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44-451: A time warp is an imaginary spatial distortion that allows time travel in fiction , or a hypothetical form of time dilation or contraction. Time Warp may also refer to: Time travel in fiction Time travel is a common theme in fiction , 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

88-437: A respirator . 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. 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

132-404: 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 are reversed for time traveling people and objects, so that for example backward travel requires the use of

176-450: A fantastical narrative set-up". In literature, communication from the future is a plot device in some science fiction and fantasy 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 " The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper ", which tells

220-457: 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 's 1951 Time and Again , Russell T Davies' 2005 revival of Doctor Who , Barrington J. Bayley 's 1974 The Fall of Chronopolis , and Matthew Costello 's 1990 Time of

264-520: A means of tourism, with travelers curious to visit periods or events such as the Victorian Era or the Crucifixion of Christ , or to meet historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln or Ludwig van Beethoven . 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 's 1952 A Sound of Thunder , in which

308-513: A mistake. However, he notes the weather forecast is for an unseasonable snowfall, which occurs, and later an advertisement for a waiter which precedes the firing of one. Then he reads about a robbery at a theater's box office during a performance in an article under his byline . He writes the article beforehand. His editor refuses to publish it at first, until a policeman comes by and confirms the robbery. This causes Police Inspector Mulrooney to put him in jail, convinced he could only have known about

352-549: 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 similarly presents time travel as occurring without explanation, 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

396-498: 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 's 1819 Rip Van Winkle , where the mechanism of time travel is an extraordinarily long sleep. Mark Twain 's 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court had considerable influence on later writers. The first novel to include both travel to

440-497: A series of film noirs . Although It Happened Tomorrow was far from Clair's favorite, he was later to write that "[t]he last twenty minutes are the best thing I did in Hollywood." The ending, especially, which hinges on a mistake in the newspaper from the future, had a personal connection for Clair, since he was fired from his first job as a reporter when he made up a story which was the opposite of what actually happened; Nichols

484-417: Is a 1944 American fantasy film directed by René Clair , starring Dick Powell , Linda Darnell and Jack Oakie , and featuring Edgar Kennedy and John Philliber . It is based on the one-act play "The Jest of Haha Laba" by Lord Dunsany . Lawrence and Sylvia Stevens are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. In a flashback to the 1890s, Lawrence Stevens is an obituary writer unhappy with his job. He

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528-419: Is given tomorrow's evening newspaper by an elderly newspaper man named Pop Benson, though he does not bother to read it. After work, he and his co-workers go to see a mind-reading act starring the "Great Sigolini" (Oscar Smith) and his beautiful assistant Sylvia. Lawrence is enchanted with Sylvia and manages to get her to agree to a date the next day. He finally notices the newspaper's date, but dismisses it as

572-432: Is sometimes achieved by space and time warps , stemming from the scientific theory of general relativity . Stories from antiquity often featured time travel into the future through a time slip brought on by traveling or sleeping, in other cases, time travel into the past through supernatural means, for example brought on by angels or spirits. A time slip is a plot device in fantasy and science fiction in which

616-456: The Fox . Researcher Barbara Bronlow wrote that traditional ghost stories 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. It Happened Tomorrow It Happened Tomorrow

660-563: The Galaxy series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe , 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. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes a time war as

704-605: The character use the Time Stone, one of the Infinity Stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe , 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 to normal time flow by going through such

748-412: The characters, and there is often some hope of breaking out of the cycle of repetition. Time loops are sometimes referred to as causal loops , 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,

792-452: 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 , similar to 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

836-553: The feeling of déjà vu , 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 loops , one form of which is explored in Newcomb's paradox . 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

880-533: The film, and the two hired Clair's friend Dudley Nichols to assist in writing the script. They set the time period in the 1890s to avoid dealing with the war. Clair initially wanted Cary Grant for the lead role, but wound up with Dick Powell, who was on the verge of altering his screen persona from a lightweight musical-comedy "juvenile" to a harder one, playing tough guy private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet later that year, followed by

924-526: 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 book Bearing an Hourglass , the second of eight books in the Incarnations of Immortality series, the character of Norton becomes the incarnation of Time and continues his life living backwards in time. The 2016 film Doctor Strange has

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968-621: 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 newspaper from one year in the future. During the Swedish general election of 2006 , the Swedish liberal party used election posters which looked like news items, called Framtidens nyheter ("News of

1012-447: 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. 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

1056-419: 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 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

1100-422: The information. Precognition has been explored as a form of time travel in fiction. Author J. B. Priestley 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

1144-441: 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. 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

