of that and we own the DVD.  My wife doesn’t like to watch it because she says it’s “sad”.  I still can’t see how she finds a romantic movie with a happy ending “sad”.  And Chicago, yeah…

  73. 73.

    Spanky

    @zhena gogolia: 

    So I guess as long as it involves a love story, I’m good with it.

    Wellllll, there was the Heinlein story/stories where the protagonist went back in time and had an affair with his mother…

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @gkoutnik

    the ur-TT story

    Personally would suggest that to be either A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court or Looking Backward, with a nod to Rip van Winkle.

  75. 75.

    Wapiti

    I’d echo Omnes: The film Les Visiteurs. Jean Reno before he became an action star.

    For a book: Time and Again.

  76. 76.

    Sloane Ranger

    Time Trax – a scientist is helping wanted criminals escape into the past. A cop travels back to return them to their own time to face justice. American money but filmed in Australia. It only lasted a couple of seasons but I liked it.

    Goodnight Sweetheart- English sitcom about a man who travels back in time to WW2, falls in love with a girl there and then has difficulty balancing his life then and in the present.

    Primeval- prehistoric animals begin appearing in modern day England along with some strange creatures unknown in the fossil record and a specialist team investigates.

    And of course,  the Daddy of them all, Doctor Who.

  77. 77.

    lee

    I see someone has already mentioned DarK. It is very very good but it does not spoon feed you the plot. You have to keep up and that can be challenging to do.

    Another great series is Travelers. It is a bit lighter (pardon the pun) than DarK and can be a bit uneven.

    Both of series have ended so you don’t have to worry about starting them and them not getting to finish the story.

    Also mentioned The Forever War. It is considered a classic of scifi and it is very good. The sequel is…different.

    There is a ‘sister’ novel to that one An Old Man’s War. There are 6 books in the series. I have read the first 4 at least 6 times. I have not read the last 2 (just have not gotten around to it).

  78. 78.

    divF

    @NotMax: I remember reading Connecticut Yankee when I was in grade school, and being totally enthralled by the descriptions of 19th century technology being imported to medieval times. Not only Ur-TT, but Ur-Steampunk.

  79. 79.

    toine

    12 Monkeys was great! The movie had Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in it… it was very well done.

    They also made a series out of it which wasn’t bad… not as good as the movie, but worth watching for SciFi/time travel afficionados.

  81. 81.

    MomSense

    It’s culture related, but not time travel.  Ed Asner wrote the forward and published a book about my mom’s cousin and his wife.  They were big radio and Broadway performers.  There is a YouTube channel with some of their recordings.  The video is just a still photo of them, though.

  82. 82.

    Raven

    I read “The Island of the Day Before” by Eco but I don’t think I really got it.

     

    The Island of the Day Before (Italian: L’isola del giorno prima) is a 1994 historical fiction novel by Umberto Eco set in the 17th century during the historical search for the secret of longitude.[1] The central character is Roberto della Griva, an Italian nobleman stranded on a deserted ship in the Pacific Ocean, and his slowly decaying mental state, in a backdrop of Baroque-era science, metaphysics, and cosmology.

  83. 83.

    dmsilev

    For unintentional effects of time travel, Bradbury’s A Sound Of Thunder.
    David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself will turn your brain into knots trying to figure out the sequence of events. As an example, the protagonist ends up being his own father, and thanks to branching timelines, also his own mother and his twin, sort of, sister.

  85. 85.

    artem1s

    I will watch Deja Vu with Denzel anytime it’s on the TV.  mmmmm, Denzel!

    And for literature I’d have to say Enoch Root is my favorite time/dimension traveler.  Except for Stephenson’s latest book – not a good wrap up for Enoch, IMO.

  86. 86.

    dnfree

    @Pappenheimer: For Connie Willis, I have read most of her time  travel books, but I particularly liked her World War II books Blackout and All Clear.  They really seemed to capture the life of everyday people during the bombing of England. She apparently did a lot of research and interviews.

  87. 87.

    Sloane Ranger

    @oldgold: I saw a programme once. It suggested that “real” time travel was impossible but that if the parallel worlds hypothesis was right, travelling back to the past of those parallel worlds might be possible.

  88. 88.

    TinRoofRusted

    Primeval was a series put out by the BBC some years ago. Basically there were tears in the space time continuum and occasionally dinosaurs would come through them and kill people today. A team led by Douglas Henshall (of Shetland) worked to understand and close them.  LOVED IT. We first saw it on SyFy and then had to track dowN DVDs. I highly recommend it if it is out there.

  90. 90.

    Tony Jay

    Warren Ellis’ ‘Planetary‘ series is a deliberate rollercoaster ride through every superhero/action movie/sci-fi concept of the 20th century using the Wildstorm Universe as a frame, but it ends on an amusing (no real spoilers) note where the protagonists need to create a time-travel machine (sort of) in order to right a wrong that occurred before the start of the series, only for the resident techie genius to explain how time-travel either can’t or shouldn’t exist because it could theoretically destroy the entire universe.

    The theory being that from the moment time-travel is created every single time-travelling tourist until the end of time will want to come back to see the moment the first experiment succeeded and there’s simply not enough room in that finite location for that infinite number of people to occupy without disaster, so there’s either an enormous mega-nuclear explosion as all those atoms are smashed together in a single instant or they simply crush the experimental site and cause a paradox where time-travel wasn’t discovered because, well, the creator and their equipment got squished.

    The many-worlds theory would sort that out, I suppose. Everyone travels back to an alternate version of the moment of discovery where the point of divergence is their appearance on the scene. That leads to the problem of how, exactly, time-travel to a divergent timeline has a return ticket. You’re not in ‘your’ timeline anymore, and you’ve changed history as you knew it, so returning to ‘your’ own time period just sends you forward in this new timeline. I’m not aware of any writers tackling this particular paradox, though I’m sure someone must have, even if only through ‘Return to Sender’ tech powered by handwavium.

    (And yes, I’m aware of Ellis’ recent issues, the guy has still written some really good graphic novels.)

