In which H. G. Wells’s third foray into time travel finalizes the story of our favorite unnamed Traveller and his machine, all in the form that we know and love.

The two earlier forays were The Chronic Argonaut (which was abandoned after three installments in his school magazine) and seven fictionalized National Observer essays (which sketched out the Traveller and his machine, including a glimpse of the future and proto-Morlocks). The story of The Time Machine itself had three 1895 iterations:

[list][*]A five-part serial in the January through May issues of New Review, The serial contains mostly the story as we know it, but with an alternate chunk in the introduction where the Traveller discusses free will, predestination, and a Laplacian determinism of the universe.

In addition, material from Chapter XIII of the serial (just over a thousand words beginning partway through the first paragraph of page 577 and continuing to page 579, line 29) were omitted from later editions. This section was written for the serial after a back-and-forth written struggle between Wells and New Review editor William Henley. The material had a separate mimeographed publication by fan and Futurian Robert W. Lowndes in 1940 as “The Final Men” and has since had multiple publications elsewhere with varying titles such as “The Gray Man.”[/*]

[*]The US edition: The Time Machine: An Invention, by H. G. Wells (erroneously credited as H. S. Wells in the first release), Henry Holt [publisher], May 1895. This edition may have been completed before the serial, as it varies from the serial more so than the UK edition. It does not contain the extra material in the first chapter or “The Final Men” (although it does have a few additional sentences at that point of Chapter XIII).[/*]

[*]The UK edition: The Time Machine: An Invention,by H. G. Wells, William Heinemann [publisher], May 1895. This edition is a close match to the serial, with the exception of chapter breaks, the extra material in the first chapter, and “The Final Men” (omitted from what is now Chapter XIV).[/*]
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When a typewriter appears on the floor of his boarding room and begins typing messages from the future, down-on-his-luck Steve Temple thinks it must be his old jokester friend Harry—but he’s wrong about that, and the fate of the world 500 years down the line now depends on what Steve does about a recently elected man. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” doesn’t have the notoriety of that other Bradbury story about time travel and an elected official, but even though this one’s riddled with ridiculous ideas on time, it does accurately predict text messaging!

Max Alben Mac Albin is genetically predisposed to survive time travel, so he’s the natural choice to go back in time and shift the course of a missile that shifted the course of history.

In a future of FTL spaceships, time storms between the stars, and male-only space explorers, young Berenice had run away to the stars as a sex worker. But when she inexplicably becomes pregnant, the powers-that-be book passage for her on Captain Cross’s ship to the exhile planet called Gomorrah.

We may never know just how young Kivrin Engle wrangled her academic advisor and the powers-that-be at the University of Oxford into sending her to previously off-limits, 14th-century England, but her timing was not ideal given that she’dd just been exposed to a recently re-emerged influenza virus. Oh, and the inexperience tech who also got hit with the virus with the virus after the drop may have sent Kivrin to the wrong year.

Detective Wheldon, the top man in NYPD Homicide is approached by two FBI agents who offer to let him go back in time two weeks to observe the 4th killing by a serial killer.

This is the first story in Future Imperfect, a 2001 anthology of 12 original time-travel stories, co-edited by the prolific anthologist Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) who was also a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

Miranda has an odd friend named Marcus who knows a lot about time machines, another friend named Sal who has stopped hanging out with her, and a man—not really a friend—who sleeps under the mailbox out front. And then there are those mysterious notes from someone who seems to know quite a lot, but also needs her to write about everything that’s happening in her twelve-year-old life.

Somewhat self-absorbed 16-year-old Anna Green manages to fall for the first time traveler she ever meets, not realizing that he’s a time traveler or that he’s hoping his mission to 1995 will be a short-term affair.

When fourteen-year-old Victorian waif Riley shows up in the 21st century on seventeen-year-old FBI Agent Chevie Savano’s watch, the two of them pair up and head back to the late 19th century to escape Riley’s evil pursuer.

Although the book involves wormholes and scientists, it’s really a quantum fantasy, wherein an ordinary fantasy has the word “quantum” scattered throughout in key places, typically before the word magic, magician, or wormhole. Nevertheless, we’ve listed it as science fiction to match its publicity material.

In the moments before a jump, a traveler muses over the realities of time travel.

Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow).

As a test to determine whether humanity should be destroyed, four slimey aliens grant schoolteacher Neil Clarke the power to do absolutely anything. I kinda think that if I had that power, and I made as many mistakes as Neil, I'd be using my power to rewind time more often than he did.

Writer and director Terry Jones acknowledges H. G. Wells’ “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” as inspiration for the story.

While on medical leave for his mental health, police detective Darius Lafaux is called back in to investigate a case that turns into multiple murders of men who look exactly like himself.

A government agent from 1951 follows three alien invaders through a time portal to 21st-century Lost Angeles where he teams up with a local cop to track the trio down before they can signal their cohorts.

When time travel agent Kin Stewart finds himself rapidly losing his memory and stranded in 1996, he writes a journal of his life in the future and proceeds to break every rule in the book by creating a new life and family in his new present . . . until a retriever shows up in 2014.

Hanna Ginsberg—a young Jewish violinist in Germany during the rise of Hitler—awakens in a field in 1946 with no memory of the past decade.

Tess is a geologist (because, of course, geologists control the time travel of the giant ancient machines) and a member of the Daughters of Harriet (Senator Harriet Tubman, that is, from 19th-century Mississippi). On the surface, the Daughters are time travel scholars, but in reality, Tess and her fellow Daughters are fighting a pitched changewar for women’s rights against the oppressors known as the Comstockers. One more thing: While she’s at it,Tess also hopes to also save the souls of her teenaged self and her underground feminist punk friends in the 1990s, with a particular focus on their vigilante killing spree and young Beth’s abortion.

When 13-year-old Corey Fletcher first finds himself transported back in time, he doesn’t realize how it happened or that he is one of the rare travelers who can actually change the timeline, rescue his Papou, and maybe even save his grandma from 9/11.

Historical research Ruth McClintock and local high school student Reece have a journal written by Annie Oakley, from which they conclude that Annie was a time traveler to traumatic moments in her own life—a power that Ruth seems to share.

Young genius Han Tae-sul is the focus of dangerous people and a mysterious woman—Gang Seo-hae—from a war-torn near future.

Sadly, the story comes close to being a slick static timeline, but alas, the writers could not follow through.

An 18-year-old history student hopes to show that her research subject, 16th-century poet Lucia of Gonzaga, was a modern woman supressed by her time period, but as the traveling student sends messages back to her 21st-century mentor, she reveals more than just history as she’d hoped it would be.

In an alternate history leading up to a 1945 atomic bomb in southern California, young Billie “the Kid” Davis grows up in the mid-20th century, playing shortstop better than any of the boys, flying B-25s with her Dad, and eventually—with Moe Berg and the woman-with-many-names—taking on that bomb.

After turning forty in a snit because of her career decisions, her unexciting boyfriend, and her dying father, Alice Stern wakes up on her 16th birthday in her teen body.

When Flynne Fisher’s ne’er-do-well brother lands a lucrative gig testing new VR tech, he drafts Flynne to do the heavy lifting, and she’s bowled over by the future world the VR has created—until she realizes it’s more than a sim.