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Time Travel In Fiction: Literature, Films & Television

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Douglas Adams created the best fictional time travel in 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'. An elderly time traveller creates anomalies as he tries to save endangered things and species. Look, you probably just have to read it.

Here's a thought to spook you... infinite parallell worlds, all more or less identical. How do you know that you aren't jumping between them all the time? Worse yet, supposing there's only a limited number of versions of you and in the other worlds, you have apparently vanished without a trace?
 
12 monkeys is good, but I'm a big Terry Gilliam fan :)... it's based loosely on the short French film La Jétee. Not his best tho - Brazil, Fear and Loathing... and Fisher King are all better Gilliam films
 
12 Monkeys was quite good. I was going to discuss something from it on here, but I guess if you haven't seen it I shouldn't. So go watch it now :)
 
I agree 100% - 12 Monkeys is a great film, although for a flick about killer viruses I'd go for The Andromeda Strain, and for time travel H.G. Wells still does it for me in The Time Machine. However, as far as combining the two go, 12 Monkeys is a winner, and it also proves that despite all indications to the contrary, Brad Pitt ain't a bad actor (pre-Fight Club/Snatch/Meet Joe Black)
 
the first time 1 saw 12 monkeys i didnt rate it but it was on bbc2 the other week and i saw it again and i thought it was brilliant its much better second time around in my opinion

cas
 
What was the film in which H.G Wells goes after Jack the Ripper (to the future, no less) in a time machine? Was it Time After Time? I believe Malcolm MacDowell was in it, if I'm not mistaken. It's been forever since I've seen it--twenty years maybe (I'm getting too old, when anything's been twenty years ago)--but it was a fun picture.
 
A bit like Alan Partridge, wasn't it?

"Lynn, message from Alan: something to pitch to Tony Hayers at BBC lunch on Friday. Idea for film extravaganza. Plot, thus--Malcolm McDowell is trapped in the future; he's being pursued by a cyberpunk from the past, played by Rutger Hauer. Eh, terrible idea. No one will watch that. I've not thought it through, Lynn. I'll call you back."
 
Perhaps it isn't people going back in time to kill various grandparents that we need to worry about. ;)
 
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Like that bloke in that van Damme film, "Time Cop" . . .

Carole
 
Van Damme!

Oh well. I thought I was being original. :)
(Mind you, given how hackneyed a lot of VD's films tend to be, I must have been even less original than that... ;) )
 
Time Cop!

All Ticks, no Talks...

If anyone here reads science fiction, they'll appreciate how little new or original could be thought of, so don't lose sleep over it. In sf, time travel stories are so done that it's tough to get any published at all.

Ah, well, back to reality.
 
Re: Time Cop!

FraterLibre said:
If anyone here reads science fiction, they'll appreciate how little new or original could be thought of, so don't lose sleep over it. In sf, time travel stories are so done that it's tough to get any published at all.
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I still reckon that one of the more convoluted is RA Heinlein's "All You Zombies." Ingenious use of a sex change operation. ;)
 
There was a short story (Larry Niven?) in which all of these lovely preserved bodies are used to host the brains/minds of the aged and decrepit. Nice idea. Heart disease, cancer, etc, are easy to fix in the future, but old age isn't as easy to beat. (I have the feeling that the god awful "Freejack" was based on this story.)
 
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There’s a science fiction short story that, I think, is one of Fritz Leiber’s “Snake and Spiders War” stories. In it a baby is found abandoned on an orphanage steps. When it is examined it is found to be a hermaphrodite, with potentially fully functioning sex organs of both sexes. She is bought up as a woman and while working in a bar meets and has a one night stand with a strange customer. She becomes pregnant and the baby is abducted soon after being born. She goes through a mental crisis and decide to take on fully her male side and starts living life as a man. He then travels back in time where he seduces his younger female self and abducts the baby when it is born. This he takes further back in time where it is abandoned outside the orphanage. Hence he proves to be his own mother and father. I writing all this from memory so I apologise if I have made any errors in telling the plot but the gist of the story is correct. No doubt somebody can confirm the author and remind me of the title.
 
Being your own father

There is a similar plot in the Red Dwarf series;
Dave Lister is found, as a baby, in a box under a pool table in the Aigburth Arms, parents unknown. Towards the end of the last series Lister & Kristine Kochanski create a test tube baby, using his sperm & her egg, and make use of a rip in the space time continuum (sp?) to place the resulting baby in a box under the pool table in the Aigburth Arms.
 
I think the story Mr Sly mentioned is "All You Zombies" by Heinlein.
 
Thanks naitaka for naming the story and correcting me on the author. I think I got confused over the recruitment element of the plot. Leiber's "Snake and Spider wars" stories have people recruited as soldiers by having them plucked from the moment of death and leaving behind a fake body so that they are free from the constraints of history.
If anyone is interested in "All you Zombies" you can find a plot synopsis here
http://www.dahoudek.com/heinlein/reviews/allyouzombies.htm
 
Like in the film "The Terminator".A Terminator is sent back in time to kill the woman who will give birth to the man who leads human beings to victory against machines in a future war.If it was successful then it would prevent him from existing in the future,which would also prevent the machines from ever sending one back in time to kill his Mom since he doesnt exist.