  93. 93.

    dnfree

    It’s not exactly time travel, but it’s something….Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series. Everyone who ever lived on earth is resurrected on a mysterious planet for an unknown reason, and they’re all mixed together.  You get lots of great characters interacting to try to solve the puzzle.  It was the Game of Thrones of its time, because it took a long time between books. It could have gone on forever with that cast of characters but he wrapped it up in a massive fourth book. The first two are the best.

  94. 94.

    Origuy

    Somewhat related: I know that several jackals have been binging on the British archaeology show, Time Team. It went off the air several years ago. Now Tim Taylor, the producer, and several of the other people involved, are trying to bring it back with new episodes. They have a Patreon site and have been streaming the episodes along with new commentary from participants and others, such as historians and writers of historical novels. They have several sites in mind and have started the research and paperwork for some of them.

  95. 95.

    dexwood

    The Twilight Zone sometimes aired time travel episodes. One I saw recently was The Last Flight about a WWI pilot who landed at a modern Air Force base, modern being about 1960. Pretty good.

  96. 96.

    Azelie

    I’ve been interested in time travel in children’s media. I really enjoyed the period of time when my kid was into the Magic Tree House series (in part because as a medievalist I found the Arthurian elements amusing – Morgan Le Fay is the librarian of Camelot who sends – brother and sister on missions, and she works with Merlin). It’s clear that the author is putting in effort to learn about the historical scenarios that she’s writing about.

    There’s a kid’s show called Justin Time that is generally cute but sometimes annoying. And then a current PBS show called Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum is pretty bad. Like, the kids travel to meet Catherine the Great and one of them is motivated to get over his shyness in meeting new people.

    It’s all time travel into the past and doesn’t have the element of imagining other worlds and futures. When it’s well done it’s good as adventure and as a way to introduce kids to historical events.

  101. 101.

    schrodingers_cat

    Accurate description of twin paradox in popular media. Queen’s Year of 39
    https://youtu.be/kE8kGMfXaFU
    Time travel as a science fiction trope usually gives me a headache. Because the physics is usually fucked up and that takes me out of the story. These are usually my least favorite Trek episodes.

  103. 103.

    Brooklyn Dodger

    Cronocrimenes (Time Crimes) is a head buster and very entertaining. The teaser:

    Nacho Vigalondo’s time-travel thriller opens with Hector spying on a beautiful woman near his property. Investigating, he finds her assaulted and he in turn is attacked by a man whose head is swathed in bandages. Fleeing, Hector encounters a scientific facility where a scientist persuades him to hide in a time machine. Travelling back in time just a few hours, he observes himself.

    I like this director’s films very much. High concept, small budget, really fun stuff.

  107. 107.

    Miss Bianca

    Outlander – books and TV series both

    Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy.  A rare (to me) instance of “time travel forward” that posits a believably real but very different future (two of them, actually). Plus an early attempt at “de-gendering” language – “per”/”person” being the singular pronouns of choice in the future to replace his/hers and him/her. Written in the 70s, and very influenced by 70s radical feminist theory. One of the ones I re-read every few years or so.

  114. 114.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Can you imagine them pitching ‘Goodnight Sweetheart‘ now?

    “So, let’s get this straight, this married guy shacks up with two separate women in two different timelines and lies to them both for years?”

    “Yeah, but his real wife is a harridan who he really dislikes but he’s too much of a coward to tell her he wants a divorce, so he just keeps on cheating on her with his hot Cockney pub-owner.”

    “Get out.”

  115. 115.

    trollhattan

    What was the movie where the nuclear aircraft carrier shows up just before Pearl Harbor. Gotta love imagining the pitch meeting for that one.

    Same premise as every neoconfederate wishing he could show up at Pickett’s Charge with their AR15 to give them Yanks some of their own medicine.

  120. 120.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Hot Tub Time Machine

    13 Going on 30

    The Final Countdown

    Idiocracy  (though, after what we’ve been through, that seems like a documentary)

    Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

  122. 122.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @dmsilev: Never read the Gerrold story, but I speculate he was riffing off Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” – which is a helluva riff on the Grandfather Paradox.

  125. 125.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @trollhattan:

    The Final Countdown. Interestingly, I don’t think the aircraft carrier was able to do anything. They return back to 1980 without seriously altering the timeline. Martin Sheen was in it.

    Same premise as every neoconfederate wishing he could show up at Pickett’s Charge with their AR15 to give them Yanks some of their own medicine.

    A tad harsh, tbh. And actually, that was already made, funny enough. Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South where South African white supremacists/neo-Nazis give AK-47s to the Confederates and they win the Civil War. Of course, Robert E. Lee isn’t racist enough for them, the South Africans try to kill him, they fail, and Lee pledges to abolish slavery or something

  126. 126.

    billcinsd

    @dnfree: I agree Blackout and All Clear are very good books. Probably not quite up to To Say Nothing of the Dog, to my taste but very good

  129. 129.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Not a comedy, but neither does it eschew comedic elements. A taste of it, without giving away too much of the story.

    In the present day, director of the ministry and 17th century artist Velázquez seated close together at a table in the cafeteria, where the staff is being held hostage by time-traveling Nazis. Velázquez shown doing a charcoal sketch of one of the armed troops.

    Director: “You picked now to start sketching?”

    Velázquez: “It’s either that or shit my pants.”

    Director: “By all means then, keep drawing.”

  132. 132.

    Tony Jay

    @trollhattan:

    Same premise as every neoconfederate wishing he could show up at Pickett’s Charge with their AR15 to give them Yanks some of their own medicine.

    Turtledove basically used that as the concept behind ‘Guns of the South’, except the time-travellers were South African nutters and the AR15s were a ton of surplus AK47s for Bobby Lee’s Johnny Rebs.

    ETA – Or what Goku said.

    He’s on record as regretting his characterisation of Lee in the book as anything other than a racist piece of shit.

  133. 133.

    Brooklyn Dodger

    @dexwood: He’s a keeper. Saw him at the Seattle Film Festival a few years ago.

