time travellers in fiction

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The Best Fictional Characters Who Time Travel

From hopping through centuries to altering pivotal moments, time travelers have entertained us with their adventures. Here’s a list of time travelers who have warped our screens and changed film and TV with their time voyaging.

When Marty McFly from the film Back to the Future travels back and forth in time, he faces funny yet challenging situations. These include his mother developing a crush on him and trying to fit in with 1950s culture while avoiding the local bully. Marty’s quest to secure his existence and return to the 1980s makes him one of the famous time travelers.

Emmett "Doc" Brown, also from Back to the Future , is the eccentric inventor behind the time-traveling DeLorean. Known for his expression, "Great Scott!" Doc's determination to perfect time travel and his loyalty to Marty are central to their adventures.

The Doctor from Doctor Who is one of TV's most unique time-traveling characters. As a Time Lord, the Doctor explores time and space in the TARDIS, facing various interstellar adversaries. The Doctor's incarnations, both male and female, make them a versatile protagonist in science fiction.

Now it's your turn to decide which of these fictional explorers tops the list. Vote for your favorite and see who stands the test of time in the world of temporal travel!

Marty McFly

Marty is a teenager who accidentally travels back in time in a DeLorean car invented by his eccentric friend, Doc Brown. He finds himself in the 1950s and must navigate the challenges of altering history while trying to get back to his own time. Marty is courageous and quick-witted, but also struggles with the consequences of his actions.

Emmett Brown

Known as Doc Brown, he is a brilliant scientist who invents the time-traveling DeLorean. Doc is eccentric and often gets caught up in his own experiments, but he is also a loyal friend to Marty. He has a deep fascination with time travel and is constantly seeking new adventures through different eras.

A mysterious and enigmatic character from the long-running British TV show Doctor Who , the Doctor is an alien Time Lord who can regenerate into a new form when near death. With their trusty TARDIS (a time-traveling spaceship), the Doctor explores different times and places, always seeking to right wrongs and protect the universe from various threats.

Spock, the logical and stoic Vulcan from Star Trek , may not be primarily associated with time travel, but he has encountered various temporal anomalies throughout his journeys aboard the USS Enterprise. Known for his calm demeanor and superior intellect, Spock brings a sense of rationality to the chaos of time-traveling situations. His ability to analyze complex situations adds depth to his character as he grapples with the intricacies of altering timelines.

Terminator (T-101)

A cyborg assassin sent back in time from a post-apocalyptic future, the T-101 is programmed to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of humanity's future savior. However, it eventually develops a sense of morality and protects Sarah and her son John instead. The T-101 is relentless and unstoppable, making it a formidable force throughout its time-traveling journey.

A mischievous god from Norse mythology, Loki possesses the ability to manipulate time and space. He often uses this power for his own amusement or personal gain, causing chaos wherever he goes. Despite his villainous tendencies, Loki also displays moments of complexity and vulnerability that make him a compelling character.

Alan Parrish

Alan Parrish is the protagonist of the film Jumanji , where he becomes trapped in a magical board game that transports him through time and dangerous adventures. As a young boy who grows up in the jungle after being sucked into the game, Alan's resilience and resourcefulness make him a relatable character as he tries to find a way back home while facing various challenges across different time periods.

Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard is the distinguished captain of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation . While not primarily associated with time travel, Picard encounters temporal anomalies during his missions, showcasing his calm leadership and intellectual prowess in unraveling complex temporal puzzles. His diplomatic nature and moral compass make him an engaging character as he faces the challenges presented by time-traveling phenomena.

Bill S. Preston, Esq.

Bill is one half of the dynamic duo known as Bill & Ted, who embark on a series of time-traveling escapades in their iconic phone booth. With his laid-back attitude and infectious enthusiasm, Bill brings a sense of comedic relief to their journeys through history. Despite their initial bumbling nature, Bill's unwavering friendship and dedication to their mission make him an essential part of their time-traveling adventures.

Amy Pond is another beloved companion of the Doctor in the Doctor Who series. With her fiery personality and strong-willed nature, Amy brings a sense of adventure to their time-traveling escapades. Her emotional journey and deep connection with the Doctor create a captivating storyline as she explores different eras and confronts her own personal demons.

A pizza delivery boy who accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the year 3000, Fry becomes a time traveler by virtue of being displaced in time. He joins a delivery crew and embarks on various adventures throughout different eras, often struggling to adapt to the future while also longing for his past life.

Hermione Granger

A highly intelligent and resourceful witch from the Harry Potter series, Hermione uses a Time-Turner to attend multiple classes at once. She is diligent and determined, always seeking knowledge and using her abilities to help her friends. However, she also learns about the dangers of meddling with time and the importance of accepting its limitations.

Sam Beckett

Sam Beckett is the main character in the TV series Quantum Leap , where he finds himself leaping into different people's bodies throughout history. As a physicist who becomes trapped in his own time-travel experiment, Sam's mission is to right historical wrongs and find his way back home. His determination and empathy for others make him a relatable and engaging character as he leaps through time.

Ted "Theodore" Logan

One half of the iconic duo known as Bill & Ted, Ted is a laid-back and somewhat dim-witted teenager who, along with his best friend Bill, travels through time to complete a history project. Ted's journey through time helps him grow into a more responsible and thoughtful individual.

Jack Harkness

Jack Harkness is a charming and immortal time-traveler from the Doctor Who universe. With his dashing good looks and flirtatious nature, Jack adds a touch of excitement to any time-traveling adventure. His complex backstory and mysterious past make him an intriguing character as he navigates through different eras, often finding himself caught in the midst of dangerous situations.

Rose Tyler is a beloved companion of the Doctor in the Doctor Who series. With her down-to-earth personality and unwavering loyalty, Rose brings a sense of humanity to their time-traveling escapades. Her emotional journey and deep connection with the Doctor create a captivating storyline as she explores different eras and faces the consequences of altering history.

River Song is a captivating character from the Doctor Who series, known for her complex relationship with the Doctor and her own time-traveling abilities. With her sharp wit and enigmatic personality, River adds an air of mystery to any storyline she appears in. Her nonlinear timeline and deep connection to the Doctor create a compelling narrative as she navigates through time alongside him.

Ant-Man (Scott Lang)

Scott Lang gains the ability to shrink in size and increase in strength thanks to a special suit created by Dr. Hank Pym. With this newfound power, he becomes Ant-Man and embarks on various adventures, including traveling through time to prevent catastrophic events. Scott is witty and relatable, often finding himself in humorous situations due to his unique abilities.

Rory Williams

Rory is a loyal companion of the Doctor in the Doctor Who series. With his unwavering dedication and courage, Rory adds a sense of stability to their time-traveling adventures. Despite being initially portrayed as an ordinary human, Rory's character evolves throughout the series, showcasing resilience and bravery as he faces various challenges across different timelines.

Agent Phil Coulson

Agent Phil Coulson is a beloved character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, known for his role in the organization S.H.I.E.L.D. While not primarily associated with time travel, Coulson encounters temporal anomalies and alternate timelines throughout his missions. His dry wit and unwavering dedication to protecting humanity make him an engaging character as he navigates through the complexities of time-altering events.

Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane Smith is a resourceful journalist and companion of the Doctor in the Doctor Who series. With her tenacity and investigative skills, Sarah Jane adds a sense of determination to their time-traveling adventures. Her strong bond with the Doctor and her own personal growth make her a compelling character as she faces various challenges across different eras.

Kyle Reese is a soldier sent back in time from a post-apocalyptic future in the Terminator franchise. Tasked with protecting Sarah Connor, the mother of humanity's future savior, Kyle finds himself caught in a battle against powerful machines. His bravery and selflessness make him a compelling character as he confronts the challenges of altering history while trying to ensure humanity's survival.

Merlin, the legendary wizard from Arthurian mythology, possesses magical abilities that allow him to manipulate time and space. With his wisdom and foresight, Merlin often guides and advises the legendary King Arthur on his quests. His mysterious nature and deep connection to ancient magic create an aura of intrigue as he weaves through different timelines.

Arthur Dent

Arthur Dent is the hapless protagonist of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. After Earth is destroyed, Arthur finds himself traveling through space and time aboard a stolen spaceship. His bewildered reactions and dry humor add a relatable touch to his character as he navigates through absurd situations across different dimensions.

The mighty God of Thunder himself, Thor, is no stranger to epic adventures across time and space. Armed with his trusty hammer Mjolnir, he travels through different eras like a lightning bolt on steroids. But despite his godly powers, Thor often finds himself perplexed by the intricacies of time travel. As he battles ancient foes and encounters historical figures, he can't help but marvel at the wonders and complexities of the temporal realm.

Mister Peabody

Mister Peabody is a highly intelligent dog who possesses a time machine known as the WABAC. Alongside his adopted human son, Sherman, Mister Peabody embarks on educational and humorous adventures throughout history. His dry wit and vast knowledge make him an entertaining character as he navigates through different time periods, imparting wisdom and solving problems along the way.

Samurai Jack

Samurai Jack is a skilled warrior who is thrown into the future by an evil sorcerer named Aku. Armed with his sword and determination, Jack embarks on a quest to return to his own time and defeat Aku. His stoic nature and unwavering sense of justice make him an intriguing character as he battles through different eras, facing both physical and emotional trials.

Black Widow

Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow, is one tough spy who knows her way around time travel gadgets. She's got a mysterious past and a set of killer skills that make her an essential member of the Avengers team . But when it comes to time travel, even she can't help but get caught up in the mind-bending paradoxes and alternate timelines. With her quick thinking and deadly moves, Black Widow navigates the temporal landscape with grace and determination, always ready to save the day.

Ash Williams

Ash is a groovy guy who finds himself time-traveling through some seriously strange situations. He's got a chainsaw for a hand and a boomstick in his holster, which definitely comes in handy when battling evil deadites across different eras. But let me tell you, he's always scratching his head, wondering how he ended up in medieval times or the Wild West. Ash may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he's got enough guts and one-liners to make any time travel adventure a blast.

The T-1000 is a shape-shifting android assassin from the Terminator franchise, sent back in time to eliminate key targets. With its liquid metal form and advanced technology, this relentless machine seems unstoppable. However, as it pursues its targets across different time periods, the T-1000 encounters unexpected obstacles and paradoxes that leave it momentarily perplexed. But don't be fooled, this time-traveling killing machine always finds a way to adapt and continue its mission.

Okabe Rintarou

The main protagonist of the anime series Steins;Gate , Okabe is a self-proclaimed mad scientist who accidentally discovers a way to send text messages back in time. As he delves deeper into time travel experiments , Okabe faces numerous challenges and grapples with the consequences of altering events. He is eccentric yet compassionate, making him an intriguing character to follow.

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who loves pushing boundaries - including those of time itself. With his high-tech suit and brilliant mind, he tinkers with time travel technology like it's just another hobby. But even for someone as smart as Tony Stark, time travel can be a real head-scratcher. He's constantly trying to wrap his mind around the paradoxes and consequences of altering the past, all while saving the world from imminent threats.

Cable, also known as Nathan Summers, is a time-traveling mutant from the X-Men universe. With his cybernetic enhancements and ability to manipulate technology, Cable journeys through time to prevent a dystopian future. His gruff demeanor and complex backstory make him a compelling character as he battles against formidable enemies while trying to alter the course of history.

The Time Traveller

As the name suggests, the Time Traveller is a mysterious figure who journeys through time with his trusty time machine. Armed with his scientific knowledge and insatiable curiosity, he explores the past, present, and future, encountering strange civilizations and mind-bending phenomena along the way. Yet, despite his vast experience in time travel, the Time Traveller remains fascinated by the enigmatic nature of temporal mechanics, constantly seeking answers to the mysteries of the universe.

Bruce Banner

When it comes to time travel, Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, is a bit of a ticking time bomb. One moment he's a brilliant scientist, and the next he's a raging green monster smashing everything in sight. But despite his unpredictable nature, Bruce finds himself drawn into time-traveling escapades that leave him scratching his head in confusion. As he navigates through different eras, he struggles to control his emotions and prevent the Hulk from causing chaos.

Austin Powers

Groovy baby! Austin Powers is a swinging secret agent from the 1960s who gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the '90s. With his flamboyant style and cheeky charm, he finds himself thrust into time-traveling adventures that leave him both bewildered and excited. From battling Dr. Evil to wooing beautiful spies across different eras, Austin Powers embraces the wild ride of time travel with a mix of grooviness and bewilderment.

Reverse Flash

The Reverse Flash, also known as Eobard Thawne, is a villainous speedster from DC Comics who can manipulate time. With his intense obsession with the Flash and his ability to travel through different eras, Reverse Flash poses a constant threat to both past and present timelines. His cunning nature and desire for revenge create an engaging narrative as he clashes with heroes across various points in history.

Shrek may be an ogre, but that doesn't mean he's immune to the allure of time travel. With his loyal sidekick Donkey by his side, Shrek stumbles upon magical portals that transport him to different fairy tale lands and even alternate realities. But as he embarks on these unexpected journeys, Shrek can't help but wonder how he ended up in such bizarre situations. With his trademark humor and down-to-earth attitude, Shrek embraces the perplexities of time travel with a hearty "ogre" laugh.

Trunks is a character from the Dragon Ball series, known for his ability to travel through time using a time machine. As the son of Vegeta and Bulma, Trunks possesses incredible strength and determination. His stoic nature and commitment to protecting the future make him an intriguing character as he battles against powerful foes and alters events in order to prevent catastrophe.

