# First story with the same plot as Groundhog Day **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 8, 2016, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352 "2016-07-08T02:12:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/1 "2016-07-08T02:12:19Z")
In the weird coincidence department, I just read a mystery novel by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, _The Innocent Mrs. Duff_, when I happened to look at the third issue, Summer 1950, of _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ and saw that the lead story was by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. So I had to read it. “Friday, the Nineteenth” has the same plot as _Groundhog Day_. A suburban businessman, totally bored with his wife and marriage, discovers that his best friend’s wife feels the same way. They meet in NYC on Friday, the nineteeth, and make plans to spend Saturday together. But when he wakes up on Saturday morning he finds that it’s Friday, the nineteeth. He goes to NYC and works through his day until he meets the woman, who is also experiencing the day over. Then they do it again the next day, and the next, and the next… As far as I can tell, no one has ever noticed the similarity before. The story has never been reprinted in English. Holding wrote only two other stories for _F&SF_; she’s known for her mysteries and has no fantasy credentials except for a YA novel about a talking cat. Still, _Groundhog Day_ is so famous that you’d think a story with the same plot would get some attention. Weird, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/2 "2016-07-08T02:22:29Z")
Doubled and Redoubled by Malcolm Jameson came out in 1941 and also featured a repeating time loop. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/3 "2016-07-08T02:36:34Z")
Interesting. I searched for stories having the same plot and that one never came up. It’s not mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction’s entry on time loops, or in listings of stories in which lives are repeated. It only got reprinted in one anthology. Another story that you think would be resurrected, or at least referenced, um, repeatedly. Thanks for the cite. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/4 "2016-07-08T02:53:28Z")
[Christmas Every Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Every_Day), story originally published 1892. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/5 "2016-07-08T03:11:59Z")
Cool. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/6 "2016-07-08T03:13:48Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > [Christmas Every Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Every_Day), story originally published 1892. The plot of this sounds really similar to Groundhog Day in its details, not just the time loop. Closer than the later two stories. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/7 "2016-07-08T03:55:43Z")
Was curious and while I did not find a good example, I found this curious clip from a 1933 movie called [_Turn the clock back_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_Back_the_Clock_%28film%29), it only had one time loop but the interesting bit is that it also featured the original 3 Stooges in a fairly straight role as wedding singers in an uncredited performance. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/5mXxJMrS29c/maxresdefault.jpg "Preview Clip | Turn Back the Clock | Warner Archive") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mXxJMrS29c) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/8 "2016-07-08T04:23:00Z")
Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1975 short story “Darkness Box” has the same sort of time-loop plot in a fantasy setting. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/9 "2016-07-08T04:26:11Z")
[Another bunch of examples.](http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/time_loop) > [@](#): > > The present entry discusses the form of time loop in which, typically, periods of time are repeated and re-experienced by a character’s consciousness: there is often some hope of breaking out of the useless cycle of repetition. > > This is not so in Anthony Armstrong’s early comic-fantasy example “The Prince’s Birthday Present” (in The Prince Who Hiccupped and Other Tales, coll 1932), whose ungrateful recipient of three wishes – multiplied by recursive wishing to an indefinite number – is finally unwise enough to ask that he may relive the last, particularly enjoyable half-hour; the replay of course includes this wish. One of the many temporal complications of Keith Laumer’s Dinosaur Beach (1971) sees the protagonist enter a closed time loop where an older and wiser version of himself insists that (as he had been uselessly told by his predecessor, and so on back through an unknown number of cycles) the new arrival must kill his elder self to break the loop. Richard A Lupoff’s “12:01 PM” (December 1973 F&SF) traps its protagonist in the same repeated hour, always resetting to the time of the title with even death offering no release; this became a short Oscar-nominated film, 12:01 PM (1990) directed by Jonathan Heap, and a longer made-for-tv feature: 12:01 (1993) directed by Jack Sholder. In Philip K Dick’s “A Little Something For Us Tempunauts” (in Final Stage, anth 1974; rev 1975; ed Barry N Malzberg and Edward L Ferman), the cycle may be ultimately inescapable; there is a grim suspicion that the US chrononauts’ suicidal attempt to disrupt the obscurely sensed time-loop has in fact brought it into being. The cast of Jack Skillingstead’s Life on the Preservation (2013) is trapped in the domed City of Seattle, forever recycling the same day. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/10 "2016-07-08T04:33:30Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > The plot of this sounds really similar to Groundhog Day in its details, not just the time loop. Closer than the later two stories. However, the original 1892 [short story “Christmas Every Day”](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22519/22519-h/22519-h.htm#CHRISTMAS_EVERY_DAY) is very different. It’s just a father inventing a story for his little girl about a little girl whose wish came true to have Christmas every day, and how annoying it was for everyone: > [@](#): > > And at this her papa darted off like lightning, and began to tell the story as fast as he could. > > > [@](#): > > > > Well, once there was a little girl who liked Christmas so much that she wanted it to be Christmas every day in the year […] So, then, she began to send her letters; and in about three weeks—or just the day before Christmas, it was—she got a letter from the Fairy, saying she might have it Christmas every day for a year, and then they would see about having it longer. […] > > > > She had a splendid Christmas. […] The little girl slept very heavily, and she slept very late, but she was wakened at last by the other children dancing[Pg 9] round her bed with their stockings full of presents in their hands. > > > > “What is it?” said the little girl, and she rubbed her eyes and tried to rise up in bed. > > > > “Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!” they all shouted, and waved their stockings. > > > > “Nonsense! It was Christmas yesterday.” > > > > Her brothers and sisters just laughed. “We don’t know about that. It’s Christmas to-day, anyway. You come into the library and see.” > > > > Then all at once it flashed on the little girl that the Fairy was keeping her promise, and her year of Christmases was beginning. […] > > > > Well, the next day, it was just the same thing over again, but everybody getting crosser; and at the end of a week’s time so many people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers anywhere; they perfectly strewed the ground. […] > > > > After a while coal and potatoes began to be awfully scarce, so many had been wrapped up in tissue-paper to fool papas and mammas with. Turkeys got to be about a thousand dollars apiece […] And they got to passing off almost anything for turkeys—half-grown humming-birds, and even rocs out of the Arabian Nights—the real turkeys were so scarce. And cranberries—well, they asked a diamond apiece for cranberries. […] ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/11 "2016-07-08T06:14:47Z")
There’s also “Shadow Play”, a 1961 episode of _The Twilight Zone_, in which a man constantly relives the day of his trial, conviction and execution. It was remade for the 1980s series. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/12 "2016-07-08T11:14:01Z")
There was a made-for-TV film called \*12:01 \* which came out a short time before _Groundhog Day._ The former accused the latter of copying it, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/13 "2016-07-08T12:18:36Z")
Hardly fair, since the idea of being stuck in a loop wasn’t exactly original, and they had very different takes on it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/14 "2016-07-08T12:20:26Z")
At least three stories in classic Doctor Who used time loops: Carnival of Monsters, The Armageddon Factor and Meglos. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/15 "2016-07-08T12:42:23Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > There was a made-for-TV film called \*12:01 \* which came out a short time before _Groundhog Day._ The former accused the latter of copying it, IIRC. And “12:01” the movie was based on a short story from 1973 (of the same name) [12:01 P.M. - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12:01_PM) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/16 "2016-07-08T16:23:04Z")
> [@ekedolphin](#): > > There was a made-for-TV film called \*12:01 \* which came out a short time before _Groundhog Day._ The former accused the latter of copying it, IIRC. Wow, 12:01 came out before GD! I would have swore that it was the other way. I remember thinking while watching 12:01 that the former was a version (ripoff) of the latter (I was not aware of the short story). Maybe someone is messing with time. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/17 "2016-07-08T16:44:25Z")