    Extraterrestre is another of his in the sci-fi genre. Guy wakes up realizing his one-night stand is THE ONE. Somehow he has to convey this to her, while dealing with her fiance due to arrive any minute, a vindictive neighbor, and the fact that Madrid has been evacuated during the night because an alien spaceship is docked just outside the city.

  134. 134.

    Juliet

    I saw Somewhere In Time in Sault Ste Marie MI in a theater when it first opened. The majority of the movie takes place on Mackinac island where cars are not allowed. The opening scene is of a modern day sports car driving up the road to the Grand Hotel. There was an audible gasp throughout the theater that there was a car driving on the island!

  135. 135.

    catclub

    Trump Must Be Cut Off From Intelligence Briefings, Democrat Says

    Just print them in 10pt font. No pictures.

    Bloomberg headline.

  136. 136.

    jeffreyw

    @trollhattan:

    Same premise as every neoconfederate wishing he could show up at Pickett’s Charge with their AR15 to give them Yanks some of their own medicine.

    Harry Turtledove is all over that.

  138. 138.

    Raven

    @Juliet: Man, my sisters boyfriend split the draft to the “Soo” and I drove her up there to be with him. Had one hell of an adventure!

  139. 139.

    OzarkHillbilly

    What other films/TV or books or comics do you like with time travel?

    *None* of them, because their plot line always defies logic.

    **there are exceptions but they are very few and very far between.

  140. 140.

    Shakti

    I can’t recommend Kindred, by Octavia Butler, highly enough. She uses the time travel to write a story about dealing with the wounds of history and how the past isn’t even really past.

  141. 141.

    Leto

    Book: The Time Traveler’s Wife. (Movie adaptation is just horrible)

    Film: About Time. Co-stars Bill Nighy which, for me, always makes it worth watching.

  142. 142.

    NotMax

    @dexwood

    The Time Element, mentioned above, can be viewed as Rod Serling’s warm-up for The Twilight Zone, airing on “The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.” Should still be available on Prime.

  145. 145.

    Tony Jay

    What was the movie where the nuclear aircraft carrier shows up just before Pearl Harbor. Gotta love imagining the pitch meeting for that one.

    That one probably inspired John Birmingham’s series which starts with a multi-national naval taskforce from 2021 getting jumped back to WW2 and landing (mostly) slap bang in the middle of the US fleet heading towards the Battle of Midway, with very, very wide-ranging and not very pleasant results.

    Oh, and 1940s racism and sexism are – so – horrific to the 2021 folks that they need their own autonomous enclave carved out of California to feel ‘normal’ in. So naïve, Mr Birmingham.

  146. 146.

    Subsole

    @jeffreyw: 
    Ah, I see you are a person of refinement and culture.

    Loves me some Haldeman. Especially his horror stories. Guy does supernatural really, really well.

  147. 147.

    dmsilev

    @Leto: I bounced of that book hard. Had to force myself to get through it (it was a gift, and for some reason I felt a sense of obligation). I’m not really sure why, there was just something about it I found really grating.

  149. 149.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: What was the movie where the nuclear aircraft carrier shows up just before Pearl Harbor.

    The Final Countdown.

    Australian author John Birmingham’s Axis of Time trilogy starts with a Pacific battlegroup of 2021 transported back to the Battle of Midway – and takes it from there into an alternate timestream. Lot of fun.

    Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time is fun as well – two factions engaged in a battle up & down the timestream called The Change War. Available free on-line from Project Gutenberg .

    And of course there’s Eric Flint’s 1632 and sequels in which a small WV town gets tossed backwards into the middle of the Thirty Years War.

  150. 150.

    Raven

    Time is a western concept. Or, as Dylan put it “Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast. . .”

  156. 156.

    ryk

    @Gin & Tonic: Back in the ‘70s I read everything I could find by Keith Laumer. He was my intro to sci-fi. Don’t know if they would hold up now, but my teenage self loved his books.

     

    Has anyone mentioned The Time Traveler’s Wife yet?

  158. 158.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    Certainly in the same neighborhood, along with Jason Ayres’ My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday and Ken Grimwood’s Replay.

  162. 162.

    Leto

    @dmsilev: that sucks. I stayed up for the entire return trip from Baltimore International to Kuwait reading it. Henry’s worst fear was my own and it both basically happened to us.

  163. 163.

    TomatoQueen

    At present I’m reading our Mr Levenson’s Einstein in Berlin, and have just come upon the 1915 paper, in which gravity and time do indescribable things. A bit more than 40 years ago, in the senior mathematics tutorial, we were ending Lobachevski and getting ready to take on Albert, with sideswipes at Minkowski and Lorentz first. I found myself smiling in math class when my classmates were perturbed by such things as the twin paradox, because science fiction had led me to them long before and so they were dear friends, if a bit quirky and not completely explained….but they’re all related and it’s all good, in a deeply satisfying way.

    City on the Edge of Forever
    Forever War
    The Heechee Series
    To Say Nothing of the Dog
    Woman on the Edge of Time
    Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    Time and Again

  164. 164.

    Subsole

    If he hasn’t been mentioned yet, Harry Turtledove does some pretty wild and entertaining alt history, from Alien invasions during WW2 to time traveling Afrikaaners smuggling AK 47s to Lee’s army.

  166. 166.

    Subsole

    @oldgold: The theory I read is that any alteration you deliberately introduce will either erase the you that went back in time to create the change, thereby nullifying the change

    Or

    It splits off an entirely new timeline in the multiverse, thereby creating a change, but not one perceived by the prime timeline.

    Mozart in Mirrorshades is actually a really good story about the latter. A bit dated, totally cyberpunk, but good.

  167. 167.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Tony Jay:

    He’s on record as regretting his characterisation of Lee in the book as anything other than a racist piece of shit.

    Glad to hear that. The Myth of Robert E. Lee, Egalitarian, was an enduring one.