John Spartan

John Spartan is a tough-as-nails cop from the movie Demolition Man  who gets cryogenically frozen in 1996 and wakes up in a seemingly utopian future. As he navigates this unfamiliar world filled with strange technology and bizarre social norms, John can't help but feel perplexed by the passage of time. With his no-nonsense attitude and relentless pursuit of justice, he adapts to this new era while questioning the complexities of progress and societal change.

The Borg Queen is a formidable antagonist from the Star Trek  universe who leads the Borg Collective, a hive mind of cybernetic beings seeking to assimilate all life forms. While not a traditional time traveler, the Borg Queen's vast knowledge and ability to manipulate technology allow her to transcend temporal boundaries. She constantly seeks to expand her influence across different eras, leaving perplexed heroes in her wake.

Link is the courageous hero from the beloved video game series The Legend of Zelda . Armed with his sword and shield, he embarks on epic quests that often involve traveling through time to rescue Princess Zelda and save the kingdom of Hyrule. As he explores different eras and solves intricate puzzles, Link embraces the challenges of time travel with a sense of wonder and determination, always ready to face whatever awaits him.

George Bailey

George Bailey is an ordinary man from the classic film It's a Wonderful Life  who gets a glimpse into what life would be like if he had never been born. Through this magical experience, George learns the value of his own existence and the impact he has on others. While not a traditional time traveler, George's journey through alternate realities leaves him pondering the mysteries of time and the profound effect one person can have on the world.

Taylor is an astronaut who crash-lands on a mysterious planet ruled by intelligent apes in the classic film Planet of the Apes . As he uncovers the truth about this upside-down world, Taylor finds himself caught in a web of time travel paradoxes that boggle his mind. With his survival instincts and relentless pursuit of answers, Taylor confronts the enigma of time travel head-on, leaving audiences captivated by the twists and turns of his journey.

Ebenezer Scrooge

Rip Hunter is a time-traveling adventurer from DC Comics who leads a team of misfit heroes known as the Time Masters. With his futuristic technology and vast knowledge of temporal mechanics, Rip navigates through the timestream with a mix of excitement and trepidation. As he battles against time-traveling villains and tries to maintain the delicate balance of history, Rip Hunter constantly finds himself caught in a web of paradoxes and unexpected twists.

Bishop is a mutant from the X-Men universe who possesses the ability to absorb energy and redirect it back at his enemies. But what sets him apart is his unique talent for time travel. Whether it's preventing apocalyptic futures or altering historical events, Bishop leaps through time like a kangaroo on caffeine. However, even with his temporal prowess, he often finds himself questioning the consequences of meddling with the fabric of time.

Quinn Mallory

Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

Claire Randall

Claire Randall is a World War II nurse who mysteriously travels back in time to 18th-century Scotland in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander  series. As she becomes entangled in the political turmoil and passionate romances of the past, Claire grapples with the challenges of adjusting to a different time period. With her resourcefulness and determination, she navigates through historical events while pondering the mysteries of fate and destiny.

James "Sawyer" Ford

Booster Gold

Booster Gold is a charismatic superhero from DC Comics who hails from the future and travels back in time to become a hero in our present day. Armed with advanced technology and a flair for showmanship, Booster Gold embraces his role as a time-traveling champion while navigating the complexities of altering history. Despite his occasional missteps, he remains determined to be a true hero and leave his mark on the timeline.

David Bowman

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a troubled teenager who becomes entangled in a mind-bending journey through time and parallel universes. As he encounters a mysterious rabbit named Frank and experiences strange visions, Donnie struggles to make sense of his reality. With his introspective nature and philosophical musings, he delves into the complexities of time travel while questioning the nature of existence itself.

Crono is a silent hero from the classic video game Chrono Trigger . With his spiky hair and trusty sword, he embarks on a quest that takes him through different time periods to save the world from impending doom. Despite his lack of words, Crono's actions speak volumes as he faces mind-boggling puzzles and encounters historical figures. Through it all, he remains steadfast in his mission while marveling at the wonders of time travel.

Ender Wiggin

Henry DeTamble

Richard Alpert

Colter Stevens

Hank Morgan

Artemis Fowl II

Billy Pilgrim

Ivar the Timewalker

Rip van Winkle

Curtis Donovan

Gary Hobson

Chris Hughes

Mazer rackham.

Dana Franklin

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As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

The 35 Best Books About Time Travel

Here's what to read after you finish Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

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Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is an incredible introduction to the time travel genre. In the books, Claire Randall's entire life shifts when she travels back in time through the stones at Craigh na Dun , arriving in Scotland in 1743. There, she meets her 18th-century husband, Highland warrior Jamie Fraser, and their epic love story spans centuries.

Gabaldon first published Outlander —the book that would eventually inspire the television series starring Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie —in 1991, and the ninth novel in the series, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone , came out in November 2021.

Ahead of the seventh season of Outlander , now's the perfect time (ha) to dive into time travel books. From time traveling romance to alternate realities to murder mysteries, there's something for everyone here.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Any list about time travel books must begin with The Time Traveler's Wife , right? This bestselling novel tells the love story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who inadvertently travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Plot sound familiar? The book was adapted into a 2009 film starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, and a 2022 TV show starring Theo James and Rose Leslie .

Read more: 20 of the best Time Travel Films Ever Made

A Murder in Time

Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI, until one disastrous raid when half her team is murdered and a mole in the FBI is uncovered. After she recovers from her wounds, she's determined to find the man responsible for the death of her team—yet upon her arrival in England, she stumbles back in time to 1815. Mistaken for a lady's maid, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the period as she figures out how to get back to her own timeline. There are five books in the Kendra Donovan series , so if you love a time travel mystery, don't miss these.

Author Octavia Butler is a queen of science fiction, and Kindred is her bestselling novel about time travel. In it, she tells the story of Dana, a Black woman, who is celebrating her 26th birthday in 1976. Abruptly, she's transported back to Maryland, circa 1815, where she's on a plantation and has to save Rufus, the white son of the plantation owner. It's not just a time travel book, but one that expertly weaves in narratives of enslaved people and explores the Antebellum South.

Faye, Faraway

Diana Gabaldon herself called Faye, Faraway "a lovely, deeply moving story of loss and love and memory made real , " so you know it's going to be good. The plot focuses on Faye, a mother of two, who lost her own mother, Jeanie, when she was just 8 years old. When Faye suddenly finds herself transported back in time, she befriends her mother—but doesn't let on who she really is. Eventually, she has to choose between her past and her future.

The Eyre Affair

In this version of Great Britain circa 1985, time travel is routine. Our protagonist is Thursday Next, a literary detective, who is placed on a case when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel.

Bonus: The Eyre Affair is the first in a seven book series following Thursday.

The River of No Return: A Novel

Lord Nicholas Davenant is about to die in the Napoleonic Wars in 1812, and wakes up 200 years later. But he longs to return back in time to his love, Julia. When he arrives in modern society, a mysterious organization called the Guild tells him "there is no return," until one day, they summon him to London and he learns it's possible to travel back through time. A spy thriller that's also historical romance that's also time travel... Say less.

One Last Stop

Casey McQuiston's second novel ( following Red, White, and Royal blue, which is going to be a major motion picture this summer ) is a queer time-loop romance set on the Q train in New York City, and it's riveting. August is 23, working at a 24-hour diner, and meets a gorgeous, charming girl on the train: Jane. But she can't seem to meet up with her off the Q train—until they figure out Jane is stuck in time from the 1970s. How did she travel through time? Can August get Jane unstuck? Will they live happily ever after!? The questions abound.

What the Wind Knows

Anne Gallagher grew up hearing her grandfather’s stories of Ireland. When she returns to the country to spread his ashes, she is transported back in time to 1921—and is drawn into the struggle for Irish independence. There, she meets Dr. Thomas Smith, and must decide whether or not she should return to her own timeline or stay in the past. As one reviewer wrote on Amazon, What the Wind Knows is a "spectacular time travel journey filled with love and loss."

The Midnight Library: A Novel

Imagine a library with an infinite number of books—each containing an alternate reality about your life. That's the plot of The Midnight Library , where our protagonist Nora Seed enters different versions of her life. She undoes old breakups, follows her dream of becoming a glaciologist, and so much more—but what happens to her original life?

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel

In this novel from Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, magic existed—until 1851. A secret government organization, the Department of Diachronic Operations (or D.O.D.O. for short), is dedicated to bringing magic back, and its members will travel through time to change history to do so. As Kirkus Reviews wrote , the novel "blend[s] time travel with Bourne-worthy skulduggery." It's a delight for any fans of science fiction, with a slow burn romance between military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons and linguist Melisande Stokes.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, this epistolary romantic novel tells the story of two time-traveling rivals who fall in love. Agents Red and Blue travel back and forth throughout time, trying to alter universes on behalf of their warring empires—and start to leave each other messages. The messages begin taunting but soon turn flirtatious—and when Red's commander discovers her affection for Blue, they soon embark down a timeline they can't change.

The House on the Strand

Set at an ancient Cornish house called Kilmarth, where Daphne du Maurier lived from 1967, The House on the Strand story follows Dick Young, who has been offered use of Kilmarth by an old college friend, Magnus Lane. Magnus, a biophysicist, is developing a drug that enables people to travel back to the 14th century, and Dick reluctantly agrees to be a test subject. The catch: If you touch anyone, you're transported back to the present. As the story goes on, Dick's visits back to the 1300s become more frequent, and his life back in the modern world becomes unstable.

The Kingdoms

It’s 1898 and there’s a man named Joe, who lives in London, which is, in this alternate historical, a part of the French Empire as in this version of the past, Britain lost the Napoleonic Wars. Joe has gotten off a train from Scotland and cannot remember anything about who he is or where he’s from. He soon returns to his work, and after a few years, he is sent to repair a lighthouse in Eilean Mor in the Outer Hebrides. Joe then finds himself a century earlier, on a British boat with a mysterious captain, fighting the French and hoping for a future that is different than the one he came from. If you're into time travel and queer romance and alternate history, this is for you.

The Future of Another Timeline

In 1992, 17-year-old Beth agrees to help hide the dead body of her friend's abusive boyfriend. The murder sets Beth and her friends on "a path of escalating violence and vengeance" to protect other young women. In 2022, Tess decides to use time travel to fight for change around key moments in history. When Tess believes she's found a way to make an edit to history that actually sticks, she encounters a group of time travelers bent on stopping her at any cost. Tess and Beth's lives intertwine, and war breaks out across the timeline.

Shadow of Night

The sequel to A Discovery of Witches , the plot of Shadow of Night picks up right where the story left off: With Matthew, a vampire, and Diana, a witch, traveling back in time to Elizabethan London to search for an enchanted manuscript. You really need to read the first book before reading Shadow of Night , but the series by Deborah Harkness is a swoony magical romance.

And: It's now a TV show! ( Season one is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .)

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

In The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, the same day happens again and again. Each day, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered at 11:00 p.m at Blackheath. And each day, our protagonist Aiden Bishop wakes up in the body of a different witness—and tries to solve her murder. He only has eight days, and it's a race against time to solve Evelyn's murder and to escape the time loop.

Recursion: A Novel

In 2018 New York City, detective Barry Sutton fails to talk Ann out of jumping off a building. But before Ann falls to her death, she tells him she is suffering from False Memory Syndrome—a new neurological disease where people are afflicted with memories of lives they never lived. The dissonance between their present and these memories drives them to death. This is best read unspoiled, but it's undoubtedly a time travel story you haven't read before.

On the eve of her wedding day, Shay Garrett looks into her grandmother's antique mirror and faints. When she wakes up, she's in the same house—but in the body of her grandmother, Brandy, as a young woman in 1900. And Brandy awakens in Shay's body in the present day in 1978. It's like Freaky Friday , but with time travel to the Victorian era.

Here and Now and Then

Kin Stewart is a time traveler from 2142, stuck in 1990s suburban San Francisco. A rescue team arrives to bring Kin back to his timeline—but 18 years too late. Does Kin stay with his "new" family, and the life he's built for himself in San Francisco, or does he return to his original timeline? He's stuck between two families—and ultimately, this is a time travel tale about fatherhood.

A Knight in Shining Armor

Originally published in 1989, this romance novel features a present-day heroine and a knight from the 16th century who fall in love. Per the book's description: "Abandoned by a cruel fate, lovely Dougless Montgomery lies weeping upon a cold tombstone in an English church. Suddenly, the most extraordinary man appears. It is Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck…and according to his tombstone he died in 1564. Drawn to his side by a bond so sudden and compelling it overshadows reason, Dougless knows that Nicholas is nothing less than a miracle: a man who does not seek to change her, who finds her perfect, fascinating, just as she is. What Dougless never imagined was how strong the chains are that tie them to the past…or the grand adventure that lay before them."

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma , a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram .

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Screen Rant

The 15 greatest time travellers in movies and television.

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The concept of time-travel pre-dates modern science fiction by centuries. Often in antiquity there were stories and fables of people who slept for decades, or even centuries and awoke in a strange new world which had changed around them.

The concept of time-travel as being achieved via science was popularised by H.G Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine. With the advent of the 21 st century, and the theory of relativity, science fiction stories often included an element of time travel as a narrative device. This “Distancing Effect” allows for the audience to address contemporary issues in a metaphorical way.

Here are the 15 Greatest Time Travellers in Movies and Television.

