Wanted: step-by-step instructions on time travel

Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series)

Find a bunch of standing stones somewhere - these may be in Scotland or the U.S., but potentially elsewhere as well. Visit them on Samhain or Beltane. If you are able (seems to be genetic) to travel with the stones, you will hear them humming when you touch them. It helps (for your protection) to have a gemstone with you and have someone you love at the time you’re going to. Time moves parallel, so if you spend 20 years sometime and then return, you will find that 20 years have passed.

You must actually reverse the rotation of the earth. I have had people explain the hypothesis that he was mearly travelling backward through time and to his perspective the Earth would have seemed reverse, however that doesn’t hold up to the scientific fact. After travelling around the world many times, he stops, however the earth is still rotating in the opposite direction, So it’s not a matter of perception.He turns around and goes the other way to pull the rotation back in the normal direction. The rotation of the Earth is the key.

And forget all about your Kryptonian powers.

Can anyone explain the time travel in Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book? I have to admit I have absolutely no head for math or science, and didn’t pay too much attention to the more technical passages. I know it involves a net and a technician, who would presumably be able to explain it, if he weren’t a) fictional and b) sick as a dog.

Chrono Trigger-style time travel:
*Genius inventor friend

  • Steampunk teleportation device
  • Spunky tomboy princess
  • Shiny pendant made of dreamstone

Or

*Rip in the space-time continuum generated by Lavos

Or

*Time machine invented by Belthasar

Power-Puff Girls-style time travel:
*Race home with your sisters

Jackie Chan Adventure-style time travel:
*Get zapped with a funky time-related invention, then run real fast with the rabbit talisman

Futurama - Park your spaceship next to a star about to go supernova, then microwave an aluminum popcorn package. To re-open the space hole and return home, microwave another package.

Timeline - Something about shrinking down and utilizing quantum foam (quondam phone?), but I forget the details.

And NEVER argue with your past or future selves to decide who does the homework.

Ah, remembered another series.

Doraemon-style time travel:

  1. Live as a total loser all your life.
  2. Marry your childhood sweetheart and have kids.
  3. Wait for civilization to invent sentient robots and time travel.
  4. Have your great-grandson send a robot assistant to you into your desk.

The Anubis Gates

There are particular locations in space and time where magic works and advanced machinery does not. If you’re at the correct time and place, you can use sorcery to go to another such time and place. Travel by this method is paradox-free, which raises exciting free-will issues but makes meeting yourself much safer. Fair warning, though: you’re teleporting into a place where magic works and your high-tech toys don’t.

Peggy Sue Got Married was filmed in my hometown.

I remember a book called ‘How to make scrambled Chickens’ that had
Time travel instructions.

  1. Dress in period clothing.
  2. place a chair in the middle of the room. sit in it.
  3. concentrate on the period you wish to visit. Hold your breath.
  4. tip the chair so you fall over backwards.
  5. You will be in the desired time period until you exhale.

The Bullwinkle Show (or more specifically, Peabody’s Improbable History): I’m not really sure. I know Mr. Peabody adopted Sherman, but I think he already had the WABAC Machine. I guess he’s a smart enough dog to have built it. There’s your answer: build a time machine.

Step one: Buy time machine off eBay.

Step two: Set dial for 1982.

Step three: Don’t forget to insert the crystals.

Sweet!

Wait until midnight, when the grandfather clock in the hall strikes 13.

Pokemon: Find an ancient machine and make your Pokemon spin on it or simply find a Celbi, scare it, and hold on tight.

Ecco the Dolphin: Find an ancient machine and make a high pitched sound at it or ask an all-powerful infinite being (which couldn’t hang on to all his parts with both hands) or get molested by two aliens.

Easy enough.

Time After Time: Use H.G. Wells’s time machine. Of course, it helps if you are H.G. Wells.

The Time Traveler’s Wife:

Have a genetic mutation to give you temporal instability. Unfortunately, you might not be able to control it, but apparently atypical antipsychotics can help.

Terminator movies - I DON’T KNOW! I DIDN’T BUILD THE FUCKING THING!

Mentally construct a hyper-cube and then fold it around yourself, sealing the edges so that it becomes 1 (?) dimensional. *

Join the Time Patrol. **

Walk the pattern engraved/embossed in the floor of the cave. ***

Invent the time machine, then send yourself back in time to invest a few dollars that will grow to be the largest fortune on earth so that you can afford the energy to run the time machine to send yourself back. ****

  • Heinlein
    ** Pohl
    *** Norton
    **** don’t remember (Harrison?)

Time Cube explains it all.