What’s interesting to me is that neither Holding nor Jameson nor Howell is mentioned in the time loop article. (That’s the link Kimstu gave from the Encyclopedia of SF that I mentioned in post #3.) Most of the examples there are of people reliving their entire or long stretches of their lives with knowledge of the past, not just a single day. The time loop article also omits _The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin_ by P. D. Ouspensky, which came out in 1915 and has the protagonist reliving his life. The Howell story is not listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database either, an even odder omission. (The ISFDB credits \*Osokin \*to 1947 rather than its original publication. Half my life is spent trying to confirm what’s found in supposedly reliable references.) Riemann, Howell’s is farther off _Groundhog Day_ to my mind because the entire world experiences the effect, not just the one or two people stuck in an oblivious world. It has the greatest line, though. > [@](#): > > Now, the next day, it was the same thing over again, but everybody getting crosser, and at the end of a week’s time so many people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers anywhere, they perfectly strewed the ground. Even when people tried to recover their tempers they usually got somebody else’s, and it made the most dreadful mix. It was made into a 1996 TV movie. _Christmas Do-Over_ was a 2006 TV movie with the father alone reliving Christmas over and over. Time loops have gotten popular since GD. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/18 "2016-07-08T17:37:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Time loops have gotten popular since GD. Aside from the examples mentioned, Ken Grimwood’s [Replay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_%28Grimwood_novel%29) predated GD by quite a bit, but used the same general idea. A man relives most of his whole life, and makes changes to improve it, but all his efforts are wiped out by the reset. It’s a very good book. As much as I love GD, it really is beginning to look like it ripped off a lot of other works. (much more than Terminator “ripped off” Ellison (that is, not really at all)). Maybe GD should be prefaced with an acknowledgement of the previous works, like the one Terminator has to carry now. However, GD is still is a good movie. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/19 "2016-07-08T18:59:10Z")
Ramis was sued for GD. But not by Lupoff, who looked into it but decided he couldn’t win. Here’s the author’s description of the story: > [@](#): > > Robinson Blake leads an unexceptional bachelor life in New York City. He has a secret yearning for his boss’s wife and two immediate problems: how to get up on time in the morning and how to extract himself from an affair with his eccentric secretary, Milly. > > Suddenly, Rob is caught in a unique and terrifying calamity. A certain Monday becomes fixed in time and repeats itself over and over again with Rob, apparently the only person on earth who understands what is happening. Other people proceed through each re-run with no memory of what has passed before. Only Rob remembers. > > Rob’s efforts to sort things out results in a series of comic and sometimes dangerous fiascos. Then, surrendering to the erotic, forbidden possibilities offered, Rob sets about seducing the delectable Phillipa, his boss’s wife. Every morning is a brand new day and Phillipa must be wooed from scratch, though not always with the same degree of success. Finally Rob meets his nemesis, Mrs Hawkmann, who is both the archetypal Jewish mother (Milly’s) and a practicing witch. Through Mrs Hawkmann, who bears a striking resemblance to the late General de Gaulle, Rob is introduced to the Satanic forces he suspects may re responsible for this repeating day. But the final explanation of what is happening as well as the solution to Rob’s romantic entanglements, is as much a surprise to the hero as it is to the reader. From a 1981 novel called _One Fine Day_ (also known as _The Devil’s Trill_) by Leon Arden. [Arden v. Columbia Pictures Industries Inc.](http://www.leagle.com/decision/19952156908FSupp1248_12019/ARDEN%20v.%20COLUMBIA%20PICTURES%20INDUSTRIES,%20INC.) went to court in 1995. He lost, the judge saying that the idea was similar but the particulars weren’t, and ideas are not copyrightable. And while I’m digging up new examples, how about this one? > [@](#): > > A mad scientist, who is dying from an incurable heart disease, builds a time machine. He then relives December 31 over and over again so that he can repeatedly kill his cousin who has wronged him. Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane are the only two conscious enough to realize the repetition of New Year’s Eve, and together they successfully change the course of events to prevent the villain’s evil deed. That’s the plot of the radio script “The Man Who Murdered Time” broadcast on _The Shadow_ on January 1, 1939. I meant to put a question mark at the end of my thread title. “First” is a lot earlier than I thought. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2016, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352/20 "2016-07-08T19:10:37Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > That’s the plot of the radio script “The Man Who Murdered Time” broadcast on _The Shadow_ on January 1, 1939. They played it on SiriusXM awhile back. And it was clearly the same plot – one day over and over again. Only the Shadow knew what was going on because of his power to cloud men’s minds, though it would also be known to anyone he touched. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-story-with-the-same-plot-as-groundhog-day/759352.md?page=2)