15. Max Walker (Timecop - 1994)

Timecop is largely forgettable fare, mainly only notable as being the highest-grossing movie of Jean-Claude Van-Damme’s career, taking over a hundred million dollars (which was a lot back then).

The concept is pretty smart, if simplistic. A corrupt senator assigned to watch over the time enforcement division (the timecops) uses time-travel technology to invest heavily in the past using knowledge of the future. Becoming vastly wealthy, he uses his money, power, and influence to run for president, presumably to abuse that position also - not that anyone would ever do that in the real world, of course. He’s defeated by Max Walker, a timecop who is tortured by the mystery of his wife’s unexplained murder ten years previously. Through time-travel trickery, Max’s wife survives her own murder. When he returns to his proper place in the time stream, the two are reunited.

Timecop is pretty clumsy and the use of paradoxes, and the over-played “Two Jean-Claudes” trick seen in several of his movies (one is more than enough), make it a fun, if forgettable ‘90s action flick. What makes it great is the concept. Cops chasing through time in order to maintain the time stream is pretty cool, even if it’s wildly underdeveloped here. If there’s one movie on this list crying out for a reboot, it’s Timecop .

14. Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - 1949)

Bing Crosby may be an unlikely time-traveller, but in this 1949 musical comedy he’s just that. Based on the 1889 novel of the same name, the movie is about a mechanic (Crosby) who bang his head and finds himself in Arthurian Britain in the year 528AD.

Befriending a knight, Hank uses his knowledge of futuristic technology to become a knight and prevents Merlin and Morgan LeFay from usurping Arthur’s throne. He returns to his own time, heartbroken that he had to leave behind the woman he had fallen in love with in the past, Alisandre La Carteloise.

The movie ends with Hank visiting Britain, and on a tour of an ancient castle, meets a young woman who looks exactly like his lost love.

13. Hiro Nakamura (Heroes - 2006)

“ Save the cheerleader, save the world. ”

While later series are generally considered to be of much poorer quality, there’s no denying the phenomenon that was the first season of Heroes . Central to the success of the series was the time-travelling antics of Hiro Nakamura, the office worker-turned master of time and space.

At the beginning of the first season Hiro believes he can manipulate spacetime, but is having trouble proving it. When he finds himself six months in the future, halfway around the world, he witnesses a nuclear blast destroying New York, teleporting back to his own time and place at the last instant.

With only a comic book from the future, depicting his own journey, to guide him. He seeks out clues to his destiny, eventually not only mastering his powers, but being instrumental in defeating the supervillain Sylar by impaling him with a Katana he comes into the possession of along the way.

While the show had an ensemble cast, Hiro was undoubtedly the heart and soul of the show. His optimism and child-like wonder provided a counterbalance for the often very dark atmosphere.

12. The Observers (Fringe 2008)

The observers were a race from the far future that had evolved from present-day humanity. In early seasons they seemed content to merely observe moments of historical importance and record their findings. As the show progressed, they seemed to have a vested interest in preserving the lives of people who ensured the timeline would play out in the manner they needed.

Eventually, it was discovered that the Observers were planning to invade the Earth, having destroyed the ecology of their native time. One of their number, known as September, opposed their plans, feeling that humanity deserved to live.

Convoluted, and sometimes confusing, Fringe had one of the richest mythologies in modern television. The observers were key to the early mystery of the show, and by the final season had become the primary antagonist.

11. The Enterprise Crew (Star Trek: The Voyage Home - 1987)

Easily the funniest of the original run of Star Trek movies, and one of the few that didn’t have a primary antagonist. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home sees the original crew of the Enterprise using a commandeered Klingon ship to travel back in time hundreds of years to 1987 San Francisco in order to bring two humpback whales to their time in order for he humpbacks to communicate with a probe which is inadvertently destroying the planet. Despite the urgency of the mission, the movie is very light-hearted and plays out almost like a comedy. The cast shot many scenes on location and ad-libbed with regular people who were unaware they were being filmed.

Most of the humour revolved around the customs of the era seeming to be more alien to the crew than the aliens they encountered in their usual adventures. Many of the jokes revolve around their misinterpretations of the era, contemporary peoples' reactions to the crew, and frequent misuse of slang.

The crew is successful in their endeavour: they repair their ship, return to their own time, and save the planet along with the whales which can repopulate the ocean.

10. Rip Hunter (DC Comics – since 1959 and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow - 2016)

In the original DC comics storylines, Rip Hunter is an ordinary man who uses his invention, the Time Sphere, to travel through time. Due to numerous revisions of the time stream, usually due to the various “Crisis” events, his history has changed many times. He is currently written as the son of fellow time traveller, and superhero, Booster Gold. After the Crisis on Infinite Earths event, Rip retains his memories from the previous timeline, unlike the rest of the universe. There also exists another version of Rip, native to this timeline, making him a literal man out of time.

In the TV series Legends of Tomorrow , Rip Hunter (played by Arthur Darvill) is portrayed as a Time Master, sworn to protect the time-line from alteration, who goes rogue in order to prevent the rise of the immortal villain Vandal Savage. As the show progresses, it becomes apparent that Savage has killed Rip’s son and their enmity is deeply personal.

Failing to kill Vandal Savage in the past, Rip assembles a team of super humans who are expendable to history and uses them to battle Savage in various times throughout history.

9. Doc Brown and Marty McFly (Back to the Future - 1985)

Probably the most famous franchise involving time-travel, the adventures of Doc Brown and Marty McFly take them from their original time in 1985 to 1955, 2015, and 1885. In each of these timelines they find numerous cases of history repeating itself, with the McFly family being central to the events in each era.

Initially Marty uses the DeLorean time machine to evade Libyan terrorists and accidentally jumps thirty years into the past. He inadvertently alters the circumstances of his parents falling in love and has to restore the time-line quickly before he erases himself from history and causes a paradox.

In the sequel, he travels to the future to prevent his childrens' lives going off the rails. In doing so, he allows his nemesis Biff Tannen to use the time machine to change the events of his life. Marty then chases through time to an alternate 1985, then 1955 to restore events to their natural state.

The third installment finds Marty in 1885, to recover Doc after they had been separated. Once again finding that the time machine cannot function properly, the two devise a plan involving a stolen steam locomotive to transport them back to the future once more.

8. The Time Traveller (The Time Machine - 1960)

Following the novel of the same name, the time traveller (given the name H. George Wells here after the author, unnamed in the novel) invites several friends to his home in January of 1900. He shows them his miniature time machine which disappears into the time stream. They remain unconvinced by this parlour trick, and leave. He bids them farewell, and heads to his basement where he enters his full-sized time-machine, which sends him 17 years into the future.

In 1917, he meets the son of his friend, Filby, and learns of the beginning of The Great War. He then travels to 1940 and discovers that the world is once again at war, this time World War 2. He then travels to 1966 (the future of the 1960 audience) to discover his neighbourhood is a futuristic metropolis but is under threat of nuclear war.

Escaping a nuclear blast, The Time Traveller finds himself in 802,701 AD when the nuclear winter is finally over and mankind has become two separate species, the docile Eloi, and the cannibalistic subterranean Morlocks. George explores this strange new world before it becomes too dangerous and returns to his home in 1900.

His friends, still dubious of his claims, examine a flower from the future which does not exist in their time. Filby believes him, and upon returning discovers both George and the machine missing, seemingly having gone back to the future timeline of the Eloi.

7. Kyle Reece (The Terminator- 1984)

While the Terminator franchise has seen many time-travellers attempt to change the course of history, none have been able to measure up to the originals. Kyle Reese is a young soldier who grew up after a nuclear bombardment who knows nothing but war with the machines, sent to protect the mother (Sarah Connor) of the future human resistance leader (John Connor). A terminator robot is sent to the past with orders to kill Connor, guaranteeing the machine victory in the future.

Kyle is traumatised by his life, he rarely sleeps and when he does his dreams are filled with nightmares of a never-ending war. Despite his doubts over whether the technology exists in the 1980s to destroy a Terminator, he travels naked and alone to protect a woman he has never met, prepared to give his life to save her. It is revealed that in the future the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, had given Kyle a photograph of Sarah many years before. Kyle had fallen in love with the woman in the photograph, and volunteered to save her.

Kyle dies trying to stop The Terminator, but it is Sarah who delivers the final blow to the machine. Kyle’s bravery, and warnings of the future, inspire Sarah to raise the son she has created with Kyle to be the leader he needs to be.

The Terminator is notable for being a paradox. The future war cannot take place without two key elements, the rise of the machines, and the birth of John Connor. Neither of these things can happen without the use of time travel as the machines cannot rise without Skynet being developed from tech harvested from the destroyed Terminator, and John cannot be sired unless Kyle travels in time. Future movies muddy the waters even further, but what remains is the story of Kyle Reese who is willing to cross time for the woman he loves.

6. Bill and Ted (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - 1989)

Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted “Theodore” Logan are two high school metalhead slackers with dreams of one day being rock stars (despite being terrible musicians). In the future of 2688, they have become legendary figures whose music has become the inspiration for a utopian society. The leaders of this utopian world send their agent, Rufus, to 1989 to ensure Bill and Ted pass high school so that they may take their place in history. Should they fail, Ted’s father plans to send Ted to a military academy ending their plans for their band and changing the future. Rufus arrives in a time machine (disguised as a phone booth) and sends them on a mission through time to learn about history, thereby passing their history final, and therefore high school.

Bill and Ted travel throughout the past, recruiting historical figures such as Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Ark among others. They also meet and fall in love with a pair of medieval princesses. Escaping from the princess’ angry father, the booth is damaged and the pair briefly end up in the utopian future they help to forge through their music.

Eventually the pair arrive back in their own time with their new friends in tow. They make an event out of their history final, and ensure the future comes to pass as it should.

5. Ash (Army of Darkness - 1992)

Army of Darkness picks up from where the previous movie ( Evil Dead II ) leaves off, with series protagonist and deadite-destroyer, Ash, being transported back in time through a mystical portal to 1300AD where he must battle an army of the dead before he can return home.  Ash also has to confront and destroy an evil version of himself “Bad Ash” that represents his dark side. Having lost his right hand in the previous movie, Ash replaced it with a chainsaw. In this movie, he builds a gauntlet to use in place of it when not in combat.

Unlike the previous two entries in the series, this one has an element of time-travel. It also has two very different endings. The first, and intended ending, has Ash defeat the Army of Darkness and drink a potion which will allow him to sleep until his own time. He drinks too much and awakens in a post-apocalyptic future instead. In the alternate ending, and the ending most familiar to US audiences, Ash simply rides off into the sunset before reappearing in the present. He is seen back at work, boasting about his success in defeating the Army of Darkness, but is suddenly interrupted when a co-worker also becomes corrupted by an evil spirit and becomes a deadite.

4. James Cole (12 Monkeys - 1995)

*This article refers to the 1995 film, not the ongoing television series of the same name*

In an alternate 1996, a mysterious virus has wiped out most of humanity, leaving the few survivors to flee into underground tunnels for survival. In 2035, James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner selected to go back in time to 1996 to search for clues as to the virus’ origins and the mysterious organization known as the 12 Monkeys, who are believed to have been the cause of the outbreak.

Due to time travel being an inexact science, Cole arrives in 1990 instead of 1996. He is sent to a mental institute as his prophesies about the impending apocalypse are seen as delusions. While he is there, he encounters Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) a fellow inmate with fanatical views, but a possible insight to the impending outbreak. Due to Cole shifting back and forth across time, he not only witnesses the true source of the outbreak and is unable to stop it, but his child self witnesses his death as an adult, a moment that haunts Cole his entire life and shows that despite trying to change destiny, events play out exactly as they were always going to.

3. Tim Lake (About Time - 2013)

What would you do if you discovered that you could effortlessly travel backwards and forwards in time? When Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) is told by his father that all male members of his family have this power, he is sceptical. Upon discovering his father is telling the truth, his initial thoughts are that he could use the gift to become wealthy, but his father discourages this saying that his uncle is vastly wealthy but it never made him happy. Tim decides that he will dedicate his life to the highest ideal: love.

After an aborted attempt to woo his sister’s friend, Charlotte (Margot Robbie) he meets and immediately falls for Mary (Rachel McAdams). Due to altering the time-line to help an acquaintance, he realizes that he has never met Mary in this new timeline. He seeks her out once more, and using his knowledge of their previous encounter, woos her once again.

Tim travels back and forth numerous times and has an idyllic life with Mary; they marry and have a daughter. Tim’s sister hasn’t been so lucky in her life. She struggles to build any sort of career, and her drinking causes her to have a car crash. Tim tries to alter the events of her life, but realizes that should he go back to before his children are born, he risks wiping them out of existence entirely. He must simply let his sister make her own choices and accept the consequences, like everyone else.

When he discovers his father has terminal cancer, he is heartbroken. He also realizes that time-travel cannot change it. His father tells him that he has travelled back and forth numerous times himself, making the most of his life, and is content to let his life run its course. He imparts some wisdom to Tim, he tells him to live each day twice. Once with all the tensions and worries that make our lives as they are, and again, making no changes, but noticing the world for how wonderful it truly is.

After Tim’s father dies, he comes to realize that he needs to only live each day once, appreciating the beauty of the world as if he were living it for the second time. The film ends with him having given up time-travelling and living each day to the fullest.

2. Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap - 1989)

“ Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home… ”

The opening to each episode nicely sums up the show. Doctor Sam Beckett travels to numerous places and times to correct historical mistakes, sometimes involving key moments in history, but generally just helping to put regular people on the right path.