    Speaking of Turtledove, I really liked his Worldwar series where a reptile-like alien species, called the Race, invade Earth during WW2, forcing the Axis and the Allies to form a temporary truce to fight of the invaders. Interestingly, the aliens were only as advanced as 21st century Earth is (minus FTL) and it’s culture//technological level had been stagnant for some time. They had first surveilled Earth during the Middle Ages and assumed humanity would remain at that technological level. Lots of historical characters as well as original ones. Lots of problematic elements in the books, not surprising given they were written in the 90s

  168. 168.

    cckids

    I always hesitate to recommend Orson Scott Card, but his Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Colombus has time travel elements, and is intriguing mainly for the questions it tries to answer – Card’s answers aren’t generally mine, but the questions he raises are fascinating: once time travel is possible, is it ethical? If by changing the past, you can save the future, should you? You’ll be erasing millions of people’s lives without their knowledge or consent. If you can choose one point in time to return to and change something that will make the future better on multiple levels, what would it be?

    Card chooses changing Colombus’s voyage, so that the European conquest of the Americas,and the resulting plundering of the world’s resources, slave trade and ecological disasters would be averted.

    It’s worth a look.

  171. 171.

    Tony Jay

    @Subsole:

    I’ve heard good things but have never got around to reading it. There’s not enough time-travel in the Middle-Ages stories out there. Every bugger wants to mess with WW2 or the US Civil War.

  174. 174.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Spanish speakers were recommending El Ministerio del Tiempo on Netflix as a cool series that was also a good way to practice my Spanish. I never got around to watching it and now it seems to be gone, not streaming anywhere. Does anybody know why that happened and if it’s ever coming back?

  175. 175.

    Viva BrisVegas

    My favourite, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp.

    The  time travel mechanism is a simple lightning bolt in Mussolini’s Rome which takes the mild mannered protagonist back to the Fall of Rome. The story is what he does to prevent it.

    Yes, time travel is impossible, so is Faster Than Light travel (which is just another form of time travel). Without FTL there is no Star Wars, Star Trek or almost anything else that takes place outside the solar system.

  181. 181.

    aliasofwestgate

    Puella Magi Majica Madoka is actually one of the better time travel anime out there. Also one of my fave anime–period. Great deconstruction of magical girl tropes, and a nod to Kamen Rider Ryuki (which was a middlingly good kamen rider from the 00s).

    With some downright nasty twists, and not really for young kids either. But excellent storytelling and helped put Gen Urubochi on the map for quality stuff period. Also nicely short at 12 episodes, with an amazing soundtrack. i have a tendency to rewatch it every now and then.

  185. 185.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Sloane Ranger: Time Trax – a scientist is helping wanted criminals escape into the past. A cop travels back to return them to their own time to face justice. American money but filmed in Australia. It only lasted a couple of seasons but I liked it.

    Trax was a show just ahead of it’s time (no pun intended) — vaguely serialized, with the AI being an actual character and not a “sexy” eye-candy, as I recall. Tried for some real drama, which I recall hearing got more intense after my local station dropped it.

    In a similar vein is my contribution, CBC’s Continuum. Starring Rachel Nichols and a murderer’s row of Vancouver-based acting talent, what starts off as a way-too-ernest for those skintight “future police” uniforms pilot quickly mutates into a morally gray, character-driven SF show. The creator, Simon Barry, does not lack verve and energy, even if sometimes his ideas run well ahead of his ability (esp. budget) to implement.

    I loved that little series, and it ends beautifully.

  186. 186.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Subsole: Turtledove reminds me of Harlan Ellison’s snarling mid-1960s put-down of famed SF editor John W. Campbell, who

    once edited a magazine of science fiction called Astounding, and now edits a magazine of schematic drawings called Analog.**

    I was an Analog subscriber at the time & admit, truer vitriol never spewed.

    Turtledove’s alternative histories are fascinating schematic diagrams. Unfortunately, he is an utter failure at creating believable characters – his best efforts occasionally rise to the level of laughable.

    His “Southern Victory” series starts with the South winning the Civil War & proceeds to the end of the Second Great War in 1945. I can sum up all 11 (!!?!) volumes up rather nattily:

    Fascism? It can’t happen here!

    (Turtledove:) Hold my beer.

    ** This might’ve appeared in the intro to Ellison’s groundbreaking anthology Dangerous Visions.

  187. 187.

    Pete Downunder

    If you can get past his racism and in later years RWNJ politics, as I a kid i enjoyed Robert A. Heinlein’s , The Door into Summer and even the truly racist Farnham’s Freehold, both with time travel elements. As someone mentioned above By His Bootstraps was a real mind bender. I probably haven’t read any SciFi since the 80’s – apart from purportedly serious works claiming that string theory is other than a religion – so interested in any Jackal recommendations.

  188. 188.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Also, the Philadelphia Experiment. Couple of WWII sailors get beamed to 1984.

    Really enjoy Turtledove. Especially the one about the aliens pulling an H.G. Welles…directly into the middle of WW2…

  189. 189.

    Amir Khalid

    Does anyone here remember the 1960s TV show The Time Tunnel? It aired in Malaysia when I was a child.

  190. 190.

    Tony Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I’m so old I got that series when it first came out. Really liked the way he made the lizard Race not only convincingly alien in their worldview, but also genuinely beatable despite their technological advantages.

    And his introduction of aliens to WW2 actually changed the history in radical ways, which is more than can be said for his Timeline 191 mega-series. Turns out that if you have the CSA successfully seceding from the USA then by the time you get to the 1940s their version of WW2 plays out almost exactly like the OTL War in Europe (rolls eyes).

    Damn but that was lazy. Other than the War ending a year earlier and the US Army being the guys in grey (oh, and all the atomic bombs) I could have just stuck with Larry Oliver and ‘The World at War’.

  191. 191.

    oldster

    Another vote for the German production, “Dark,” on Netflix, which I am currently watching. Lots of time travel, but so far (part way through season 2 of 3) it has always put character and relationship up front.
    Yes, it has nuclear reactors and black holes, but on one level it is simply a story about four families in a small town, and how they interact over several generations. Putting people first means a lot to me.

  192. 192.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    There’s a really enjoyable movie called About Time with Bill Nighy that I enjoyed immensely even though the time travel premise is basically magic. Plus Bill Nighy is great in anything.

