Poster for the 1960 film The Time Machine

Time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

is a common theme in

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

, mainly since the late 19th century, and has been depicted in a variety of media, such as literature, television, film, and advertisements. The concept of time travel by mechanical means was popularized in

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The Time Machine ''The Time Machine'' is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively for ...

''. In general, time travel stories focus on the consequences of traveling into the past or the future. The central premise for these stories often involves changing history, either intentionally or by accident, and the ways by which altering the past changes the future and creates an altered present or future for the time traveler upon their return home. In other instances, the premise is that the past cannot be changed or that the future is predetermined, and the protagonist's actions turn out to be either inconsequential or intrinsic to events as they originally unfolded. Some stories focus solely on the paradoxes and alternate timelines that come with time travel, rather than time traveling itself. They often provide some sort of social commentary, as time travel provides a "necessary distancing effect" that allows science fiction to address contemporary issues in metaphorical ways.

Mechanisms

in modern fiction is sometimes achieved by space and time warps, stemming from the scientific theory of

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. Stories from antiquity often featured time travel into the future through a time slip brought on by traveling or sleeping, or in other cases, time travel into the past through supernatural means, for example brought on by

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inclu ...

s or spirits.

Time slip

A time slip is a

plot device A plot device or plot mechanism is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. A clichéd plot device may annoy the reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelie ...

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

and

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

in which a person, or group of people, seem to travel through time by unknown means. The idea of a time slip has been used in 19th century fantasy, an early example being

Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...

's 1819 ''

Rip Van Winkle "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls aslee ...

'', where the mechanism of time travel is an extraordinarily long sleep.

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

's 1889 ''

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled ''A Yankee in King Arthur's Court''. Some early editions are titled ''A Yankee at the Court of King Arth ...

'' had considerable influence on later writers. The first novel to include both travel to the past and travel to the future and return to the present is the

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

1843 novel '' A Christmas Carol''. Time slip is one of the main plot devices of time travel stories, another being a

time machine Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

. The difference is that in time slip stories, the protagonist typically has no control and no understanding of the process (which is often never explained at all) and is either left marooned in a past or future time and must make the best of it, or is eventually returned by a process as unpredictable and uncontrolled as the journey out. The plot device is also popular in children's literature. The 2011 film, ''

Midnight in Paris ''Midnight in Paris'' is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialis ...

'' similarly presents time travel as occurring without an explained mechanism, as the director "eschews a 'realist' internal logic that might explain the time travel, while also foregoing experimental time Distortion techniques, in favor of straightforward editing and a fantastical narrative set-up".

Communication from the future

In literature,

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

from the future is a

in some

and

stories. Forrest J. Ackerman noted in his 1973 anthology of the best fiction of the year that "the theme of getting hold of tomorrow's newspaper is a recurrent one". An early example of this device can be found in H.G. Wells's 1932

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

" The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper", which tells the tale of a man who receives such a paper from 40 years in the future. The 1944 film '' It Happened Tomorrow'' also employs this device, with the protagonist receiving the next day's newspaper from an elderly colleague (who is possibly a ghost). Ackerman's anthology also highlights a 1972 short story by

Robert Silverberg Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Gr ...

, "What We Learned From This Morning's Newspaper". In that story, a block of homeowners wake to discover that on November 22, they have received ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' for the coming December 1. As characters learn of future events affecting them through a newspaper delivered a week early, the ultimate effect is that this "so upsets the future that spacetime is destroyed". The television series ''

Early Edition ''Early Edition'' is an American fantasy comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from September 28, 1996, to May 27, 2000. Set in Chicago, Illinois, it follows the adventures of a man who mysteriously receives each ''Chicago Sun-Times' ...