Eventually, after years of leaping, he arrives in a strange place, at the very moment of his birth, not in the form of another person, but as himself. He meets a mysterious barkeeper who seems to be aware of Sam’s predicament. He assures Sam that Sam is in control of his leaping, and that Sam can leap home any time he wants to. Sam chooses to leap to a point when his best friend Al is missing in action, and tells Al’s wife to wait for him, thus ensuring Al’s life is much happier than it had been. Sam then leaps away once more and the closing narrative explains that Sam continues to leap, but never returns home.

1. The Doctor (Doctor Who - 1963)

The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels through both time and space in his TARDIS, a time machine that resembles a 1950s Police Box from Britain that is bigger on the inside. The Time Lords, one of the oldest species in the universe, dedicated themselves to overseeing all of time and space. The Doctor, a rebel amongst his people, chose to leave his home and stole an obsolete TARDIS to explore the universe, usually along with human companions. His name is unknown to most, and he is only ever referred to as either “The Doctor” or simply “Doctor”. He chose this name for himself, essentially as a promise - " Never cruel nor cowardly. Never give up. Never give in. "

Very little information on The Doctor’s childhood has ever been given. The original series made some references to his time training at the academy on Gallifrey. The more recent series has given occasional insights such as in the episode “The Sound of Drums” where it is shown that at age 8 Time Lords are shown the time vortex, a gap in space and time which shows them infinity. He says that some are inspired, some go mad (such as his nemesis, The Master) and others run away. When asked, he says that he ran away and has never stopped running.

Due to The Doctor’s alien heritage, when his body dies, it regenerates into a new form (allowing the actor playing him to be replaced numerous times). The Time Lords have a limited number of lives, but The Doctor was given a new set of lives when his expired, allowing for yet more regenerations and continued adventures throughout time and space.

More of an explorer than a warrior, The Doctor has been forced to take up arms against his foes more often than he'd like. None of his adversaries have matched the horrors inflicted by the Dalek race, who have threatened all existence numerous times. These Daleks have hounded The Doctor, and the other Time Lords across time and space and remain his most persistent enemies.

Got any great time-travellers we haven’t mentioned here? Let us know about them in the comments and we may feature them in future… or even in the past!

20 Must-Read Time Travel Books

Time travel books have it all: adventure, historical fiction, romance, social commentary, mystery, humor, poetry. Enjoy these must-read time travel books.

Dana lives in East Haven, CT. She works for that Ivy League institution down the street and tries to read as many books as possible in her free time. Audiobooks and print books get equal love. Also, she unapologetically judges books by their covers and makes way too many playlists (c'mon, books need a soundtrack too!). Follow her on Twitter @lucyhenley115 .

View All posts by Dana Lee

Hear me out, there’s a sub-genre of sci-fi that that has a touch of anything you could ever want: time travel books. The best time travel books come in all packages: adventure, historical fiction, romance, social commentary, mystery, humor, poetry. It really has it all. So, if you can still recite the opening credits of Quantum Leap from memory, this list is for you. Enjoy these must-read time travel books.

Here and Now and Then  by Mike Chen

Kin is a time-traveling agent from the year 2142 who gets stuck in 1990s San Francisco after a botched mission, and his rescue team shows up 18 years too late after he’s already built a life for himself. Here and Now and Then has all those warm and fuzzy sci-fi feels with just the right amount of Doctor Who level angst . Kin dealing with the circumstances of time travel and the consequences it brings about is super compelling and emotional and so, so worthy of a Murray Gold score.

The Future of Another Timeline  by Annalee Newitz

In the world of Another Timeline , time travel has been around since forever in the form of a geologic phenomena known as the “Machines.” Tess belongs to a group called the Daughters of Harriett, determined to make the future better for women by editing the timeline at key moments in history. They run up against the misogynistic group called the Comstockers working towards the opposite goal. There’s time travel, murder, punk rock concerts, nerd references, and an edit war. As Newitz recently said in an extra of their podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct , history is a  “synthesis of good fuckery” and I can’t think of a better phrase to describe this book than that.

An Ocean of Minutes  by Thea Lim

There is a deadly flu pandemic in America. Polly’s boyfriend Frank gets sick and she signs up for a one-way ticket to the future to work off the cost of Frank’s cure. They agree to meet up in the future, but Polly is rerouted to a later time where America is divided and she has no connections and no money. This is a really gorgeously written and heart-wrenching story about time travel, dystopian society, the brutality of survival in an unfamiliar world, and a character study of a normal person dealing with it all.

Kindred  by Octavia Butler

Dana is an African American woman celebrating her birthday in 1976 California when she is pulled through time to Antebellum Maryland. She saves a young white boy named Rufus from drowning and finds herself staring down the barrel of his father’s rifle. She is pulled back to her present just in time to save her life, appearing back in her living room soaked and muddy. She is repeatedly pulled back to the past encountering the same young man.  Over the course of these harrowing episodes, Dana realizes her connection to Rufus and the challenge she is faced with. This is a brilliant, thought-provoking, and intense book that is required reading for so many reasons least of which is time travel.

Alice Payne Arrives  by Kate Heartfield

Alice Payne Arrives is a quick romp through time with some truly amazing female characters. Alice Payne is a half-black queer woman in 1788 England living in her father’s deteriorating mansion. She’s also a notorious masked highway robber and her partner is an inventor. Prudence is a professional time traveler from the 22nd century working fruitlessly to try and change one small event in 1884. The two women cross paths and work together to put Prudence’s plan to end time travel in motion. This novella packs a lot of action and time travel goodness and there’s a sequel called Alice Payne Rides . It also contains one of the realest lines of any of the time travel books I’ve read: “2016’s completely fucked.”

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe  by Charles Yu

Charles Yu is a time machine repairman searching for his missing father, “accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog.” He receives a book from his future self that could help him locate his father. The book is called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and he wrote it. Hi, this book is super cool, fun, clever, and weird in the best ways. It has the highest distinction I can give a sci-fi book and that is warm and fuzzy.

The Psychology of Time Travel  by Kate Mascarenhas

Four female scientists invent time travel in 1967. One of the scientists, Bee,  suffers a mental breakdown just before they’re about to go public with their findings. The other three exile Bee from the project to save face. Fifty years later time travel is a normal part of life and a huge business. It’s regulated by the Conclave, founded by three of the original scientists, which seeks to self govern all aspects of time travel. The Psychology of Time Travel  serves up time travel with a locked-door mystery and the payoff of alternating perspectives and timelines slowly coming together.

The River of No Return  by Bee Ridgeway

At the moment of his death on a Napoleonic battlefield, Lord Nicholas Falcott wakes up in the 21st century. He’s recruited by a time travel agency known as The Guild for training. Julia Percy lives in 1815 England and after the death of her grandfather seeks to find her place in a world where meddling with time is commonplace. There’s a whole lot going on here: romance, betrayal, double-agents, and drawing on emotion to facilitate time jumps, leading to my favorite line: “Though really they were probably both insane. Two grown men dressed up like Mr. Darcy, holding hands behind a tree, trying to pull themselves by the heart strings back to the long ago.”

This is How You Lose the Time War  by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Blue and Red are fighting on opposite sides of an endless time war. They begin to exchange letters on the battlefield, first as a boast, then as an exploration of friendship across enemy lines, and finally as a romance. I have previously described this as “poetic sci-fi realness.” I could be more professional and say that this is an epistolary work of rival agents forming a bond despite their opposition, but like I can’t okay. This book is so intricate and beautiful and the letters are not on paper, they could be in the dregs of a teacup or the rings of a tree, and I’m not crying you’re crying.

All Our Wrong Todays  by Elan Mastai

Tom is a misfit in a utopian world, and he goes back in time and accidentally screws up the future. This mishap leaves him stranded in our 2016, but what we think of as the real world is a dystopian wasteland to Tom. He eventually finds different versions of everything he knows and maybe even his soulmate. Tom has to decide whether to fix the timeline and bring back utopia or live in this new version of the world he’s created. Probably me as a time traveler, tbh.

The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde

The Fire Opal Mechanism  is technically a sequel to The Jewel and Her Lapidary , but it can definitely be read as a stand-alone. Ania is a librarian at the last university desperately trying to save as many books as she can. All the other universities have fallen to the Pressman, an extremist group bent on destroying all the world’s books and replacing them with a generic, self-updating compendium available to everyone regardless of economic class. Jorit, branded a thief, is on the run just trying to survive long enough to afford passage on a ship away from all these problems. They team up and inadvertently discover time travel, but will it help them fix the present? This is really beautifully written, especially the passages about books: “Touching a book, for Ania, was like touching a person’s fingertips across the years. She could feel a pulse, a passion for the knowledge the book contained.”

The Silver Wind  by Nina Allan

The Silver Wind  is a series of stories linked by the character Martin Newland. Each story is like an alternate universe brought about by time machines and time travel. As Allan describes on her website : “While the overarching theme of this book might properly be found in Martin’s struggle with infinity, its individual chapters deal with those small acts of creative defiance that determine our transcendence of ordinary mortality.” A thoroughly thought-provoking déjà vu experience.

What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon

Anne Gallagher travels to Ireland to scatter the ashes of her beloved grandfather. She is pulled back in time to the Ireland of 1921 and is mistaken as the long-lost mother of a young boy. She assumes this identity and is drawn into the lives of those around her and the political unrest of the time. It’s a historical romance perfect for fans of Outlander.

The Shining Girls  by Lauren Beukes

What if time travel fell into the hands of a criminal?  The Shining Girls  is the story of serial killer named Harper Curtis who stumbles upon an abandoned house in Depression-era Chicago that allows him to travel in time. He chooses his victims and visits them at different times of their lives before returning for the kill. Kirby survives Harper’s attack and, along with a former homicide reporter, tries to unravel the mystery before anyone else dies. This book is wild, W-I-L-D. There’s a lot of violence, so it might not be for everyone, but it’s such an interesting take on the time travel story.

Version Control  by Dexter Palmer

Set in the near-future, Rebecca works in the customer support department of the dating site where she met her husband Phillip. He is a scientist building a causality violation device (definitely not a time machine!). But Rebecca can’t help but feel that there’s something wrong with the present. So, this is kind of about living with technology and kind of about relationships and overcoming tragedy and also time travel. Intelligent and poignant but make it sci-fi.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler  by Ryan North

Starting out with an FAQ guide to your rented time machine, How to Invent Everything humorously goes through the history of well, everything. From how to determine what time period you have landed and are now stuck in to inventing language and electricity it’s a very Hitchhiker’s Guide -ish look at history presented as a guide for creating the things you’ll miss when you’re stranded in an earlier timeline than your own.

Time After Time  by Lisa Grunwald

It’s 1937 and Joe Reynolds is a hard-working railroad man at Grand Central Station. Nora Lansing is an aspiring artist and the last thing she remembers is her train crashing in 1925. They meet at the big clock and Joe walks Nora home, but she disappears in the street. She reappears one year later and meets Joe again. Realizing she’s jumping in time and trapped in Grand Central for mysterious reasons that might have something to do with Manhattanhenge, Nora and Joe try to unravel the mystery before she disappears again. For me this was a time travel books mashup of The Clock meets Kate & Leopold meets Gentleman in Moscow and I was very about it.

TimeKeeper  by Tara Sim

TimeKeeper takes place in an alternate Victorian world where time is controlled by clock towers. Danny is a young clock mechanic enamored with his new apprentice, who turns out to be the Enfield clock spirit, Colton. Bombings at other towers start to occur and broken clocks mean the towns they oversee will be frozen in time. The romance between Danny and Colton is very adorable and the race against literal time is an exciting backdrop. It’s the first in a trilogy.

Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick

If you’re a time travel fan then this sentence from the publisher’s summary is sure to get you excited, “World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster’s universe changed forever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer…and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus.” Time travel allows a group of scientists to go back and study dinosaurs up close in their natural environment. If you are now humming the Jurassic Park theme, please know, So. Am. I.

Just One Damned Thing After Another (Chronicles of St. Mary’s) by Jodi Taylor

There is so much going on in this whirlwind adventure that if you blink you’ll miss a major plot point.  Just One Damned Thing After Another  is just the first book in a series of the adventures of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research as they rattle around through time trying to answer history’s unanswered questions. There are currently 11 books published and forthcoming and a ton of short stories that fill in the blanks between adventures. Taylor also has a spinoff time travel series, The Time Police, with the first book just out called Doing Time .  It follows three hapless new time police recruits as they try to keep the timeline straight.

Looking for more of the best time travel books? Check out these timey-wimey posts:

Time Travel Romances

7 of the Best Alternate Timeline Books

The Lack of Black Characters in Time Travel Romance

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The Time Machine

By HG Wells

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HG Wells is one of the true titans of the scifi genre and The Time Machine is one of his finest stories. This time travel tale focuses on the story of a Time Traveller who has ventured hundreds of thousands of years beyond his own time. The level of imagination shown in the story is especially impressive when the reader considers Wells published The Time Machine in 1895. The story was the first to help Wells breakthrough as an author and remains essential reading for time travel fans.

By Stephen King

Stephen King is well known as a horror author, but in 11/22/63 he shows is a more than capable master of time travel fiction. This is a story which explores one of the most interesting chapters in American history and showcases the humanity behind the history books. As always, King presents a gripping, character-focused story full of twists and turns guaranteed to keep you guessing until the very last page.