  198. 198.

    Subsole

    @Raven: I read a short story back in the early 90s, On the Matter of the Ukdena, that looks at it from a Native American kind of perspective. Not time travel so much as alternate history, but a novel approach to different cultures’ view of time – is time an arrow, or a spiral?

  200. 200.

    Raven

    @Subsole:

    Ride the tiger

    It’s like a tear in the hands of a western man
    Tell you about salt, carbon and water
    But a tear to a chinese man
    He’ll tell you about sadness and sorrow or the love of a man and a woman

  201. 201.

    Hungry Joe

    Laughably horrible ‘60s TV would-be comedy “It’s About Time,” with two astronauts flung into the Paleolithic and taken in by a cave guy played by Joe E. Ross (Gunther Toody in “Car 54.”) Even worse than it sounds.

    And yeah, “The Time-Traveler’s Wife” annoyed the hell out of me, too.

    Because it’s been several comments since anyone has mentioned how great Connie  Willis’ “To Say Nothing of the Dog” is … “To Say Nothing of the  Dog” is great. And the book that inspired it “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)” is still, after about 120 years, one of the funniest books ever written on this or any other planet.

  202. 202.

    Subsole

    @Tony Jay: It is quite enjoyable. Makes some nice points about the commodification of time, temporal parochialism, and the fact that what we consider uniquely modern often has surprisingly long roots.

  203. 203.

    Tony Jay

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    Turtledove’s alternative histories are fascinating schematic diagrams. Unfortunately, he is an utter failure at creating believable characters – his best efforts occasionally rise to the level of laughable.

    Ha! True enough for me. The ‘Southern Victory’ series started so well with ‘How Few Remain’, and despite the cookie-cutter characterisation (his Trumpian General Custer aside) the WWI analogue was convincingly grim and grimy, but from then on he spent so much time hammering an alternate America into cutsie recognisable WW2 analogues that it was just a six book race to the death of his Confederate Hitler.

    And the Freedom Party emblem should have been just the colour reversed Dixie Swastika, no stars. Jake Featherston really needed a Hugo Boss to advise him on design classics.

    Yes, this is a petty gripe.

  204. 204.

    Snarlymon

    I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Chris Marker’s La Jette. It’s a short French film from 1962 that is almost entirely still frames.

  206. 206.

    piratedan

    since I am extremely old school and this is somewhat in my wheelhouse, this could very well end up being tl;dr and my apologies if so…

    The Grandfather of “modern SF time travel” is likely still H. Bean Piper…

    He wrote multiple short stories but I believe his best is still “He Walked Around The Horses“, which takes a premise of a courier who crosses into a parallel universe where the outcome of various political events are somewhat different but is presented as a series of correspondences between a couple of state functionaries as they compare notes attempting to validate the story of the person detained.

    Piper also wrote an entire series of stories called the Paratime Police, the posits that Earth is actually not the home of humanity, Mars is but in the attempted migration of the ongoing Martian disaster of their ecosystem, there were various levels of success that all have their basis of establishing multiple parallel universes where said Paratime Police have to ensure that various academics and other sorts of nefarious persons attempt to exploit the situations on said parallel worlds.

    The best Novel in that series is likely Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

    Someone gave a shoutout to Harry Turtledove who has made a career of alternate worlds and time travellers.

    I would also give a shout out to the Eric Flint driven 1632 series, which is based on a group of nefarious aliens who perform experiments in the dimension of time and break certain celestial working models, which result in certain area of “current time” being disassociated from their former timeline and deposited in the past, thus creating a new timeline.

    As for the cinematic medium…

    I grew up with The Time Tunnel, but surprised that neither Sliders, Planet of The Apes nor Interstellar have been mentioned yet, but perhaps that shows what a rich genre it really is…

  212. 212.

    Subsole

    @Uncle Cosmo: I have some issues w/Ellison, but dear god that is devastatingly funny.

    Will agree abt Turtledove. You read it for the story, not the characters.

  213. 213.

    Ken

    I like Kage Baker’s Company stories and novels. The main characters are immortal cyborgs, but they and their stories remain very human.  I also like the premise she uses: time travel can’t change the past, but this can only be observed to apply to recorded history.

  216. 216.

    Tony Jay

    @Subsole:

    I think I’ll have to check it out.

    While I remember there was a short-story in one of those ‘Alternate Presidents/Kennedys/Warriors’ that always stuck with me. Something different happened with Tecumseh’s Native-American Confederacy and by the 1950s the USA has a large ‘Red’ minority, rebellious teenagers acting out in warpaint and a low-level terrorism problem badly handled with extreme prejudice by a paramilitary Bureau of Indian Affairs. Things kick off after the native actor who played Tonto on the Lone Ranger loses it during a ‘minstrel’ style tomahawk display on prime time TV and, well, he doesn’t throw them wide of the laughing white host as he was supposed to.

    There haven’t been many alternate histories based on Native Americans (other than Aztecs), someone should write a story about someone using time travel to give the Tribes a fighting chance…. with all the butterflies that would unleash.

  221. 221.

    Bobby Thomson

    Dark (a German series available with subtitles on Netflix) is probably the most complex attempt at a consistent time travel story.  I watched a few episodes but it got, well, dark.

  224. 224.

    ThresherK

    The ’90s go at Twilight Zone had an episode about time-travelers kidnapping a certain infant which I found memorable.

  225. 225.

    billcinsd

    Another recent American time travel TV show was Timeless. I watched the first couple of episodes, and it was not too bad. It evidently had some big backers, as it was cancelled by NBC after 1 season, brought back very shortly thereafter for 10 more episodes, cancelled again and brought back for a Finale

  226. 226.

    NotMax

    @BGinCHI

    Unrelated to time travel – if you didn’t see earlier mention of it, you’d likely enjoy the film Toc Toc on Netflix as a pleasant diversion. Loving adaptation of a comedic stage play.

  230. 230.

    Dan B

    @oldgold: Same here.  If we time traveled we would arrive at a destination in outer space or middle of star / planet unless the time travel stayed tethered to the earth’s surface.  Fast time travel would mean spinning extremely rapidly.  So many ways to die!