I need to get some sleep now.:eek!!!!: :confused:
 
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it's why movies can only be so good. i'm still waiting for the perfect time travel movie.

wait...the T-1000 was a product of the evil corporation? i thought the resistance built it
 
What occurs to me is the idea that someone could go far back and change history, say to the early Dark Ages in Europe or to Celtic Britain, and all the history books would stay the same because a certain proportion of 'established history' for the less well-documented periods is always guesswork. Then over time and repeated visits to various such periods, we could end up with a 'true' history that varies wildly from what still remained in the history books. (The closest to this scenario I can think of reading is Moorcock's Behold The Man, but Karl Glogeur only does it the one time and actually creates the historical timeline instead of changing it.)
 
Just think of the fun if someone developed a way of seeing into the past. You could solve any crime and watch any past newsworthy event at will. You would know who Jack the Ripper was, where missing people went and who shot JFK.

It would bring a whole new meaning to the History Channel
 
Chriswsm said:
Just think of the fun if someone developed a way of seeing into the past. You could solve any crime and watch any past newsworthy event at will. You would know who Jack the Ripper was, where missing people went and who shot JFK.

It would bring a whole new meaning to the History Channel
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There was mention of Stephen Baxter on another thread. His collaboration with AC Clarke. The Light of Other Days, explores exactly that scenario. Ultimately envisages a generation wired into real-time VR reconstructions of historical epochs generated from 'live' video links.
 
synthwerk said:
wait...the T-1000 was a product of the evil corporation? i thought the resistance built it
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SkyNet built it.

I always wondered why SkyNet sent the second machine back to a point later in Connor's life. Surely sending it back to roughly the same time as the first would be more effective?
 
It would bring a whole new meaning to the History Channel
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or, Channel History :p hehehe

ok...wait...the T-1000 is Robert Patrick's character. ok. Ahnald's is the T-800....the resistance sent the T-800 and SkyNet keeps sending the killer ones. ok...forget the last posted question ;) the last time i saw T2 was in like...95, maybe.
 
In the second filmthe T-800 had been captured and reprogrammed by the resistance.
 
River_Styx said:
So you build your time machine and think to yourself "I know what'll be a really spiffing idea! I'll go back all the way to the birth of life on this planet and see how it all happens.."
So it'll take a while to locate the exact point of origin but hey, you have a time machine so time is now irrelevant right?
Here we go then. Stepping out of the machine into the primordial landscape, wearing specially designed bio-hazard suit to protect you from the priitive Earth's fairly nasty atmosphere and you hear a squelch.
Looking down your boot is covered in slime, a bit like snot and there's something fleshy but flat stuck to the sole. In your horror you realise that all life on earth descended from a slug and you've just wiped it out.
But wait, you're still here so what's up with that?
Maybe this life was destined to die and be replaced by another early starter?
Then you remember what happened just before you closed up your suit and departed from your time machine. You sneezed, didn't you.
Looking back at the open door of your pod you now understand that all life is descended from a cold virus and that you are it's surrogate father. Have a nice day.
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I remember a similar story to this in a short story book called Space 5 that I read at school - it's a butterfly that gets squidged and mankind can't spell properly when he gets back.
I always thought - if mankind became less intelligent because of this, how could he have come back to his own time, since presumably humans weren't intelligent enough to have the equipment set up for him to return to.

*QS's brain explodes*
 
Quicksilver said:
I remember a similar story to this in a short story book called Space 5 that I read at school - it's a butterfly that gets squidged and mankind can't spell properly when he gets back.
I always thought - if mankind became less intelligent because of this, how could he have come back to his own time, since presumably humans weren't intelligent enough to have the equipment set up for him to return to.

*QS's brain explodes*
Click to expand...

I was going by the Treehouse of Horror episode from the Simpsons where Homer tries to repair the toaster and ends up turning it into a time machine. When he comes back Ned Flanders is ruling the Earth....hehehe
But I've often wondered if life evolved from a virus as it would explain quite a lot.....And yes I did think of it before Agent Smith.
 
re:synthwerk

How about the one (with Kirt Douglas) where the aircraft carrier-goes through the vortex=to ww2=that was great--and the "search for spock"-star trek
 
was that movie about the experiemental battle ship that could theoretically timeslip?

most time travel movies are hokey, save for one aspect. as dumb and vapid as Timecop was, the theory that by coming into physical contact with your past self and phasing yourself out was interesting.

i'm glad they did back to the future in 3 parts
 
re:synthwerk

the movie with kirt douglas was about (made in 1980) a nuke aircraft carrier "the enterprise",on routeen patrol and a storm came along and it sail into a vortex too ww2 with all the f-14 tom cats--it had dog fights with japenease zero's and they had to decide if they should try and stop the attack on Pearl Harbor.
 
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