Slaughterhouse 5

By Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is proof that time travel fiction can be critically acclaimed and have literary merit at the same time. Slaughterhouse 5 is a time travel book with a powerful antiwar message. Vonnegut entertains while making his point through the use of masterfully crafted characters including memorable members of the British military. Slaughterhouse 5 is the ideal time travel novel for a reader with discerning literary taste.

A Wrinkle in Time

By Madeleine L'Engle

The Time Quintet series begins with A Wrinkle in Time. This time travel novel tells the story of a family who are interrupted by a mysterious visitor. The fact that the father of the family has been carrying out mysterious scientific work is no coincidence. A Wrinkle in Time is a captivating story of rescue and time travel which is the perfect introduction to L’Engle’s series.

By Michael Crichton

Timeline is a combination of classic time travel fiction with pure page turner thriller elements. A group of brave men and women are sent back six centuries into the fast with a vital mission. They are fighting for far more than their own survival. Timeline has been praised for making some of the complex scientific theories which would make time travel possible understandable for a layman reader.

The End of Eternity

By Isaac Asimov

The End of Eternity is a classic take on the time travel genre by science fiction mastermind Isaac Asimov. The book’s main character is Andrew Harlan, a man tasked with the cosmic role of Eternal. This job requires Andrew to travel back and forth through time, making adjustments to its course where needed. However, Andrew soon makes the decision to begin twisting the direction of time for his own purposes.

The Accidental Time Machine

By Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman is one of the most talented modern science fiction writers, and The Accidental Time Machine is perfect for those new to his work, as well as existing fans. The story tells the tale of a scientific researcher who accidentally creates a time machine. Deciding that time travel is more alluring than his present life, the scientist sets off on a time traveling adventure that scifi fans are sure to love.

Somewhere in Time

By Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson tells the story of a man seeking his soulmate by traveling back in time to iconic past eras. Somewhere in Time is a story of mortality, love, and the concept of a soulmate. The story is an interesting take on the time travel genre, and was popular enough at the time of publication to be adapted into a major movie.

Flashforward

By Robert J Sawyer

Robert J Sawyer makes use of a fascinating premise to tell the story of Flashforward. This time travel novel is based in a world where everyone has blacked out for a couple of minutes. This naturally causes widespread death and destruction and significantly disrupts life on Earth. However, the people who survive the blackout have been given glimpses of their own future, drastically altering their behavior as a result.

The Time Ships

By Stephen Baxter

The Time Ships is Stephen Baxter’s homage to classic time travel science fiction. This time travel novel makes use of classic ideas, characters, and concepts from the world of science fiction. The Time Ships is an authorised and direct sequel to HG Wells’ classic The Time Machine. Updating such a classic text is a mammoth task, but Baxter has managed it, much to the delight of time travel fans.

The Anubis Gates

By Tim Powers

Tim Powers imagines a world where time traveling is such a commonplace activity that it requires guides to accompany those who make the journey. Brendan Doyle is one such guide who manages to get stranded in the past during the course of a routine journey. Stuck in an ancient time which is far from his own, Doyle becomes mixed up in a complex plot where his actions will have a crucial role to play in the final outcome.

By Rysa Walker

Rysa Walker begins The Chronos Files with Timebound, a story of genetic time travelers who must use their ability to positively impact events in the present. Timebound explores the complexities that come with altering the past, and the way that doing so can have unintended consequences for the present day. Timebound is a superb time travel novel as it makes the personal implications of changing time relatable and moving.

The Devil's Arithmetic

By Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen offers a time travel novel with genuine depth in The Devil’s Arithmetic. The story is about the Holocaust and presents an unflinching look at the atrocities which took place. Although the story is often presented to young adults, readers of any age are sure to find meaning and interest in its pages. Although the subject matter is upsetting, this story of a young American Jewish girl traveling back in time is an important read.

The Chronoliths

By William Gibson

Robert Charles Wilson’s The Chronoliths is a time travel novel telling the story of a slacker called Scott Warden. Scott is drifting through life when a major event happens which disrupts humanity and its collective understanding of the nature of reality. Although Scott Warden is only interested in looking out for himself, he keeps getting drawn into the story’s events, and it soon becomes clear why.

By Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter

The first installment in A Time Odyssey is Time’s Eye, a collaborative work from two masterful time travel writers, Stephen Baxter and Arthur C Clarke. Time’s Eye looks at what happens when a mysterious group of beings known as The Firstborn plunge the Earth into chaos, mixing up many different timelines into a single ‘present’. Historical figures and relatable everyday characters all have a role to play in getting to the bottom of these strange events.

Up The Line

By Robert Silverberg

Up The Line is a time travel novel considering the practicalities and temptations faced by a Time Courier, someone whose job it is to accompany time tourists back to a significant historical event, again and again. The book’s main character, Judson, eventually learns that it is possible to break the rules, and Up The Line explores the consequences when this occurs.

Time Travelers Never Die

By Jack McDevitt

Time Travelers Never Die sees a linguist and the son of a scientist embarking on an unexpected adventure through time. The two are in search of a missing scientist who is feared to be lost somewhere in time. Many significant periods from Earth’s history feature in their quest. The two have a rule to never visit the future - a rule which is eventually violated with significant ramifications.

Now Wait for Last Year

By Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick is one of the most significant authors in the science fiction genre, and Now Wait for Last Year is a time travel tale which causes you to question the very nature of time itself. The story is exciting and features an intergalactic war as well as engaging and relatable human characters. This is one of the more obscure Philip K Dick novels and is one of his most imaginative and creative.

Faces in Time

By Lewis Aleman

Lewis Aleman makes his mark on the time travel genre with Faces in Time, the story of a man racing back through history to prevent the woman he loves making a massive mistake. He ends up making plenty of enemies along the way, and finds himself chased by an ever growing cast of adversaries. Faces in Time explores the vast personal cost which can be associated with time travel, and explores what would motivate us to take such a drastic journey.

Time on My Hands

By Peter Delacorte

Time on My Hands is a time travel novel exploring what happens when a travel writer is offered a trip like no other - a trip through time. In order to receive this journey, the writer is given a task to carry out. Time on my Hands looks at both the big picture implications of traveling back in time with knowledge of the future, and also considers the personal questions we would have to answer.

Towards Yesterday

By Paul Antony Jones

Towards Yesterday is a fascinating spin on the time travel genre, as it deals with an entire human population being sent back in time, rather than the usual situation of one or two individuals. The entire population of 2042 are sent a quarter of a century back into the past. Towards Yesterday has an incredible set of unconventional characters, coupled with a unique premise, and is guaranteed to be hard to put down for all fans of time travel science fiction.

All Our Yesterdays

By Christin Terrill

Cristin Terrill uses All Our Yesterdays to tell the story of Em. Em is trapped in her present reality, at least until she finds a very unusual note. The note is from none other than her future self and orders her back in time to prevent an event from taking place. All Our Yesterdays is a Young Adult time travel tale which is likely to appeal to fans of the genre of any age. Christin Terrill offers a gripping look at the personal implications of a mission spanning the eras of time.

If I Never Get Back

By Darryl Brock

If I Never Get Back is a true treat for fans of baseball and fans of time travel science fiction. The story is based around a dissatisfied reporter who is sent back through time, and soon finds the past to be very much to his taste. Darryl Brock’s vivid descriptions of some of the most classic times in baseball history make the reader feel as if they have actually been on the journey!

Shadow of Ashland

By Terence M Green

The first book in the Ashland series, Shadow of Ashland, explores the implications of the Great Depression and how it resonates on through the ages. The book’s main character is Leo Nolan, who must keep his promise to his dying mother. His discovery is fascinating and leads him down the path of complex family discovery which will keep readers hanging on for the next book in the series.

The Shadow Hunter

By Pat Murphy

The Shadow Hunter is an incredibly imaginative time travel tale which mixes futuristic technology with the very earliest ancestors on Earth. Pat Murphy has updated the story since its original publication to more faithfully represent the story of The Shadow Hunter. This time travel novel is a fascinating mix of spirituality and science fiction which is sure to leave an impression on the reader long after the story ends.

Time Travel: Science Fiction or Fantasy

If you had to categorize time travel into a specific genre, what would it be? Many hardcore genre enthusiasts would be hard pressed to give you an answer. The casual passing fan will more than likely call science fiction. This may be due largely in part to the H.G. Wells Classic, The Time Machine . 

But does that mean all time travel books are SciFi?

Depends on how you look at it. There's a particular school of thought I like to follow. The question is not "What is it?" but "What's the methodology?". If we're hopping the timeline via Tardis, genetic ability, or a souped up DeLorean... then we're talking SciFi. 

But if spells, ancient beings, artifacts, or other forms of wizardry are employed... Fantasy. However, the lines tend to get blurred more often than not with both Fantasy geeks and SciFi nerds clamoring for control of the genre . 

Either way that does not change the fact that Time Travel books are freaking awesome and should be part of any bookavore's diet.

A Brief History of Time Travel in Science Fiction

Time loops, slips, and paradoxes: what's what.

When approaching a time travel theme, authors have so many to choose from. But what are the different angles they can take? What's the difference?

First, time loops. Books with time loops are rather interesting. This is where the character's repeatedly experience the same time period. Many times with the hopes of escaping via some redeemable action or changing the way events are to unfold. Remember that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day ? Time loop.

Next up: Time slips. What are time slips? This is where the character travels through time often unexpectedly for an indeterminate amount of time. Books about time machines often times are NOT time slips. Time machines normally allow for a controlled venture throughout the timeline with a destination both in space and time predetermined. However, time slips occur due to seemingly random events and are either corrected by another seemingly random event. Or the character is just stuck and must learn to get by. Oh well.

Lastly, everybody loves a good time paradox. Time paradoxes are really neat stuff. This is when a character travels through time (normally to the past) to change an event and alter the future. These are primarily disruptive events and even have their own classification of paradox known as The Grandfather Paradox . Pretty much... What would happen if you went back in time and killed your own grandparents? Sorry Grandma. 

The Butterfly Effect

Not all time travel is just based purely on science fiction (or fantasy), but on some real world magic.

Mathematics.

The Butterfly Effect is one often used in time travel stories. Based off of real-life Chaos Theory , the butterfly effect states that even the simplest of actions causes a ripple in time. These ripples then eventually grow into waves which mature into tsunamis. 

For instance, if you were to go back in time and kill one locust during the dinosaur days... that may lead to the a mass hunger among certain flying lizards. This could cause those lizards to migrate towards the ocean for food. Which then causes them to evolve to be ocean creatures. That leading to survival after the extinction event. Leading to reptilian creatures to swarm the gene pool. Yadda yadda yadda... Lizard people. 

There's actually a movie dedicated to this called (That's right. You guessed it.) The Butterfly Effect starring Ashton Kutcher. But the most notable example of the butterfly effect in science fiction literature is A Sound of Thunder written by SciFi legend Ray Bradbury .    

Get These Best SciFi Time Travel Books for Free!

If you are interested in getting some of these science fiction cyberpunk books for free here are two ways in which you can do that: 

1. Audible's One Month Free Trial : You can download any two of the time travel books found on this list by signing up for Audible’s free trial. Audible is arguably the best audiobook service on the market. Even if you cancel your trial and decide not to continue with a membership, you can still keep the two books you chose.

1 thought on “25 of the Best Time Travel Books”

How the book “Time and Again” by Jack Finney is not on this list is beyond me. It’s like leaving babe Ruth off the list as one of the 25 greatest baseball players of all time

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the eight types of time travel

Time travel is a stable in science fiction. Countless books, comics, movies, and TV shows have used it as their main plot device. Even more have incorporated it into a key moment of the story. Over the years, eight major types of time travel logic emerged. Recently, YouTubers Eric Voss and Héctor Navarro examined all eight types, and looked at which one gets it most correct in term of the real world science behind science fiction.

Type 1 Anything goes

Definition: Characters travel back and forth within their historical timeline.

This approach frees you to have fun and not get lost in the minutiae of how time travel works. Usually, there’s a magical Maguffin that to quote the great Dr. Ememett Brown, “makes time travel possible”. Writers have used a car, a phone booth, and a hot tub, among other options. This approach leads to inconsistent limits on the logic of the time travel, but this doesn’t mean the story is poorly plotted, won’t be enjoyable or won’t be an enormous hit. This approach is more science fantasy than science fiction with no basis in real-world science.

Examples: Back to the Future , Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , Hot Tube Time Machine , Frequency , Austin Powers , Men In Black 3 , Deadpool 2 , The Simpsons , Galaxy Quest , Star Trek TOS , Doctor Who , 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

Type 2 Branch Reality

Definition: Changes to the past don’t rewrite history. They split the timeline into an alternate branch timeline. This action does not change or erase the original timeline.

As authors got more familiar with the science behind time travel in theoretical physics, this type, based upon the many worlds theory in quantum mechanics, emerged. When the character travels back into the past and changes events, they create a new reality. Their original reality is unchanged. Branches themselves can branch leading to a multiverse of possibilities.

Examples: The Disney Plus series, Loki , used this extensively. See also: Back to the Future Part II , Avenger’s Endgame , the DC Comics multiverse, the Marvel Comics multiverse, Rick and Morty , Star Trek (2009), A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

Type 3 Time Dilation

Definition: Characters traveling off-world experience time moving more slowly than elsewhere in the universe, allowing them to move forward in time (but not backward).

This type is the based upon our scientific understanding of how time slows down as you approach the speed of the light. This is a forward-only type of time travel. There’s no going backwards.

