# Time travel adoptions and kidnappings? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533 "2018-07-25T00:58:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/1 "2018-07-25T00:58:05Z")
I’m listening to an audiobook that features a main character who has gone back in time a few centuries, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll try to bring either of the orphaned children she’s taken under her wing back to our time. This got me thinking about the very few stories I’ve read that involve time travel and adopting or kidnapping children from another time. These are all I can come up with on my own: [ul] [li] **The Ugly Little Boy** by Isaac Asimov. A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day.[/li] [li] **The 4400**. In a round about way. Among other people, Maia, a little girl is kidnapped from the past by beings from far into the future, and then sent back in time, but decades after her own time, and is adopted by a person trying to figure the mystery out.[/li] [li] **All You Zombies** by Robert A. Heinlein. At least I think. I didn’t fully understand this story.[/li] [li] **12 Monkeys??** This show hasn’t made a lot of sense since season 2… [/li][/ul] Can you think of any others? ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/2 "2018-07-25T01:12:43Z")
Since I was recently reminded of it: Kage Baker’s _Company_ series (kidnapping). ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/3 "2018-07-25T01:27:33Z")
The synopsis of All You Zombies is right there in Wikipedia, but I won’t link to it, in the name of anti-spoilage. But if there was ever anyone justified in feeling like a loner, it would be the protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/4 "2018-07-25T01:28:20Z")
The video game Shadow of Destiny has both children from different time periods switched at birth as well as accidentally taking a teenage side-character from the present and accidentally leaving her in 1540. When you see her again on your next time travel visit (after a few years had passed in her timeline) she’s understandably furious. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/5 "2018-07-25T13:37:18Z")
John Varley’s novel “Millennium”, and the movie based on the story, has time travelers abducting entire plane loads of people (not just children) and taking them 1000 years into the future. ---
**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 25, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/6 "2018-07-25T14:18:59Z")
Jo Walton’s The Just City features kidnapped children and time travel Poul Anderson’s There Will Be Time is another example. ---
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/7 "2018-07-25T15:52:04Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > John Varley’s novel “Millennium”, and the movie based on the story, has time travelers abducting entire plane loads of people (not just children) and taking them 1000 years into the future. Yes but they were all going to be dead anyway! It’s planeloads of people taken from what would have been fatal crashes and replaced by replica dead bodies. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/8 "2018-07-25T16:00:02Z")
In _The Rose Red City_ a woman’s child is kidnapped as she travels with two men from the city of the title. Near the end of the book she discovers to their mutual surprise that one of the men is her child all grown up, having been deposited in ancient Greece (IIRC) and grown up there. In\* The Man Who Folded Himself\* the time traveling protagonist meets his female alternate timeline counterpart, they have sex and she’s impregnated. They have a falling out later; as she’s incapacitated from giving birth he steals her baby son and leaves, thinking “she will never know” she had a son (she didn’t); however she gives birth to a second child, a daughter and thinks “he will never know” he has a daughter, and he never does. In the [Red Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son) setting “Krypton” is actually Earth in the distant future, and baby Superman was sent back in time. ---
**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 25, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/9 "2018-07-25T17:28:05Z")
River Song in _Doctor Who_ ---
**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 25, 2018, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/10 "2018-07-25T17:34:02Z")
A short story “The Comedian” by Timothy Robert Sullivan is yet another example ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2018, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/11 "2018-07-25T23:50:44Z")
> [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](#): > > Yes but they were all going to be dead anyway! It’s planeloads of people taken from what would have been fatal crashes and replaced by replica dead bodies. Neat. I was actually thinking that it’d be neat to read - or write - a story that is _somewhat_ similar to one element of **A Sound of Thunder** , specifically them killing the dinosaur that’s about to die anyway. Instead of killing a dinosaur, the very expensive “adoption agency” could time travel and procure babies and young children they knew historically would soon die of either accident or non-congential illness hours or days before their cause of death happened, so them being removed from the past wouldn’t effect the future the way that stealing a child that would’ve had a whole life in the past would. ---
**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 26, 2018, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/12 "2018-07-26T00:10:48Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Neat. I was actually thinking that it’d be neat to read - or write - a story that is _somewhat_ similar to one element of **A Sound of Thunder** , specifically them killing the dinosaur that’s about to die anyway. Instead of killing a dinosaur, the very expensive “adoption agency” could time travel and procure babies and young children they knew historically would soon die of either accident or non-congential illness hours or days before their cause of death happened, so them being removed from the past wouldn’t effect the future the way that stealing a child that would’ve had a whole life in the past would. Something much like this happens in Kage Baker’s Company novels. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/13 "2018-07-26T00:25:34Z")
The video game _Torment: Tides of Numenara_ takes place on a world (possibly Earth?) that’s been home to dozens of technologically advanced societies that have risen and fallen over millenia, leaving the game world scattered with forgotten, “so-advanced-it-might-as-well-be-magic” tech that nobody remembers the purpose or function of. One bit of tech you find on a side quest is an arch that serves as a time portal. Someone (I don’t recall if it’s ever revealed who) uses the arch to operate a cross-time adoption agency, paying destitute parents in the past for their kids, then placing them with wealthy parents in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/14 "2018-07-26T00:27:16Z")
Kage and I used to move in some of the same circles; it’s still weird to me when people know of her works when they don’t know her. She was a right-on lady. Anyway. ---
**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 26, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/15 "2018-07-26T13:51:28Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > Kage and I used to move in some of the same circles; it’s still weird to me when people know of her works when they don’t know her. She was a right-on lady. Anyway. I loved her books, and I’m sorry that her untimely death prevented me from getting the chance to meet her. Everything I’ve heard about her indicates that she was indeed a “right-on lady.” ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/16 "2018-07-26T19:11:09Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Neat. I was actually thinking that it’d be neat to read - or write - a story that is _somewhat_ similar to one element of **A Sound of Thunder** , specifically them killing the dinosaur that’s about to die anyway. Instead of killing a dinosaur, the very expensive “adoption agency” could time travel and procure babies and young children they knew historically would soon die of either accident or non-congential illness hours or days before their cause of death happened, so them being removed from the past wouldn’t effect the future the way that stealing a child that would’ve had a whole life in the past would. Such a series of books exists. It’s called _The Missing_, and it’s by Margaret Peterson Haddix. The first book, _The Missing: Found_, is about three kids who learn they are actually Virginia Dare and the Princes in the Tower. > **[The Missing: Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix](https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4169-5417-0)** > > In a tantalizing opener to a new series, Haddix (the Shadow Children series) taps into a common childhood fantasy—that you... ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-adoptions-and-kidnappings/818533/17 "2018-07-27T01:04:10Z")
This idea is a significant plot point in “Hyperion,” by Dan Simmons.