Time Travel in Entertainment

Time travel has always captured the imaginations of the public. The very beginnings of time travel literature can be traced to In the Year 2440, by L.S. Mercier in 1771. The main character traveled through the future as a result of an elongated summer, approximately six hundred and seventy year (Flynn 2-3). Later, Charles Dickens added to the sub-genre in 1843 with his novel A Christmas Carol. This was the first novel to utilize the idea that a character could travel back and forth through time. The science aspect was lacking, however, since the character of Scrooge was led through time by ghosts (Flynn 2). The idea of traveling through time at will was not lost on H.G. Wells in 1888 when he published The Time Machine. In this book for the first time, the time machine is employed. At this point, the sub-genre of science fiction finally included an element of science. After Wells’s novel, the popularity of time travel in popular entertainment exploded (Clute 1227). Now there are countless novels, stories, movies, and T.V. programs that utilize some form of time travel.

Examples of Time Travel in the Newtonian Universe
"Express to the Future" by Michael Verne (1895)
"Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving (1819)

Examples of Travel in the Multi-Verse
The FOX Televion Show Sliders (1990's)
"Store of the Worlds" by Robert Sheckley (1959)

Examples of Time Travel in Einstein's Universe
Timeline by Michael Crichton (1999)
Contact (1997) by Warner Brothers Studio