Time Slip - Time Slips in Popular Culture

Time Slips in Popular Culture

• The idea of a time slip has been exploited by a number of science fiction and fantasy writers. This is one of the main plot devices on time travel stories, the other being a time machine. 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 time and must make the best of it, or is eventually returned by a process as unpredictable and uncontrolled. Conversely, in a time machine story the protagonist is typically in control of the process, understands the scientific principles involved and can come and go between times at discretion. The two types of time travel were popularized at the end of the 19th century by respectively Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, both having considerable influence on later writers.

• Notable later stories using the theme include John Wyndham's short stories "Odd" and "Stitch in Time" in Consider Her Ways (1961). "Chronoclasm" and "Pawley's Peepholes", included in the collection The Seeds of Time (1956), explore the subject from the point of view of those being visited.

• 1990s sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart saw its main character Garry Sparrow walk down a passage in 1993 only to find himself in 1940. He was able to go back and forth at will, with the time in the past running concurrently with the present day. The series finished in 1999 with the 'past' year being 1945.

• The 1990 novella The Langoliers by Stephen King involved a jet airliner which had passed through a timeslip into yesterday, and the crew and passengers' desperate attempts to return to today before being consumed by the eponymous Langoliers.

• The 1970 children's TV series Timeslip explores the notion of two children who are able to slip through time. In the series the children are able to travel backwards to visit their parents as young people and forwards to meet themselves as adults.

• Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse-Five, experiences a series of time slips throughout his life after becoming "unstuck in time".

• Martian Time-Slip is a 1964 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It advances the idea that the flow of time can change or even be reversed from place-to-place. Time on Mars is much more malleable than time on Earth or at least there are more portals and loop holes on Mars.

• In 11/22/63, a 2011 novel by Stephen King, Jake Epping walks through a time slip to enter into 1958 to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

• In the 2011 Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris, the main character, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), is mysteriously sent back to 1920s Paris via Peugeot Type 176 to interact with the so-called Lost Generation era of authors and artists. Additionally, the character of Adriana (Marion Cotillard) experiences an even further slip of time into the Belle Époque era, where she elects to stay.

• The final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, All Good Things..., features Captain Picard travelling through time between the first episode of the series, the present, and the future.