  231. 231.

    There go two miscreants

    The late Richard Meredith wrote a trilogy of time travel/alternate universe books, At The Narrow Passage, No Brother, No Friend, and Vestiges of Time, that I’ve enjoyed reading. Not sure if they are still in print.

    I have to confess to liking Peggy Sue Got Married, corny as it is.

    In a sense, Groundhog Day is a time-travel story. Also, a thought that is probably not original, a sort of mirror-image Alzheimer’s story, where the protagonist remembers, but no one else does!

    Lots of great suggestions here, also many I already like.

     

    ETA: James Gleick’s Time Travel, which is not a story but discusses time travel and other time-related issues. Very interesting book.

  232. 232.

    Spanish Moss

    “Timeline” is probably my favorite. Some archaeology students are transported back to 14th century France on the day of an important battle in the Hundred Years War.
    Loved Willis’ Doomsday Book, haven’t read “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, I will have to give it a try. So nice to get recommendations like this from these threads!
    I will also confess to loving “Somewhere in Time”. The music was amazing: John Barry’s score, and Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini.

  233. 233.

    J R in WV

    Love Eric Flint’s work, all of it. Even the novels in his world by other authors are OK. Mostly.

    Agree, Turtledove and characters, not there for me at all. Will not read any alternate history about the CSA winning anything. Might as well read about Hitler winning, not going there.

    Connie Willis is great. Iain Banks is great, not Time Travel tho. Haven’t revisited Heinlein lately. Was interesting as a kid. You guy mention all the greats.

    Thank goodness there are still great people writing great SF!!

    That and B-J have kept me sane the past few years.

    Thanks, guys!!

  235. 235.

    Uncle Omar

    Late to the party again.  Other than that, Alfred Bester’s The Man Who Murdered Mohammed which came out in 1958 and was a finalist for a 1959 Hugo is Bester’s contribution to time travel fiction. .  A couple of Bester’s novels worth mentioning (and reading) are The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination.  I really like these in my 20’s, but like many things from that era might not stand the test of time.

  236. 236.

    Shana

    Seconding the Connie Willis time travel books, including Black Out and All Clear a 2 parter about WWII.

    And Live Up To Your Name on Netflix, a KDrama with time travel, completely charming.

  237. 237.

    Steeplejack

    I don’t know how much of it is time travel vs. multiverse stuff, but Rick and Morty (on Adult Swim) is surprisingly good. Violent as hell, but good.

  238. 238.

    Sandia Blanca

    Outlander–all of the books, and the 9th one should be coming out sometime during the Biden Administration. Diana Gabaldon is a brilliant writer who knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat, even in a 900-page novel. (Have not really watched the series, although I love the actors starring in it).

    The Chronicles of St. Mary’s–mentioned above.  My husband and I both adore Jodi Taylor’s books, which now include the spinoff series featuring The Time Police. Characters are well-developed, plots are both historic and fanciful, and she uses plenty of humor when she’s not putting the protagonists through another life-threatening disaster.

  239. 239.

    Antonius

    • The Doomsday Book – Connie Willis
    • Short story: Story of Your Life – Ted Chiang

    Warning: These stories will break your heart.

  242. 242.

    Pappenheimer

    I recall (possibly wrongly) that Harry Harrison did a “Time traveler tries to rewrite the American Civil War” story with a lone traveller introducing Sten guns to the ANV – apparently you can make a working Sten with a 19th century workshop and a couple of orangutans.  But the guy ‘s only read one Civil War history textbook, which doesn’t mention the Petersburg mine, so he chooses his factory site…unwisely.

  243. 243.

    PJ

    Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun is a series about what it takes to save the world.  It initially reads as fantasy, but it becomes apparent as you go that it’s actually science fiction revolving around a fair amount of time travel (or the results of time travel), though none of it is clear until the fourth and last book (and it’s only really made explicit in the sequel, The Urth of the New Sun.)

  244. 244.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: There haven’t been many alternate histories based on Native Americans (other than Aztecs), someone should write a story about someone using time travel to give the Tribes a fighting chance…. with all the butterflies that would unleash.

    Orson Scott Card, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. A couple of centuries from now, the environment is collapsing; scientists decide to use time travel to prevent the bad effects of the Columbian contact.

  245. 245.

    Subsole

    @Pete Downunder: Dedthred probably, but other good sci-fi, if a bit dated, is David Gerrold’s War Against the Cthorr series.

    Aliens invade earth, ecologically. Humanity gets nailed by plagues, then suffers massive social collapse. Then the aliens show up. They don’t come as an army but as an ecosystem. Our green world is getting xenoformed. Very well thought out ecosystem, full of very different and logically consistent beasties. A wild political background where America controls the world – by losing WW3. Wireless networked telepath-spies who trade bodies as easily as they trade clothes, and even weirder stuff.

    Trippy and strange and very, very grim.

    Be warned, the third and fourth books touch on the kind of human shrapnel you get from widespread social collapse – child predators, cults, that kinda ish features prominently. The good guys in this book are not nice. The bad guys are worse. Can be hard reading at times, but not quite like anything else I have read.

  246. 246.

    Mathguy

    This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal el-Mohtar is the best time travel story (technically a novella) I have read since Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. It won the Hugo and Nebula last year. It is excellent. It is well worth seeking out.

  248. 248.

    Ann Marie

    If you want something more low-brow in time travel stories, try “Legends of Tomorrow” on the CW.  As the characters themselves put it, they are not so much legends as legendary screw-ups.  Each season they defeat the big bad, but do so in way that creates a whole new type of problem they have to deal with the next season.  In the first season it tried to be serious and was fairly dreadful, but thereafter they leaned into the goofy, such as the time a talking stuffed animal got into the hands of some Vikings and started a whole new religion.

  253. 253.

    TheflipPsyd

    Went back to read the thread  and I don’t think anyone mentioned  Sliders. And does anyone remember a show called Otherworld from the 80s? Interesting premise but I think only a few episodes were made as it was a mid-season replacement and it didn’t get picked up.