Examples: Planet of the Apes , Ender’s Game , Flight of the Navigator , Interstellar , Buck Rodgers .

Type 4 This Always Happened

Definition: All of time is fixed on a predestined loop in which the very act of time travel itself sets the events of the story into motion.

This one can confuse and delves closer to the realm of theology than science. It feels gimmicky, and has become something of a trope making it hard to pull this off in a satisfying way for your audience. This type also invites the audience to question if your protagonist ever had free will or agency in the story.

Examples: Terminator , Terminator 2 , Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Game of Thrones -Season 6, Twelve Monkeys , Interstellar , Kate and Leopold , The Butterfly Effect , Predestination , Ricky and Morty -Season 5, Looper .

Type 5 Seeing the Future

Definition: After seeing a vision of their fate, characters choose to change their destiny or embrace their lot.

We’re stretching to call this time travel, but it provides your story with built-in conflict and stakes. Will the hero choose to walk the path knowing how it will end, or will they choose a different path?

Examples: Oedipus Rex , A Christmas Carol , Minority Report , Arrival , Next (Nicolas Cage), Rick and Morty -Season Four. Star Trek:Discovery -Season 2, Avenger’s EndGame with Dr. Strange and the Mind Stone.

Type 6 Time Loop / Groundhog Day

Definition: Characters relive the same day over and over, resetting back to a respawn point once they die or become incapacitated.

This type gained popularity after the movie, Groundhog Day , became a tremendous hit. Most of the other examples take the Groundhog Day idea and put a slight twist on it. Like Type 4 “This Always Happened”, the popularity of this type can make it harder to pull off in a fresh and innovative way.

Examples: Obviously, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Edge of Tomorrow , Doctor Strange in the ending battle with Dormammu, Russian Dolls (Netflix), Palm Springs , Star Trek TNG .

Type 7 Unstuck Mind

Definition: Characters consciousness transport through time within his body to his life at different ages.

Nostalgia for the past and dreaming of the future are core parts of the human experience. This type runs more metaphorically than scientific.

Examples: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, X-Men: Days of Future Past , Desmond in the series Lost .

Type 8 Unstuck Body

Definition: A character’s body or object becomes physically detached from the flow of time within the surrounding universe, becoming inverted or younger. Only certain objects or bodies are unstuck from time. Also called Inverted Entropy.

This one will blow your mind if you think about it for too long. Like Type 2 “Branch Reality”, this one comes from the realm of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. Scientists and mathematicians have all the formulas worked out to make this de-aging a reality, but currently lack the technology to control all the variables in the ways needed. It would like scientists working out than an object could break the speed of the sound in 1890. It would look inconceivable, given the technology of the day, but I wouldn’t put limits on human ingenuity.

Examples: Dr. Strange (the Hong Kong battle). Tenet , briefly in Endgame with Scott Lang and Bruce, Primer .

If you’re writing a time travel story, you’ll need to decide which one of these types you want to deploy. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. In many ways, its similar to designing your magic system, especially if you go with a Type 1 time travel story. The most important thing remains to have relatable characters and to tell a great story while being internally consistent with the rules and logic of your story world.

Ted Atchley  is a freelance writer and professional computer programmer. Whether it’s words or code, he’s always writing. Ted’s love for speculative fiction started early on with Lewis’  Chronicles of Narnia,  and the Star Wars movies. This led to reading Marvel comics and eventually losing himself in Asimov’s Apprentice Adept and the world of Krynn ( Dragonlance Chronicles ). 

After blogging on his own for several years, Blizzard Watch ( blizzardwatch.com ) hired Ted to be a regular columnist in 2016. When the site dropped many of its columns two years later, they retained Ted as a staff writer. 

He lives in beautiful Charleston, SC with his wife and children. When not writing, you’ll find him spending time with his family, and cheering on his beloved Carolina Panthers. He’s currently revising his work-in-progress portal fantasy novel before preparing to query. 

Ted has a quarterly newsletter which  you can join here . You’ll get the latest on his writing and publishing as well as links about writing, Star Wars, and/or Marvel.

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A Concise Breakdown of How Time Travel Works in Popular Movies, Books & TV Shows

in Film , Literature , Sci Fi | January 24th, 2020 4 Comments

As least since H.G. Wells’ 1895 nov­el  The Time Machine , time trav­el has been a promis­ing sto­ry­telling con­cept. Alas, it has sel­dom deliv­ered on that promise: whether their char­ac­ters jump for­ward into the future, back­ward into the past, or both, the past 125 years of time-trav­el sto­ries have too often suf­fered from inel­e­gance, incon­sis­ten­cy, and implau­si­bil­i­ty. Well, of course they’re implau­si­ble, every­one but Ronald Mal­lett might say — they’re sto­ries about time trav­el. But fic­tion only has to work on its own terms, not real­i­ty’s. The trou­ble is that the fic­tion of time trav­el can all too eas­i­ly stum­ble over the poten­tial­ly infi­nite con­vo­lu­tions and para­dox­es inher­ent in the sub­ject mat­ter.

In the Min­utePhysics video above , Hen­ry Reich sorts out how time-trav­el sto­ries work (and fail to work) using noth­ing but mark­ers and paper. For the time-trav­el enthu­si­ast, the core inter­est of such fic­tions isn’t so much the spec­ta­cle of char­ac­ters hurtling into the future or past but “the dif­fer­ent ways time trav­el can influ­ence causal­i­ty, and thus the plot, with­in the uni­verse of each sto­ry.” As an exam­ple of “100 per­cent real­is­tic trav­el” Reich points to Orson Scott Card’s  Ender’s Game , in which space trav­el­ers at light speed expe­ri­ence only days or months while years pass back on Earth. The same thing hap­pens in Plan­et of the Apes , whose astro­nauts return from space think­ing they’ve land­ed on the wrong plan­et when they’ve actu­al­ly land­ed in the dis­tant future.

But when we think of time trav­el per se, we more often think of sto­ries about how active­ly trav­el­ing to the past, say, can change its future — and thus the sto­ry’s “present.” Reich pos­es two major ques­tions to ask about such sto­ries. The first is “whether or not the time trav­el­er is there when his­to­ry hap­pens the first time around. Was “the time-trav­el­ing ver­sion of you always there to begin with?” Or “does the very act of time trav­el­ing to the past change what hap­pened and force the uni­verse onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry of his­to­ry from the one you expe­ri­enced pri­or to trav­el­ing?” The sec­ond ques­tion is “who has free will when some­body is time trav­el­ing” — that is, “whose actions are allowed to move his­to­ry onto a dif­fer­ent tra­jec­to­ry, and whose aren’t?”

We can all look into our own pasts for exam­ples of how our favorite time-trav­el sto­ries have dealt with those ques­tions. Reich cites such well-known time-trav­el­ers’ tales as A Christ­mas Car­ol , Ground­hog Day , and Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture , as well, of course, as  Back to the Future , the most pop­u­lar drama­ti­za­tion of the the­o­ret­i­cal chang­ing of his­tor­i­cal time­lines caused by trav­el into the past. Rian John­son’s Loop­er treats that phe­nom­e­non more com­plex­ly, allow­ing for more free will and tak­ing into account more of the effects a char­ac­ter in one time peri­od would have on that same char­ac­ter in anoth­er. Con­sult­ing on that film was Shane Car­ruth, whose Primer — my own per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion — had already tak­en time trav­el “to the extreme, with time trav­el with­in time trav­el with­in time trav­el.”

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban , Reich’s per­son­al favorite time-trav­el fic­tion, exhibits a clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy uncom­mon in the genre. J.K. Rowl­ing accom­plish­es this by fol­low­ing the rule that “while you’re expe­ri­enc­ing your ini­tial pre-time trav­el pas­sage through a par­tic­u­lar point in his­to­ry, your time-trav­el­ing clone is also already there, doing every­thing you’ll even­tu­al­ly do when you time-trav­el your­self.” This sin­gle-time-line ver­sion of time trav­el, in which “you can’t change the past because the past already hap­pened,” gets around prob­lems that have long bedev­iled oth­er time-trav­el fic­tions. But it also demon­strates the impor­tance of self-con­sis­ten­cy in fic­tion of all kinds: “In order to care about the char­ac­ters in a sto­ry,” Reich says, “we have to believe that actions have con­se­quences.” Sto­ries, in oth­er words, must obey their own rules — even, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, sto­ries involv­ing time-trav­el­ing child wiz­ards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

What Hap­pened When Stephen Hawk­ing Threw a Cock­tail Par­ty for Time Trav­el­ers (2009)

Pret­ty Much Pop #22 Untan­gles Time-Trav­el Sce­nar­ios in the Ter­mi­na­tor Fran­chise and Oth­er Media

Based in Seoul,  Col­in Mar­shall  writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book  The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les  and the video series  The City in Cin­e­ma . Fol­low him on Twit­ter at  @colinmarshall  or on  Face­book .

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (4) |

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Comments (4), 4 comments so far.

The idea of an episode where the time trav­el­er is present and doing his (in this case) thing, as he lives through the episode the first time around, reminds me of one of the great clas­sic sci-fi short sto­ries, but, sor­ry, I can’t remem­ber the author or title. I’ll say there’s a din­er, and a note, involved, but, no spoil­ers! And also check out “The Man in the Emp­ty Suit”.

I real­ly enjoyed this video very much — thanks. Pri­zon­er of Azk­a­ban is my favorite of the HP series in large part because the time-trav­el sequence is so per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed. One thing that occurred to me while watch­ing this though: when you say that the char­ac­ters can “instant­ly jump back in time and can inter­act with your­self, but it does­n’t gen­er­ate new time­lines” — my think­ing is that we don’t know this to be true; only that that the time­line DOESN’T change because. I’m work­ing from mem­o­ry so bear with me, but if I recall Dum­b­le­dore stress­es to Hermione that they must be very care­ful not to be seen while time trav­el­ling — it is because they adhere to this rule that the time­line does not change. One would pre­sume that the rea­son Dum­b­le­dore is so insis­tent on this rule is pre­cise­ly because if they were to inter­act with peo­ple the way Mar­ty does in Back To The Future, the time­line would in fact change. So the con­struct of time trav­el in Pris­on­er of Azk­a­ban and Back To The Future are/may be the same — the dif­fer­ence is that Hermione and Har­ry do not inter­act direct­ly with peo­ple in the past, but Mar­ty does.

Oth­ers: “A Sound of Thun­der”, a 1952 short sto­ry by Ray Brad­bury Dr Who Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy

I know the focus here is film time trav­el, but if you haven’t read Jack Finney’s Time and Again and the sequel, From Time to Time, pos­es some inter­est­ing ideas using Ein­stein’s the­o­ries of par­al­lel time line and time trav­el. I think either or both would make very inter­est­ing films…

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravelTropes

Time Travel Tropes

Bruce Banner: Changing the past doesn't change the future. [...] Clint Barton: Well, that's what I heard. Bruce: By who? Who told you that? Rhodey: Star Trek , Terminator , Time Cop , Time After Time ... Scott Lang: Quantum Leap ... Rhodey: A Wrinkle in Time , Somewhere in Time ... Scott: Hot Tub Time Machine ... Rhodey: Hot Tub Time Machine , Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure . Basically, any movie that deals with time travel. This is known! — A quick discussion about time travel, Avengers: Endgame

Of all the concepts in Speculative Fiction , Time Travel is probably the one that, over time , has provided us with the most possibilities for storytelling, and therefore the one that has been ( clocked as having been) exploited the most.

Whether you're casting a critical eye on the past, satirizing the present through a warped future, or just looking for an excuse to have dinosaurs rampaging through New York, time travel is the way to go. Or, possibly, the way to have been going. It's so hard to tell these days. Or those days. Or whatever. Or whenever . We tend to get grammatically confused when talking on this subject.

