Time travel is an enduring concept in fiction. Part of the reason is that it can provide all sorts of narrative opportunities – characters can revisit their own pasts or those of their ancestors, or they can be flung far into the future to explore an unfamiliar new world.
But centring stories around a time machine can also allow varied plots that have little to do with the actual mechanics of time travel. Doctor Who demonstrated this for most of its first 26 years – many have pointed out that the TARDIS acts as much as a ‘genre machine’ as a ‘time machine’, providing an excuse for writers to dabble with different settings and styles in each new story.
Many time travel stories fixate on the method of travel – the time machine itself – which can take many different forms. So you want to build a time machine? Here are a few off-the-rack options:
The vehicle (static)
The grandfather of all time machines, featured in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, is a sit-down Victorian gentlemanly affair, operated by brass levers and the like. Alternatively, why not try the less comfortable (but presumably simpler to construct) wall-mounted time-travel chair, as seen in Terry Gilliams’ Twelve Monkeys?
The vehicle (mobile)
For genre fans of a certain age, Marty McFly’s Delorean is second only to the TARDIS itself as the pre-eminent mental image of a time machine. It’s practical as a standard mode of transport, it’s thrilling in action and, given the right era, it can even fly. However, a vehicle likely to be a touch closer to (theoretical) reality is the often-seen spacecraft-through-a-wormhole method, as depicted in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and many SF novels of the Golden Age. (More straightforwardly, another Terry Gilliam film, Time Bandits, features ‘time holes’ that can simply be wandered through on foot.)
The box (comfortable)
The Doctor’s TARDIS wins this category, hands down. It’s not only fully functional – though temperamental – as a time machine, it can travel in space, too. (As a cautionary tale, see the Red Dwarf episode ‘Out of Time’: having located a time machine, the crew are disappointed that it’s only capable of transporting them to the same pocket of deep space, far from anywhere, in an era of their choice.) More to the point, the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, with internal areas still not fully explored after more than half a century of televised episodes.
The box (uncomfortable)
The obvious contender here is the phone box from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – it’s smaller on the inside, which becomes problematic if you’re intent on gathering up famous figures from history and bringing them to the present. But I’d argue that an even worse prospect is the fridge-freezer-coffin setup seen in Shane Carruth’s Primer. Not only is it uncomfortable, the time travel it allows is dizzying, with multiplying versions of yourself to contend with, as well as multiplying time machines.
The portable device
Bracelets and helmets are some of the most popular wearable time machines. They’re nice if you can get them, but then there’s always the tricky issue of whether they match your time travel outfit of choice.
Indiscriminate
The method of time travel seen in James Cameron’s The Terminator affects a wide area, and can’t transport any physical items along with the time traveller. Hence the prospect of a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger and the difficulty of making locating clothes the first item on your to-do list.
In my novel, You Don’t Belong Here, I was keen to hark back to H.G. Wells original concept, in that it features a time machine that’s a physical piece of kit, taking up a whole room. The main obstacle to Daniel Faint travelling through time in comfort and style is that the time machine is stolen (shades of my childhood hero, the Doctor, here) and there’s no instruction manual. Daniel has only a vague idea how to assemble and operate the machine, despite its frustratingly basic controls. Worse still, his tests leave him utterly disoriented and, quite possibly, watched by somebody who wishes him harm. I relished the idea of sidestepping the fiddly issue of how to build a time machine, and instead dealing with the issue of if you had a time machine, would you dare to use it?
Tim’s time-travel thriller novel, YOU DON’T BELONG HERE (Snowbooks) is available now. He has also released two novellas, BLIGHTERS (Abaddon) and CARUS & MITCH (Omnium Gatherum) – the latter was shortlisted for a This Is Horror Award. His short stories have featured in Interzone, BFS Horizons and numerous anthologies. He is the Editor of the SF magazine, The Singularity, and blogs at www.cosycatastrophes.wordpress.com.