1188-461: The old man died two days ago, even before Stevens received the first newspaper. Stevens tries his best to avoid the hotel lobby where his death is supposed to take place, but circumstances keep pushing him in that direction. He spots the man who stole his money and chases him on foot through the streets and over the rooftops, until they both fall through the chimney that leads to the very hotel lobby he's been trying to avoid. A gunfight breaks out, and

1232-478: The original timeline from the point of interaction. A record can be consulted multiple times, thus providing a time loop mechanism. Philip K. Dick 's novel The Man in the High Castle features books reporting on an alternate timeline. The TV series transposes the mechanism of the books to newsreels . Incidentally, the alternate timeline is the historic timeline , as opposed to the alternate history of

1276-476: The past and travel to the future and return to the present is the Charles Dickens 1843 novel A Christmas Carol . Time slip is one of the main plot devices of time travel stories, another 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

1320-418: 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. An alternative future or alternate future is a possible future that never comes to pass, typically when someone travels back into the past and alters it so that the events of the alternative future cannot occur, or when a communication from

1364-474: The past in a way that affects their own future, such as by killing their own grandparents. The engineer Paul J. Nahin 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 causal loops . The possibility of characters inadvertently or intentionally changing

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1408-463: The past. The protagonist of the short story Story of Your Life experiences life as a superimposition of the present and the totality of her life, future included, as a consequence of learning an alien language . The mental faculty is speculation based on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis . A "time loop" or "temporal loop" is a plot device in which periods of time are repeated and re-experienced by

1452-541: The premise is that the past cannot be changed or that the future is determined, and the protagonist's actions turn out to be 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. 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. Time travel in modern fiction

1496-403: The protagonists are big game hunters 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 . The final type in which there are people time-traveling to the future is experienced in the second book of Douglas Adams ' The Hitchhiker's Guide to

1540-412: The racetrack, to win enough money to get married. Unfortunately, he also reads a story about his own death that night, so he and Sylvia get married immediately and head off to the track with her uncle. Stevens bets on winner after winner, amassing $ 60,000, which is then stolen on their way back to town. They give chase but are arrested for speeding. Stevens hopes for more help from Benson, but learns that

1584-444: The robbery by being a member of the gang who pulled it off. Stevens and his new girlfriend Sylvia have a number of adventures, until her uncle mistakenly thinks that Stevens has consorted with his niece in her boarding house room. The uncle attempts to intimidate Stevens into marrying her, not knowing that Stevens has come to him to ask for her hand. Stevens gets another newspaper from Pop Benson, intending to use it to pick horses at

1628-599: The same scene that begins the film. Director and producer Frank Capra originally purchased the rights to Hugh Wedlock and Howard Snyder's story, but when he discovered the concept was similar to that in Lord Dunsany 's 20-year-old one act play, he bought it as well; later, when he was going into the Army to serve in World War II , he sold both to Arnold Pressburger . Pressburger approached Rene Clair about directing

1672-500: 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 , "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 for

1716-460: The thief is shot and killed. Because he has Stevens' wallet on him, he is at first identified as the newspaperman, and his newspaper prints an erroneous story saying that their star reporter has been killed. When a reporter finds out the truth, the newspaper has already hit the streets; and it is this edition that he had received from Pop. Stevens does not die in the hotel lobby. He marries Sylvia and lives to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary,

1760-426: The works, so that the records also function as meta-references to the timeline experienced by the authors and the consumers of the works. The plot of the film Source Code features a simulated and time-looped reality based on the memories of a dead man. The idea of changing the past is logically contradictory , creating situations like the grandfather paradox , where time travellers go back in time and change

1804-468: Was a former newsman as well. It Happened Tomorrow was a success at the box office. Film historian Jeff Stafford noted that the critical response in the United States was "complimentary but reserved". Variety described it as "diverting escapist entertainment, with many sparkling moments and episodes along the line." In France, however, the film was a "major critical success". Robert Stolz

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1848-562: Was coined by mathematician Edward Lorenz 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 , 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 protagonist's small changes to his past results in extreme changes. A "distinct subgenre" of stories explore time travel as

1892-607: Was nomimated for the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture , while Jack Whitney was nominated for Best Sound, Recording It Happened Tomorrow was adapted as a radio play for the July 3, 1944 episode of Lux Radio Theater with Don Ameche and Anne Baxter , the September 25, 1944 episode of The Screen Guild Theater with Dick Powell and Linda Darnell reprising their original roles and on

1936-435: Was popularized in H. G. Wells ' 1895 story, The Time Machine . In general, time travel stories focus on the consequences of traveling into the past or the future. The 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. In other instances,

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