'', inspired by the film ''It Happened Tomorrow'', also revolved around a character who daily received the next day's newspaper, and sought to change some event therein forecast to happen. A newspaper from the future can be a fictional edition of a real newspaper, or an entirely fictional newspaper. John Buchan's 1932 novel '' The Gap in the Curtain'', is similarly premised on a group of people being enabled to see, for a moment, an item in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' newspaper from one year in the future. During the Swedish general election of 2006, the

Swedish liberal party The Liberals ( sv, Liberalerna, L), known as the Liberal People's Party ( sv, Folkpartiet liberalerna) until 22 November 2015, is a conservative liberal political party in Sweden. The Liberals ideologically have shown a broad variety of liberal ...

used election posters which looked like news items, called ''Framtidens nyheter'' ("News of the future"), featuring a future Sweden that had become what the party wanted. A communication from the future raises questions about the ability of humans to control their destiny. The

visual novel A , often abbreviated as VN, is a form of digital semi-interactive fiction. Visual novels are often associated with and used in the medium of video games, but are not always labeled as such themselves. They combine a textual narrative with sta ...

'' Steins;Gate'' features characters sending short text messages backwards in time to avert disaster, only to find their problems are exacerbated due to not knowing how individuals in the past will actually utilize the information.

Precognition

Precognition Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future. There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a ...

has been explored as a form of time travel in fiction. Author

J. B. Priestley John Boynton Priestley (; 13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator. His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction, notably in ''The Good Compa ...

wrote of it both in fiction and non-fiction, analysing testimonials of precognition and other "temporal anomalies" in his book ''Man and Time''. His books include time travel to the future through dreaming, which upon waking up results in memories from the future. Such memories, he writes, may also lead to the feeling of ''

déjà vu ''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univers ...

'', that the present events have already been experienced, and are now being re-experienced. Infallible precognition, which describes the future as it truly is, may lead to

causal loop A causal loop is a theoretical proposition, wherein by means of either retrocausality or time travel, an event (an action, information, object, or person) is among the causes of another event, which is in turn among the causes of the first-menti ...

s, one form of which is explored in

Newcomb's paradox In philosophy and mathematics, Newcomb's paradox, also known as Newcomb's problem, is a thought experiment involving a game between two players, one of whom is able to predict the future. Newcomb's paradox was created by William Newcomb of the ...

. The film '' 12 Monkeys'' heavily deals with themes of predestination and the Cassandra complex, where the protagonist who travels back in time explains that he can't change the past. The protagonist of the short story ''

Story of Your Life "Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in '' Starlight 2'' in 1998, and in 2002 in Chiang's collection of short stories, ''Stories of Your Life and Others''. Its major themes are languag ...

'' experiences life as a superimposition of the present and the totality of her life, future included, as a consequence of learning an

alien language Alien languages, i.e. languages of extraterrestrial beings, are a hypothetical subject since none have been encountered so far. The research in these hypothetical languages is variously called exolinguistics, xenolinguistics or astrolinguistic ...

. The mental faculty is speculation based on the

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people' ...

Time loop

A "time loop" or "temporal loop" is a

in which periods of time are repeated and re-experienced by the characters, and there is often some hope of breaking out of the cycle of repetition. Time loops are sometimes referred to as

s, but these two concepts are distinct. Although similar, causal loops are unchanging and self-originating, whereas time loops are constantly resetting. In a time loop when a certain condition is met, such as a death of a character or a clock reaching a certain time, the loop starts again, with one or more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop. Stories with time loops commonly center on the character learning from each successive loop through time.

Experiencing time in reverse

In some media, certain characters are presented as moving through time backwards. This is a very old concept, with some accounts asserting that English mythological figure Merlin lived backwards, and appeared to be able to prophesy the future because for him it was a memory. This tradition has been reflected in certain modern fictional accounts of the character. In the

Piers Anthony Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born 6 August 1934) is an American author in the science fiction and Fantasy (genre), fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is best known for his :Xanth books, long-running novel series set in ...

book '' Bearing an Hourglass'', the second of eight books in the ''

Incarnations of Immortality ''Incarnations of Immortality'' is the name of an eight-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony. The books each focus on one of eight supernatural "offices" (Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil, Good, and Night) in a fictional reality and history p ...