• Time Travel
• Temporal Mutability
• Time Travel Tales
• Alternate History Tropes
• We Will Not Use an Index in the Future
• Accidental Time Travel : Characters wind up in another time by sheer accident.
• Adventures in the Bible : Someone goes to the past and experiences a well-known story (usually a biblical one, hence the title).
• Alien Space Bats : Something supernatural or technically natural but highly implausible that causes the alternate history to be, well, alternate.
• All of Time at Once : Something makes every day in history happen again simultaneously.
• Alternate History : A story about a world where history happened differently from how it did in real life. This may sometimes be the result of meddling time-travelers visiting and changing the past.
• Alternate-History Nazi Victory : An alternate history where the Nazis won World War II, or where World War II stopped with them still in power.
• Alternate Self : There's an extra version of an existing person, sometimes caused by time travel.
• Alternate Timeline : An alternate continuity, where both continuities share a past.
• Alternate Timeline Ancestry : Same person exists in alternate timeline, but with different family history.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change : The version of the alternate timeline changes their name either to better distinguish or to keep the original from finding out who they are.
• Anachronism Stew : A story taking place in a specific time period features technology, cultural references, etc. that are either out-of-date or don't exist yet. This could be the result of time-travelers introducing something from another era.
• Army of The Ages : An army of warriors from different times, except they're not all famous.
• Back to the Early Installment : Characters time-travel to a previous point in their own story, often a previous episode of a series.
• Bad Future : The hero time-travels to a future where the world is worse off without them.
• Bad Present : Someone from the past ends up in the present and dislikes it.
• Been There, Shaped History : Time travel is a very common way for fictional characters to become involved in major historical events.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy : A historical figure is revealed to have an unusual aspect of their lives that isn't brought up in the history books.
• Born in the Wrong Century : A character really wants to live in the past or future.
• Butterfly of Doom : Changing the past, even in a minor way, results in something terrible happening.
• Can't Take Anything with You : Time travel prevents you from bringing material objects with you. May sometimes have the outcome of time travelers arriving in their destination naked if clothes are counted as material things.
• Catching Up on History : A character has to catch up on what they've missed.
• Casual Time Travel : Time travel is a normal hobby or occupation.
• Caught in the Ripple : An installment of a work begins with something having radically changed and no-one noticing.
• Causality Mechanic : Changing the past to affect the future is available as a Game Mechanic .
• Changed My Jumper : Time-travelers somehow don't attract attention in the past with their modern clothes.
• Chekhov's Time Travel : If time travel is possible, then the characters need to time-travel.
• Christmas Every Day (some variants): Something makes it so that Christmas occurs every day.
• Chronoscope : A device with a screen that shows things that happened or will happen.
• Clock of Power : A timepiece that has superpower or grant superpowers to its user / inhabitant, usually time-related.
• Clock Roaches : Changing the timeline causes an infestation of dangerous creatures.
• Close-Enough Timeline : Several attempts to alter the past and fix history ends with the protagonist settling for a timeline that's sufficiently similar.
• Cold Sleep, Cold Future : Someone wakes up from being a Human Popsicle , only to discover that the future is a Crapsack World .
• Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit : Trying to make money by putting some money somewhere, then travelling to the future when the money will supposedly be worth a lot more.
• Conqueror from the Future : A conqueror from the future goes back in time to start his conquest in the past.
• The Constant : Something or somebody that still exists, even in the far future.
• Contemporary Caveman : A caveman ends up in modern times. Usually happens because the caveman was frozen , but they can also end up in the present day because of time travel.
• Cryo-Prison : Freezing someone as punishment.
• Crystal Spires and Togas : A future that's sort of like a technologically-advanced version of Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece.
• Delayed Ripple Effect : Negative effects of changing the past take a while to come true.
• Doctor Whomage : Characters clearly inspired by Doctor Who and share similar time traveling adventures.
• Emergency Temporal Shift : A character evades danger via time travel.
• Eyepatch After Timeskip : Someone is depicted wearing an eyepatch in the future.
• Fantastic Plagiarism : Passing off a work from the future as your own before it is written.
• Fantastic Time Management : If someone is pressed for time, they use time travel as a solution.
• Fashions Never Change : Anything set before the twentieth century has the characters wear generic clothes for their time period as opposed to nuanced fashions existing.
• Field Trip to the Past : Someone learns history by experiencing it.
• Fighting Across Time and Space : Characters fight or chase each other while teleporting through different time periods.
• Fighting Your Future Self : A character ends up fighting a version of themself from the future or vice-versa.
• Fish out of Temporal Water : Someone ends up forced to adjust living outside of their original time period.
• Fling a Light into the Future : A message sent to the future when people in the past were unable to deal with a problem or situation.
• Floating Clocks : When someone time-travels, clocks can be seen floating around.
• The Future : A time that hasn't happened yet.
• Future Badass : Someone who's wacky and/or a bit of a loser will be competent and gritty in the future.
• Future Foil : In the future, someone will have at least one aspect of their personality changed.
• The Future Is Shocking : Someone from the past ends up in the present, and while they don't find it to be a Bad Present, they do find it shocking.
• Future Loser : In the future, someone will be unpopular, have a lame job, etc.
• Future Me Scares Me : Someone is disturbed by their own future self.
• Futureshadowing : Foreshadowing by showing something that hasn't happened yet.
• Future Self Reveal : A character is revealed to be another character's future self.
• Future Slang : Funny words that will be used as slang in the future.
• The Future Will Be Better : A utopian future.
• Get Back to the Future : Someone is sent to the past and has to find their way back.
• Giving Radio to the Romans : Giving modern technology to people in the past.
• God Test (to establish the veracity of the time traveller): Someone has to prove they're God/an alien/a time traveler/etc.
• Godwin's Law of Time Travel : An alternate history in which the Nazis won is very easy to accidentally create.
• Gone to the Future : Going forward in time erases you from the timeline.
• Grandfather Paradox : Altering the past in a way that would logically prevent one's time travel from happening in the first place. Named for the example of using time travel to erase oneself from existence by killing one's grandfather before he started a family, or at least before your mother or father was conceived. note  After all, how could you have killed your grandfather if you never existed?
• "Groundhog Day" Loop : The events of an entire day repeat continuously.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue : A character is forced to live some past event in canon over and over in a fanfic.
• Have We Met Yet? : Someone meets a time traveler who already knows them.
• Help Yourself in the Future : Someone goes back in time to help their past self.
• Historical Domain Crossover : A crossover between a multiple historical figures.
• Historical In-Joke : A work mentions a historical event and implies that it happened differently than what we learned in history class.
• Historical Person Punchline : Someone from the past is revealed to be a historical figure.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act : Going back in time to kill Hitler won't ever end well.
• Human Popsicle : Someone gets frozen and then thawed out in the future.
• Identical Grandson : Someone has an ancestor or descendant who looks exactly like them.
• I Hate Past Me : Someone dislikes their past self.
• I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference] : Somebody goes back in time and uses a pop culture reference as an alias.
• Immune to Fate : A person's superpower is that they can fight fate.
• In Spite of a Nail : In spite of the alternate timeline's more drastic discrepancies, there are at least some details in common with the original timeline.
• Intangible Time Travel : You can only time travel as an astral being.
• In Their Own Image : Going back to the beginning of time to rewrite the world.
• In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous : Going back in time always leads to unintentionally meeting historical figures.
• It Will Never Catch On : Someone in the past thinks that something will never be popular. They're wrong.
• I Want My Jet Pack : A work written in the past wrongly predicts a piece of technology being invented.
• Just One Second Out of Sync : Making something unobtainable by putting it a few seconds out of sync with time.
• Kid from the Future : A childless person or people meet their future child.
• Law of Time Travel Coincidences : When someone time-travels to a period with a disaster or significant event in it, they'll always end up witnessing or get involved with what happened.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water : A character has knowledge that makes them able to adapt to another time/world.
• A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll" : Someone time travels, then plays modern music to the people in the different time.
• Love Transcends Spacetime : Love causes time travel.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right : Using time travel to prevent good things from happening and to cause more bad things to happen in the past.
• Married in the Future : In an alternate future, two characters are married.
• Mass Teleportation : When a whole lot of people are transported to another time/world.
• Meanwhile, in the Future… : The story shifts from one plotline to the other, but one plotline takes place after the other.
• Mental Time Travel : Going back in time and possessing your past self's or someone else's brain.
• Merged Reality : Saving the day by merging an alternate universe with the normal one.
• Merlin Sickness : Aging backwards.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence : Could be about time travel, but it could just be for a Period Piece : when the past is shown, a lot of things are shown in sequence to signify the time period.
• More than Three Dimensions : The idea that time is another dimension.
• Multiple-Choice Future : The idea that destiny is unreliable and many things could happen in the future.
• My Future Self and Me : Someone meets themselves from the future and nothing bad happens.
• My Own Grampa : Through time travel and incest, a person becomes their own ancestor.
• Narnia Time : Another world has a different timeline which changes unreliably.
• Necessary Fail : Going back in time to prevent something bad from happening results in something worse happening.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet : Meeting your alternate-universe self, or yourself from a different timeline, is bad.
• Newspaper Dating : A time traveler finding out what year is it by looking for a newspaper or something else dated.
• No Backwards Compatibility in the Future : Characters from the future time-travel to our time, but their technology doesn't work with ours.
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel : Someone has problems when they time-travel to a time when a lot of people were prejudiced against a group they belong to.
• Non-Linear Character : A character who can simultaneously see into the future and the past while still observing the present.
• Non Sequitur Causality : Altering the past has consequences that realistically wouldn't happen.
• No Ontological Inertia : The idea that if the creator is destroyed, the creation will disappear and/or also be destroyed.
• Now I Know What to Name Him : A character meets their parents in the past, prompting them to name their child after that person as part of a Stable Time Loop .
• Ominous Message from the Future : A person or people from the future send a message back in time, warning people that something bad is going to happen.
• One-Man Industrial Revolution : Someone makes enough technology to change the world significantly.
• Only One Me Allowed Right Now : If there's more than one version of the same person, something bad will happen.
• Ontological Inertia : Making something "un-happen" is impossible. Technically, you might be able to change the way something happens, but if you have something specific that you want not to happen, you're out of luck.
• Other Me Annoys Me : Someone dislikes their alternate self.
• Our Time Machine Is Different : Any significant time machine.
• Our Time Travel Is Different : Ways of showing time travel onscreen.
• Out of Time, Out of Mind : Someone experiences lots of out-of-place time, yet when they return to the normal timeline, they look/act as if nothing happened.
• Past Right Now : Something historical-seeming exists in the present.
• Peggy Sue : A fanfiction where a character goes back in time to change history.
• Place Beyond Time : A place where time doesn't exist.
• Popular History : Works set in the past will have an implausible emphasis on pop culture and/or portray their pop culture as being a mishmash of things from different parts of the era.
• Portal to the Past : A portal that allows time-travel into the past.
• Precrime Arrest : Someone is arrested for a crime they haven't even committed yet.
• Present-Day Past : In the recent past, technology or fashion that hasn't been invented yet exists.
• Progressive Era Montage : A montage that shifts from one era to the next.
• Reset Button : Something which renders one or more drastic events unimportant.
• Reset Button Ending : It looks like the main conflict has been solved, but at the end, something happens that resets the status quo and makes it so it hasn't.
• Reset-Button Suicide Mission : Sacrificing oneself in an alternate timeline, knowing that it won't really happen.
• Ret-Gone : Someone ends up erased from history alongside all memory and evidence of their existence.
• Retroactive Precognition : A character who ends up in the past ends up seeming psychic.
• Retroactive Preparation : Someone is prepared because they time-traveled and made their past self prepared.
• Ripple Effect Indicator : An object or sometimes even a person that signifies that time travel has been happening.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory : Someone still remembers the old timeline in spite of it being changed.
• Rubber-Band History : A story that begins in an alternate history and ends in a non-alternate history.
• San Dimas Time : Someone has a limited amount of time to change the past before it somehow becomes too late to change it.
• Screw Destiny : Someone successfully defies destiny.
• Screw Yourself : If having intercourse with oneself involves using time travel to have sex with one's past or future self.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy : A prophecy that would come true if it weren't for its own existence.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy : Trying to defy a prophecy actually makes it come true.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong : Using time travel to prevent bad things from happening.
• Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right : Someone goes back in time to undo a bad thing in the past, and (due to it creating a Bad Future , Temporal Paradox , or something else terrible) has to go back and undo that change.
• The Slow Path : Waiting is treated as similar to time travel.
• Speculative Fiction LGBT : LGBT people feature a lot in sci-fi and fantasy.
• Spin the Earth Backwards : Making the Earth spin backwards in an attempt to turn back time.
• Stable Time Loop : Events happened because a person went back in time and vice versa.
• Stranded with Edison : Using a historical genius to introduce modern technology to people in the past.
• Supernaturally Young Parent : Not always because of time travel but it can be: for a paranormal reason, someone is younger than their son or daughter.
• Temporal Abortion : A time travel plot to end someone's existence by preventing them from ever being born.
• Temporal Duplication : Multiple versions of the same person present due to time travel.
• Temporal Paradox : When time travel causes a paradox.
• Temporal Sickness : Time travel literally makes someone sick.
• Temporal Suicide : Someone killing their past/future self.
• Terminator Twosome : Two people go back in time, one to change history and one to prevent history from being changed.
• This Is Going to Be Huge : Someone in the past thinks that something will be very popular. They're wrong.
• This Is My Boomstick : Using technology to impress people from the past.
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space : A work tries to answer the question of where (not when) you end up when you time travel.
• Time Crash : Someone "breaks" time via time travel.
• Time Dilation : Effectively traveling forward (but not backwards) in time, via Einsteinian relativity.
• Time Dissonance : A species that thinks of time in a different way than humans.
• Time-Freeze Trolling Spree : Playing pranks on other people while they're frozen in time.
• Time Is Dangerous : Time machines are dangerous to use.
• Timeline-Altering MacGuffin : Something from the future that will cause an alternate timeline if left in the past.
• Time Loop Fatigue : A character is exhausted physically or emotionally by a time loop.
• Time Loop Trap : Someone uses a Stable Time Loop for imprisonment.
• Time Machine : A machine that enables time travel.
• Time Master : Somebody who can control time.
• Time Police : People who either outlaw time travel or make laws related to time travel.
• Time Rewind Mechanic : A video game "mechanic" that allows you to rewind time.
• Time Stands Still : Time stops progressing, thus freezing everything in perfect stasis.
• Time-Travelers Are Spies : A time traveler is mistaken for a spy.
• Time-Traveler's Baby : A time traveler has a baby in the time period they traveled to.
• Time Traveler's Dinosaur : An extinct creature makes an appearance due to time travel.
• Time-Traveling Jerkass : Changing the past to benefit oneself or get revenge on someone.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma : Changing the past raises moral dilemmas.
• Time Travel Taboo : Time travel is not allowed because [insert reason here].
• Time Travel Episode : An episode of a series that focuses on time travel.
• Time Travel Escape : Saving a dead person via time travel.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit : Using time travel to make money.
• Time-Travel Romance : Falling in love with someone from another time.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble : Not knowing which tense (it was, it is, it will be) to use because of time travel.
• Timey-Wimey Ball : The rules of time travel are inconsistent.
• To the Future, and Beyond : Somebody can travel further into the future.
• Trapped in the Past : Someone accidentally ends up in the past without knowing how to come back.
• Tragic Time Traveler : A character who travels through time, but has had no end of misery because of it.
• Tricked Out Time : Changing the past while making it look like you didn't.
• Trust Password : A phrase that proves someone's identity.
• Unstuck in Time : Somebody who randomly time travels with no idea when (and sometimes where) they'll end up.
• Wayback Trip : The protagonist/s have to fix a change in history but the change has happened for seemingly no reason.
• The Web Always Existed : If you bring a computer while time travelling, you can use the internet even before it was invented.
• Weirdness Search and Rescue : When someone ends up in another timeline, they'll get help from a more seasoned time traveler.
• We Will All Fly in the Future : Flying is effortless in the future.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future : People in the future don't get sick.
• We Will Not Have Appendixes in the Future : In the future, people will lack useless body parts.
• What Year Is This? : Someone has time traveled but doesn't know when to, so they ask for the year.
• Which Me? : When somebody has been cloned, they don't know whether to use "me" or "you/they/he/she".
• Write Back to the Future : Somebody writes a letter so that people in the future will read it.
• Wrong Time-Travel Savvy : Someone mistakenly thinks they know how time travel works.
• Ye Goode Olde Days : A work that makes the past seem better.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside : A long time in another world is a short time in this world.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside : A short time in another world is a long time in this world.
• You Already Changed the Past : Someone attempts to prevent a tragic event from happening in the past, only to find in the end that the event happened because they traveled to the past.
• You Can't Fight Fate : No amount of altering the past will prevent your destined fate from happening.
• You Will Be Beethoven : Someone travels into the past and accidentally kills someone important or finds out the important person never existed, so they have to "be" that person.
• Young Future Famous People : Past/younger versions of famous celebrities and historical figures.
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Six Novels That Bring Together Mystery and Time Travel