  255. 255.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SiubhanDuinne: There’s also Heinlein’s later elaboration of the same theme, “–All You Zombies–” , which takes the predestination loop to a far wilder extreme.

  256. 256.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: The story that really turned time travel into a major plot device in science fiction was H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, though Wells is more interested in what happens in the far future than in the paradoxes of time travel. It actually wasn’t even Wells’ first time-travel story, but it’s the one that people remember.

  257. 257.

    Brachiator

    What other films/TV or books or comics do you like with time travel?

    Sorry I missed the fun here. When I was a yoot, my favorite SF stories involved time travel or robots. Among movies, I really enjoyed “The Time Machine,” not just for the time travel, but for the sense of tragedy at the heart of the movie, the sadness of how humanity had become degraded in the future. This had quite an impact on me since a lot of stories I had read assumed that the future, like the Jetsons TV show, was going to be brighter, better and more fun than the present.

    Another film that comes quickly to mind is “The Final Countdown” (1980), which involves an aircraft carrier going back in time to the day before the Pearl Harbor attack.

    I thought “Looper” was a lot of fun.

    I only recently became a fan of the Doctor Who series.  I always found it kind of funny that quite a few long time fans didn’t like Moffat’s “timey wimey” approach.  It was as though they liked a show about a Time Lord, but didn’t particularly care for time travel.

    I look forward to going through the comments here in more detail later.  Good topic.

  258. 258.

    SFBayAreaGal

    City on the Edge of Forever
    Enterprise C
    Time After Time
    Time Machine, Movie (Rod Taylor) and Book
    Sound of Thunder
    12 Monkeys
    Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
    Dark Shadows
    Early Edition
    Fringe
    Gargoyles
    Once Upon A Time
    Time Tunnel
    Smallville
    Just to name a few ??

  260. 260.

    Miko Hazelteen

    A few to recommend, and found a few more to put on my reading list.

    Here and Now and Then
    by Mike Chen
    Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Miranda. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career…as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142….

    The Gone World
    by Tom Sweterlitsch
    Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind…

    Kindred
    by Octavia E. Butler
    Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland…

    1632
    Ring of Fire Series, Book 1
    by Eric Flint
    A West Virginia town is transported from the year 2000 to 1631 Germany at the height of the Thirty Years’ War . . .

    Recursion
    A Novel
    by Blake Crouch
    An epidemic that spreads through no known means, driving its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. But the force that’s sweeping the world is no pathogen. It’s just the first shock wave, unleashed by a stunning discovery—and what’s in jeopardy is not our minds but the very fabric of time itself…

    Every Anxious Wave
    by Mo Daviau
    Why would we need music if our lives were exactly as we wanted them to be?Karl Bender is a quiet guy who lives in three places: his bar, his apartment, and the cheap Mediterranean place on the corner that keeps him well-fed with his daily portion of hummus and chicken shwarma. But that’s all about to change. When he stumbles upon a time-traveling wormhole, Karl develops a business selling access to people who want to go back in time to hear their favorite bands…

  261. 261.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: It’s funny–the original run of Doctor Who was really only rarely about time travel. The TARDIS was usually just the conveyance to the time and place of the adventure. When they did do an episode with a lot of convoluted jaunting about in time, it was generally a big deal.

    Before the series was revived, Steven Moffat did a Doctor Who parody for a charity telethon, with Rowan Atkinson and Jonathan Pryce, called The Curse of Fatal Death. The plot of that is a comically convoluted snarl of time-travel paradoxes ending in the Doctor rapidly regenerating several times, and in many ways it oddly prefigures the revived show. To some extent I think Moffat was signaling what he’d do if he were in charge. Though you can see aspects of the Russell T. Davies and Chibnall eras too.

  262. 262.

    NotMax

    @Matt McIrvin

    Agree that was the work which refined it as a trope, however it was published at a later date than the works above, each of them incorporating time travel as a springboard.

    Not at all trying to be argumentative, there are pros and cons galore for absolutely crowning an ur-work. Jules Verne’s unpublished during his lifetime novel Paris in the 20th Century might also be noted.

  263. 263.

    The Lodger

    The Peripheral and Agency by William Gibson. These are less time travel novels than time-shifted parallel-earth stories. Read The Peripheral first.

  264. 264.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: I think the thing that really inspired people about Wells’ version was that it specifically had a time machine, rather than someone sleeping for centuries, or time-traveling by magical or mysterious unspecified means. But Wells had first come up with that considerably earlier, in an 1888 serial called “The Chronic Argonauts”, and even that was slightly preceded by a Spanish time-machine story, Enrique Gaspar’s El anacronópete.

    Those were all right around the same time as Looking Backward and A Connecticut Yankee — it seems like right around 1887-1888 the time was ripe for people writing about time travel.

    (of course, “Rip van Winkle” was much earlier and the Sleeping Beauty story is centuries old.)

  265. 265.

    NotMax

    @Matt McIrvin

    it seems like right around 1887-1888 the time was ripe for people writing about time travel

    Which leads to wondering whether the acceptance and dissemination of the marvels of electric light and the telephone may have set the stage and/or whetted the public’s appetite for fiction exploring further scientific barriers presumed unbreachable.

  266. 266.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s funny–the original run of Doctor Who was really only rarely about time travel. The TARDIS was usually just the conveyance to the time and place of the adventure.

    And this became the “standard” that some fans insist must be observed. The Doctor jumps in the TARDIS and goes to some point in the past or future, has an adventure, and then jumps into the TARDIS and “drives” off to another point and another adventure.

    I generally liked the Moffat take on the Doctor. Including the “timey wimey” stuff.

    Also I note that the best Who fans accept a multiplicity of appreciations.  This only makes sense for a series that has been on for so long.

    And yeah, I like Lady Doctors Who, too.

  268. 268.

    SFBayAreaGal

    Arrgh Enterprise C is Yesterday’s Enterprise

    I forgot to add from the Star Trek universe:

    Trials and Tribble-ations
    All Our Yesterdays
    Little Green Men
    Tomorrow is Yesterday
    Past Tense

    I forgot how many time traveling episodes the Star Trek universe created.