'' series, the character of

Norton Norton may refer to: Places Norton, meaning 'north settlement' in Old English, is a common place name. Places named Norton include: Canada * Rural Municipality of Norton No. 69, Saskatchewan *Norton Parish, New Brunswick **Norton, New Brunswick, a ...

becomes the incarnation of Time and continues his life living backwards in time. The 2016 film '' Doctor Strange'' has the character use the Time Stone, one of the

Infinity Stones The Infinity Stones are fictional items in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). They play a significant role in the first three phases (also called the " Infinity Saga") of the MCU, including being the MacGuffins of the films '' Avengers: Infin ...

in the

Marvel Cinematic Universe The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is an American media franchise and shared universe centered on a series of superhero films produced by Marvel Studios. The films are based on characters that appear in American comic books published by ...

, to reverse time, experiencing time backwards while so doing. In the film '' Tenet'', characters time travel without jumping back, but by experiencing past reality in reverse, and at the same speed, after going through a 'turnstile' device and until they revert back to normal time flow by going through such a device again. In the meantime, two versions of the time traveller coexist (and must not meet, lest they mutually destruct): the one that had been 'traveling forward' (existing normally) until entering a turnstile and the one traveling backward from the turnstile. The

laws of thermodynamics The laws of thermodynamics are a set of scientific laws which define a group of physical quantities, such as temperature, energy, and entropy, that characterize thermodynamic systems in thermodynamic equilibrium. The laws also use various paramet ...

are reversed for time traveling people and objects, so that for example backward travel requires the use of a

respirator A respirator is a device designed to protect the wearer from inhaling hazardous atmospheres including fumes, vapours, gases and particulate matter such as dusts and airborne pathogens such as viruses. There are two main categories of respi ...

. Objects left behind by time travellers obey 'reverse thermodynamics;' for example, bullets shot or even simply deposited while traveling backward fly back into (forward traveling) guns.

Record

Protagonists do not travel in time but perceive other times through a record. Depending on the technology, they can minimally consult the record or maximally interact with it as a simulated reality that can deviate causally from the original timeline from the point of interaction. A record can be consulted multiple times, thus providing a

time loop The time loop or temporal loop is a plot device in fiction whereby characters re-experience a span of time which is repeated, sometimes more than once, with some hope of breaking out of the cycle of repetition. The term "time loop" is sometimes us ...

mechanism. Philip K. Dick's novel ''

The Man in the High Castle ''The Man in the High Castle'' (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the political intrigues b ...

'' features books reporting on an alternate timeline. The

TV series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

transposes the mechanism of the books to

newsreels A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...

. Incidentally, the alternate timeline is the historic timeline, as opposed to the alternate history of the works, so that the records also function as

meta-reference Meta-reference is a special type of self-reference that can occur in all media or media artifacts, for instance literature, film, painting, TV series, comic strips, or video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, ...

s to the timeline experienced by the authors and the consumers of the works. The plot of the film ''

Source Code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

'' features a simulated and time-looped reality based on the memories of a dead man.

Themes

Time paradox

The idea of changing the past is logically

contradictory In traditional logic, a contradiction occurs when a proposition conflicts either with itself or established fact. It is often used as a tool to detect disingenuous beliefs and bias. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle ...

, creating situations like the

grandfather paradox A temporal paradox, time paradox, or time travel paradox is a paradox, an apparent contradiction, or logical contradiction associated with the idea of time and time travel. The notion of time travel to the future complies with current understanding ...

, where time travellers go back in time and change the past in a way that affects their own future, such as by killing their own grandparents. The engineer

Paul J. Nahin Paul J. Nahin (born November 26, 1940 in Orange County, California) is an American electrical engineer and author who has written 20 books on topics in physics and mathematics, including biographies of Oliver Heaviside, George Boole, and Claude Sh ...

states that "even though the consensus today is that the past cannot be changed, science fiction writers have used the idea of changing the past for good story effect". Time travel to the past and precognition without the ability to change events may result in

s. The possibility of characters inadvertently or intentionally changing the past gave rise to the idea of "time police", people tasked with preventing such changes from occurring by themselves engaging in time travel to rectify such changes.

Alternative future, history, timelines, and dimensions

An alternative future or alternate future is a possible future that never comes to pass, typically when someone travels back into the

past The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...

and alters it so that the events of the alternative future cannot occur, or when a communication from the future to the past effected a change that alters the future. Alternative histories may exist "side by side", with the time traveller actually arriving at different dimensions as he changes time.