Literature that tests the boundaries of time itself..

H.G. Wells was not the first author to explore time travel as a literary device, but he popularized the concept in ways that had never been done before. I’ve always been drawn to time travel in all genres—from sci-fi to suspense, from romance to action adventure—but my particular favorite is mixing the time-bending element with a good mystery.

Depending upon how it’s done, it can add to the tension—a race against time as our characters try to return to their own era—or it can allow readers to explore the past through modern eyes. In my own  In Time  mystery series, I’ve enjoyed the fish-out-of-water sensation that my main character—a modern-day woman and brilliant FBI agent—experiences after being tossed back to the Regency period in England. As women then were second-class citizens without the ability to even vote, not only does she have to deal with personal obstacles, but she also cannot tap into her usual arsenal of forensic tools to solve crimes.

Whether time travel is being used to wrap a mystery in an extra, innovative layer or is allowing readers to view humanity and history through a different lens, the theme is brilliantly done in the books that I’ve listed below.

Lightning , Dean Koontz

The moment I read  Lightning , I fell in love with the characters and the story’s complexity, so I was shocked to later learn that Dean Koontz actually had to fight to get this book published. I was not shocked that after he finally succeeded, the novel was wildly successful. From the first page, I was plunged into a not-so-natural phenomenon of flashing lightning in the middle of a snowstorm, from which a mystery man emerges and becomes inexplicably linked to the life of the main character, Laura. In typical Koontz fashion, Lightning weaves together a plethora of elements—heroism, heartbreak, love, humor, and plenty of bad guys. The time-travel aspect is lightly done, but with a twist that literally leaves you gasping.

Recursion , Blake Crouch

I didn’t think I could go down a more twisted rabbit hole than when I read Blake Crouch’s  Dark Matter , but he simply blew my mind with  Recursion . Time travel is often portrayed as an external process, relying on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which teased the notion that space and time could be bent to create a wormhole or vortex. Crouch, however, went  inward , by proposing the possibility that we could use our own memories to be propelled back to any point in our lives. The concept is fascinating, and there were many points at which I had to put down the book to simply  think  about what I had just read. Of course, in Crouch’s tale there is as much danger and devastation in going back to tweak your own timeline as there is if you were to jump into a time machine and return to the days of the dinosaurs, stepping on an insect that would then change life as we know it (à la Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect).

Timeline , Michael Crichton

No one has ever blended science—both fact and theory—into action adventure quite like Michael Crichton. He delves into the mechanics of time travel in such a masterful way that the incomprehensible becomes a head-nodding moment. Even better, it doesn’t slow down the story, which begins as a puzzle and evolves into an escapade, when a modern-day professor is trapped in the Middle Ages, with his band of scientifically minded students following to rescue him. I loved learning about the history of this particular time, especially seen through the eyes of scientists. Of course, human nature remains consistent through the centuries, which means there is plenty of avarice, betrayal, and cruelty to keep readers white-knuckled with worry over whether our protagonists will escape with their lives.

The Shining Girls , by Lauren Beukes 

Serial killers often escape detection by jumping jurisdictions, both in real life and in fiction. Lauren Beukes takes this to a mind-bending extreme by having a delusional psychopath jumping decades—from the Great Depression to the early ’90s—after discovering a house that is a time-traveling portal. When a woman survives her vicious attack, she becomes obsessed about finding her would-be murderer, and the puzzle pieces begin to slowly snap together. The writing is beautiful, the crimes brutal. This is not a book for the faint of heart, but if you have the courage, it’s well worth the read.

11/22/63 , by Stephen King

Traveling back in time with the purpose of changing history—and therefore the future—is an idea that has been explored in movies, TV (the old  Twilight Zone  had a few thought-provoking episodes on the subject), literature, philosophical discussions, and even in science classes. Yet Stephen King boldly—and brilliantly—explored the concept with perhaps the biggest do-over of all time with our main character, Jake (aka George), trying to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy.

The Time Machine , by H.G. Wells

It’s impossible to do a list of time-travel books without including the granddaddy of them all,  The Time Machine . Written in 1895, Wells imagined the future—802701 A.D., to be precise—when his Time Traveler narrator recounted his journey there (and beyond). I had read  The Time Machine  years ago, but I thought I needed to reread the novella again before officially including it in this list. While I had fond memories of the story, I also have fond memories of  The A-Team . Not everything stands the test of time (no pun intended). Thankfully,  The Time Machine  is worth the read and reread. Wells’ Time Traveler recounts his journey into the future, where human beings have undergone a Darwinian evolution—or, rather, a devolution, since humanity does  not  fare well. Even though it was written in the Victorian Age, it is a cautionary tale that will resonate for today’s reader, too.

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The Rules of Time Travel for Fiction Writers

Time travel is a staple of great fiction—when it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, you’re turning wormholes into  plot  holes instead. Here’s how to get a handle on the mechanics of time travel for fiction.

Doing Fictional Research

Start off by researching tales of fictional time travel and go through all the short stories, books, and movies you can get your hands on. Feel free to take your own notes on the story while you do this. If there’s a time paradox, ask yourself which—and  why . Excellent examples from film are  12 Monkeys ,  The Butterfly Effect ,  Project Almanac  and  Back to the Future . (There are plenty more, including  Hot Tub Time Machine .) Good books include  The Time Traveller’s Wife ,  The Time Machine  and  22/11/63 .

Family Guy’s  Back to the Multiverse  does a good job at explaining what’s called the multiverse theory, where people aren’t just traveling through time, but skipping through alternate realities as they do so—here, the “rules” of the universe can be a little different, like the point where Family Guy’s Brian and Stewie find themselves going through a Disney-like alternate reality where there’s, well, a lot of singing.

Sounding “Sciency” the Right Way

We all remember the “flux capacitor” from  Back to the Future . You’ll have to choose a  method  of time travel first. You can be creative: The most obvious solution is a time-machine—but remember to ask whether the time machine stays in one place (as in  22/11/63 ), travels with the time traveler (like  Back to the Future  or  Family Guy ) or is simply  really  weird—in  Butterfly Effect , the protagonist has to be reading from his diary to jump in time.   

Explaining Paradoxes

Paradoxes occur when things contradict each other; time travel paradoxes are plenty, and often part of the fun when writing it.  Just don’t lose track . What counts in one chapter, has to count in another chapter—and if ripples  can  be felt throughout your storyline because of a character’s reckless time traveling, make sure these ripples in time continuously make sense.

The Grandfather Paradox  is a popular example and one best illustrated by  Back to the Future . If you go back in time to kill your grandfather, do you effectively kill your father—and thusly yourself?  The Hitler Paradox  is another example: If you go back in time to kill Hitler, then Hitler doesn’t exist—and you wouldn’t  need  to kill Hitler in the first place. That’s pretty damned trippy, don’t you think?

The Predestination Paradox  is something I’d like to illustrate with a scene from  The Matrix , where Neo meets the Oracle; she warns him to look out for the vase. When he asks ‘what vase?’, he knocks it over. This, simply, is when your past self is the very  cause  of needing to travel back in the first place. This creates an endless loop (hence this also being referred to as a  closed causal loop ) of travel.

The Bootstrap Paradox  happens when something is sent back (often to the traveler themselves), negating the need for its creation in the first place.  Astronomy Trek  explains the Bootstrap Paradox in terms of George Lucas going back and giving  himself  the finished scripts. (Yes, we  really  had to think about that one, too.)

Taking Notes & Mapping Timelines

Obsessive note-taking is always advised for writing fiction, down to the last little plot detail. Outline beforehand, and have an outline of where your story is going to go. This is the secret to many great authors you’ve likely picked up this week, and there are very few authors who can just pull a plot twist out of nowhere.

When writing time travel, your outlines might have to become a little more focused on timelines and consequences. Create a mind map however you like, even if you have to clothespin some twine across your office and start hanging up notes.

Real Studies in Time Travel (and Real Life Oddities)

Don’t discount real science when writing  science fiction . A recent computer simulation managed to come up with a  possible solution to the grandfather paradox   and even more recent studies have shown that, at least in terms of mathematical theory, time travel is  entirely possible . In 2014, scientists studied the  behavior of photons  beamed through time.

Real-life oddities have also popped up from time to time:  John Titor  notably posted on internet forums in the early 2000s, claiming that he was a time traveler from the year 2036 who came with the purpose of warning mankind. In 2006, a man called Håkan Nordkvis claimed that he had found a worm-hole through to meet his 72-year old self under his sink—yes, that does remind us just a little of  Being John Malkovich , but somehow still not as weird…

About the author

Alex j coyne.

Alex J Coyne is an author, freelance journalist and language practitioner. He has written for international publications and blogs, been featured on radio and appeared in NB Publishers’ Skrik op die Lyf, an Afrikaans horror collection. Visit his website and get in touch at http://alexcoyneofficial.wordpress.com.

22/11/63 was so bad I could barely read it. I gave up on it. The book was written for a reason but it seems sure to me at least it wasn’t to investigate time-travel. Time-travel is a conceit, simple as that – an often dumb idea made somehow interesting whatever paradox it comes up against or overcomes or attempts to overcome.

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Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say

Matthew S. Schwartz

A dog dressed as Marty McFly from Back to the Future attends the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade in 2015. New research says time travel might be possible without the problems McFly encountered. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A dog dressed as Marty McFly from Back to the Future attends the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade in 2015. New research says time travel might be possible without the problems McFly encountered.

"The past is obdurate," Stephen King wrote in his book about a man who goes back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination. "It doesn't want to be changed."

Turns out, King might have been on to something.

Countless science fiction tales have explored the paradox of what would happen if you went back in time and did something in the past that endangered the future. Perhaps one of the most famous pop culture examples is in Back to the Future , when Marty McFly goes back in time and accidentally stops his parents from meeting, putting his own existence in jeopardy.

But maybe McFly wasn't in much danger after all. According a new paper from researchers at the University of Queensland, even if time travel were possible, the paradox couldn't actually exist.

Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen.

"Say you traveled in time in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus," University of Queensland scientist Fabio Costa told the university's news service .

"However, if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place," said Costa, who co-authored the paper with honors undergraduate student Germain Tobar.

"This is a paradox — an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe."

A variation is known as the "grandfather paradox" — in which a time traveler kills their own grandfather, in the process preventing the time traveler's birth.

The logical paradox has given researchers a headache, in part because according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, "closed timelike curves" are possible, theoretically allowing an observer to travel back in time and interact with their past self — potentially endangering their own existence.

But these researchers say that such a paradox wouldn't necessarily exist, because events would adjust themselves.

Take the coronavirus patient zero example. "You might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so, you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would," Tobar told the university's news service.

In other words, a time traveler could make changes, but the original outcome would still find a way to happen — maybe not the same way it happened in the first timeline but close enough so that the time traveler would still exist and would still be motivated to go back in time.

"No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you," Tobar said.

The paper, "Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice," was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity . The findings seem consistent with another time travel study published this summer in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters. That study found that changes made in the past won't drastically alter the future.

Bestselling science fiction author Blake Crouch, who has written extensively about time travel, said the new study seems to support what certain time travel tropes have posited all along.

"The universe is deterministic and attempts to alter Past Event X are destined to be the forces which bring Past Event X into being," Crouch told NPR via email. "So the future can affect the past. Or maybe time is just an illusion. But I guess it's cool that the math checks out."

• time travel
• grandfather paradox