  269. 269.

    Brachiator

    Two TV favorites:
    Outer Limits episode with Carroll O’Connor and Barry Morse (the relentless detective from “The Fugitive”)

    “Controlled Experiment.” Two Martians play with time and stop time to prevent a woman from shooting her lover. Their experiments result in a variety of outcomes, one of which might lead to the future doom of Earth.

    Twilight Zone. “Back There.” An engineer (“Gilligan’s Island” Professor Russell Johnson) goes back in time and tries to prevent the Lincoln assassination. He learns that you cannot change big events, but can have an impact on small ones.

  272. 272.

    Tehanu

    @daize:  I too recommend Connie Willis’ duology, Blackout and All Clear, about those same time travelers getting into WWII. Mr. Peabody & Sherman, of course. And I love the 2nd Back to the Future movie — Tom Wilson as Biff alone is worth watching. Jack Finney’s Time and Again isn’t his only time travel story; there’s also Marion’s Wall which is really sweet about a silent movie star. Other things I was going to list have already been mentioned. Oh, I know — The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope.  And Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home!

  273. 273.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: I like Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, a lot. I’m not really a fan of Chris Chibnall’s take on the show. (I’ve never liked his writing or showrunning much.) It’s a pity the two of them seem joined at the hip.

  274. 274.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: There was also a lot of talk about higher dimensions and such going around in the 1880s, sometimes with a scientific gloss and sometimes a mystical one. Wells in The Time Machine specifically describes time as a fourth dimension like space, years before Einstein, Poincaré and Minkowski did so. The ideas needed to write about this were definitely in the air.

  276. 276.

    Warren Senders

    Annalee Newitz’ terrific book, “The Future of Another Timeline” is a very good time-travel story.  Newitz is one of the best writers I’ve read recently — both her fiction and non-fiction.

    James Gleick’s book “Time Travel” is a survey of the literature on the subject, and as always with Gleick’s work, it’s fascinating.

    Mo Daviau’s “Every Anxious Wave” didn’t get a lot of attention, but IMO it’s one of the best TT stories I’ve read:

    A high-spirited and engaging novel, Mo Daviau’s EVERY ANXIOUS WAVE plays ball with the big questions of where we would go and who we would become if we could rewrite our pasts, as well as how to hold on to love across time.

    Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his closet, Karl and his best friend Wayne develop a side business selling access to people who want to travel back in time to listen to their favorite bands. It’s a pretty ingenious plan, until Karl, intending to send Wayne to 1980, transports him back to 980 instead. Though Wayne sends texts extolling the quality of life in tenth century “Mannahatta,” Karl is distraught that he can’t bring his friend back.

    Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena’s connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love — with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.

    I enjoyed “Outlander” a lot — both the books and the show.  “Travelers” was kinda meh — started strong & devolved into more standard blow-em-up action stuff.

  277. 277.

    Warren Senders

    Oh, and “The Rise and Fall of DODO” by Neal Stephenson & Nicole Gallant is absolutely wonderful.  Stephenson’s characters are often only barely human, but Gallant’s influence is palpable — the players have actual personalities and believable behaviors.  I’m told Gallant has completed a sequel which will be out this spring.

  278. 278.

    JML

    Travelers was great. Would watch more in a heartbeat.

    I’ve started reading the Time Salvager series by Wesley Chu, and it’s definitely an interesting take on time travel and indictment of corporate savagery. (not as good as his Tao series, but still interesting and enjoyable)

    Did no one mention Time Cop? The movie is a pretty good IMHO as an action romp and uses Van Damme pretty well. (plus, I’m all in on Mia Sara and you’ve got Ron Silver at his slimiest)

  279. 279.

    Pittsburgh Mike

    Here are my favorite movies/TV shows:

    Eleven Minutes Ago — Great comedy about a guy who travels back in time 50 years to collect an air sample, and finds himself in love with someone at a wedding reception.

    12 Monkeys — Suspenseful movie about Bruce Willis sent back to collect early samples of a dangerous virus, before it mutates.

    Journeyman — (TV show) A guy starts finding himself involuntarily thrown back into the past, to correct various wrongs in history, teaming up with his currently dead ex-fiancee.

    Kate and Leopold — Meg Ryan falls in love with some guy from the 19th century who her ex-BF accidentally brought to 1980s NY.  Geez, is it *that* hard to find a decent guy in New York?

     

    Books:

    Timescape (Gregory Benford) — wonderful book about messages from the future, messing with a physics grad student’s NMR experiment.

    Time and Again — book about someone traveling to 19th century NY to figure out a puzzle from the past.

    Now Wait for Last Year (Philip Dick) — guy takes a drug that moves him into the past and future, helping the president of Earth figure out how to choose the right side in an interstellar war in which Earth is just a pawn.  Pretty much the story of Italy in WW2.

  280. 280.

    Pittsburgh Mike

    @Warren Senders: Yeah, Travelers had promise, but just drifted off.  I thought the part of the story with heart was the lead guy’s relationship with his wife, but they pretty much ignore that throughout the first season or two.  After a while, I got bored with the randomly changing future.

  281. 281.

    mike shupp

    Best time travel movie – 1960’s THE TIME MACHINE with Rod Taylor. IMO, at least.

    Best novel – a lot of contenders, but the one that sticks in my head the most is Jack Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN. I should add there’s a sequel, FROM TIME TO TIME, which is a bit less compelling but worth reading, FROM TIME TO TIME, in which the protagonist from TAA goes to 1912 and a trip on The Titanic.

    Let me cough politely and mention there was a five volume series from Del Rey books some while back. which I wrote: THE DESTINY MAKERS (WITH FATE CONSPIRE 1985, MORNING OF CREATION 1986, SOLDIER OF ANOTHER FORTUNE 1988, DEATH’S GRAY LAND 1991, and THE LAST RECKONING 1991). I’ll not insist on their primacy in this particular thread, but there was certainly stuff in them that I liked.

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