Butterfly effect

The butterfly effect is the notion that small events can have large, widespread consequences. The term describes events observed in chaos theory where a very small change in initial conditions results in vastly different outcomes. The term was coined by mathematician

Edward Lorenz Edward Norton Lorenz (May 23, 1917 – April 16, 2008) was an American mathematician and meteorologist who established the theoretical basis of weather and climate predictability, as well as the basis for computer-aided atmospheric physics and ...

years after the phenomenon was first described. The butterfly effect has found its way into popular imagination. For example, in Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story ''

A Sound of Thunder "A Sound of Thunder" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published in ''Collier's'' magazine in the June 28, 1952, issue and later in Bradbury's collection '' The Golden Apples of the Sun'' in 1953. P ...

'', the killing of a single insect millions of years in the past drastically changes the world, and in the 2004 film ''

The Butterfly Effect ''The Butterfly Effect'' is a 2004 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. It stars Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, William Lee Scott, Elden Henson, Logan Lerman, Ethan Suplee, and ...

'', the protagonist's small changes to their past results in extreme changes.

Time tourism

A "distinct subgenre" of stories explore time travel as a means of tourism, with travelers curious to visit periods or events such as the

Victorian Era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

or the

Crucifixion of Christ The crucifixion and death of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and considere ...

, or to meet historical figures such as

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

. This theme can be addressed from two or three directions. An early example of present-day tourists travelling back to the past is

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...

's 1952 ''

'', in which the protagonists are

big game hunter Big-game hunting is the hunting of large game animals for meat, commercially valuable by-products (such as horns/antlers, furs, tusks, bones, body fat/oil, or special organs and contents), trophy/taxidermy, or simply just for recreation ("s ...

s who travel to the distant past to hunt dinosaurs. An early example of another type, in which tourists from the future visit the present, is Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner's 1946 ''

Vintage Season ''Vintage Season'' is a science fiction novella by American authors Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, published under the joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell" in September, 1946. It has been anthologized many times and was selected for '' ...

''. The final type in which there are people time-traveling to the future is experienced in the second book of

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), BBC radio comedy, ''The H ...

' ''

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it ...

'' series, ''

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ''The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'' is the second book in the ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' comedy science fiction "trilogy" by Douglas Adams, and is a sequel. It was originally published by Pan Books as a paperback in 1980. ...

'', which, as the title indicates, includes a restaurant that exists at the end of the universe. In the restaurant, people time-traveling from all over the space-time continuum (especially the rich) came to the restaurant to view the explosion of the universe put on repeat.

Time war

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (SFE) is an English language reference work on science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and f ...

'' describes a time war as a fictional war that is "fought across time, usually with each side knowingly using time travel ... in an attempt to establish the ascendancy of one or another version of history". Time wars are also known as "change wars" and "temporal wars". Examples include

Clifford D. Simak Clifford Donald Simak (; August 3, 1904 – April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He won three Hugo Awards and one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master, and the Horror W ...

's 1951 '' Time and Again'', Barrington J. Bayley's 1974 '' The Fall of Chronopolis'', and

Matthew Costello Matthew John Costello (born 1948) is an American writer specializing in the genres of horror, gothic, and science fiction. His articles have appeared in publications including the ''Los Angeles Times'' and ''Sports Illustrated''. He has scripted ...

's 1990 ''Time of the Fox''.

Ghost story

Researcher Barbara Bronlow wrote that traditional

ghost stories A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."Ghost Stories" in Margaret Drabble (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to English Literature''. ...

are in effect an early form of time travel, since they depict living people of the present interacting with (dead) people of the past. She noted as an instance that Christopher Marlow's '' Doctor Faustus'' called up Helen of Troy and met her arising from her grave.

References

External links

Timelinks - the big list of time travel video, film, and television
- over 700 films and television programs featuring time travel.

- Big list of adventures in time travel.
Andy's Anachronisms
- Exploring the themes of time travel and alternate universes in literature and entertainment. {{DEFAULTSORT:time travel in fiction * History of fiction Multiple time paths in fiction