Books Time Travel Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale No rules, no bureaucracy, just some randos messing around with the past, present, and future. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on June 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The larger the organization, the more likely it needs something like a bureaucracy… which both adds efficiency and harms efficiency. Bureaucracies, alas, are known for their office politics and endless red tape. This leads many to believe that bold innovations are best created and deployed by individuals (or at least small groups). This kind of effort also makes for good science fiction plots. Consider these five works about time travel as practiced on a small scale. The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (1973) Daniel Eakins expected to inherit his uncle Jim’s vast estate. Instead, Daniel was presented with $6000.00 and a fancy belt. The sting of disappointment faded as soon as Daniel discovered that the fancy belt was a fully functional time machine1. The belt provides Daniel the means to pursue hedonism on an epic scale. Daniel can and does shape history to his taste, eliminating developments that might inconvenience him2, while indulging his very particular sexual inclinations. It would be a perfect life, at least for Daniel… if only he didn’t age. Daniel’s preferred bed partner is another version of Daniel; some of these analogs are women, but most of them are men. Daniel wonders if this means he is gay. Many readers might conclude Daniel is just tremendously self-absorbed. The Wizard Children of Finn by Mary Tannen (1981) To protect Deimne from the Sons of Morna, witch Bovmall transported Deimne to a place and time far from his would-be killers. Specifically, to the estate of eleven-year-old Fiona and eight-year-old Bran McCool’s Uncle Rupert. The trio become chums, which is why when Bovmall returns Deimne to his native Ireland, the siblings accompany him. Deimne has a hero’s path ahead of him. The boy, well versed in heroic narratives, is quite familiar with what destiny demands of him. Fiona and Bran, in contrast, find themselves in the heroic adventurer’s equivalent of the Actor’s Nightmare. An actor who flubs a line might get jeered by the audience. Adventurers who fumble their line could well end up dead. One gets the impression that the heroic adventurers + faithful bard combination is extremely successful… except of course there’s a significant survivorship bias there. None of the bards who died horribly along with their companion ever got to celebrate those histories. Making History by Stephen Fry (1996) Leo Zuckerman is working on a time machine. Leo also has a dreadful secret he struggles to come to terms with. Leo is not a Jew, as he believed. Leo is the son of a Nazi war criminal. Leo and his mother appropriated the names of a dead Jewish mother and her child at the end of World War II. Enter feckless historian Michael Young, led to Leo by misaddressed mail. Michael proposes that Leo use the time machine to come to terms with his past by utterly altering that past. All Michael need do is eliminate Hitler. After all, it’s not as if Hitler had been the beneficiary of existing social forces or that in Hitler’s absence, an even greater monster might take his place. Right? One might expect that Michael would be alarmed to find himself in a new world, one where the Nazis decisively won, Britain was crushed, the Soviet Union was nuked, and the Jews completely exterminated, not to mention horrified by his own role in the matter. Michael is impressively self-centered, so the only thing that motivates him to try to fix what he helped break is his discovery that among the many liberalizations that did not happen in this history was the legalization of homosexuality. This inconveniences bisexual Michael personally; thus, he acts. Broadway Revival by Laura Frankos (2021) Recently bereaved David Greenbaum could not save his husband. Nor is David much interested in therapy. Instead, David opts to assuage his grief by an entirely novel approach: steal a time machine, travel back to 1934, and save George Gershwin. Gershwin is merely the first name on a long laundry list of people David intends to save. Armed with detailed knowledge of the era, not to mention drugs as yet undeveloped in 1934, David establishes himself as an empresario of note, then guides performers from Gershwin to Lorenz Hart away from their historical dooms. The catch? The more successful David is, the less he can depend on his knowledge of the era to guide him. Readers should be aware that David is extremely focused on Broadway and that he views other famous events of 1930s solely in terms of how they affected Broadway3. However, because his focus is extremely specific, he manages to accomplish more of his goals than many other time travelers have been able to do. Macy Murdoch, created by JP Larocque & Jessica Meya (2023) The great-great-great-granddaughter of famed Toronto detective William Murdoch, 21st century teen Macy Murdoch takes pride in her famed ancestor. Thus, should the means to clear Murdock of the crime for which he was framed back in 1910 present itself, Macy would not hesitate to take advantage of it. Enter the mysterious, seemingly abandoned time machine. Macy and her friends commandeer the device and travel back to 1910. Once there, however, it becomes evident that clearing William Murdoch’s name will be considerably more difficult than anticipated. Fans of this series who plan to visit Toronto should be aware that not every building conceals a functioning time machine. After all, we need space to store all the illicit tunnel boring machines, death rays, and rudimentary suborbital rockets Toronto’s thriving communities of visionary geniuses have created over the decades. These are just a few stories about what one person (or a small group) can accomplish, given only determination and a time machine. Perhaps I omitted your favourites. If so, feel free to extol their virtues in comments below.[end-mark] Complete with documentation, so he need not worry about e.g. traveling back to 20,000 BP to find himself solidly embedded in a continental ice sheet. ︎There’s no evidence in Daniel’s preferred histories of Women’s Lib or the Civil Rights Movement, so far as I can see. ︎At least Daniel has done his homework. Harry Harrison’s A Rebel in Time has as its antagonist a man who relies overmuch on a single text, Ordeal by Fire by Fletcher Pratt, a short history that omits any mention of John Brown or why the bad guy might want to avoid Harper’s Ferry on October 16, 1859. ︎The post Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale appeared first on Reactor.

NBC Has #BigSadz Admitting Trump Can Legally Send in the Guard

We might need to bring in Bill Murray—the man whose 1979 SNL skit made "Quien Es Mas Macho?" famous—to judge this one. Today's Morning Joe played clips of NBC/MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff speaking with Trump border czar Tom Homan and California Gov. Gavin Newsom regarding the Trump administration's response to the rioting in Los Angeles over ICE's efforts to arrest illegal aliens. Soboroff mentioned to Homan threats that have been made to arrest anyone who stands in the way of enforcement operations, and asked if that applies to LA Mayor Bass and Newsom. Homan's succinct response: "I'll say it about anyone. You cross that line." The clip ended there, but the clear implication was that Bass and Newsom are potentially subject to arrest if they "cross that line." In the clip, Homan spoke for three seconds. The first clip of Newsom's remarks to Soboroff was much longer -- 42 seconds -- and included much macho posturing by the guv, including: "He's a tough guy. He knows where to find me." "Come after me. Arrest me. Let's just get it over with." "So Tom, arrest me. Let's go."     Then Soboroff ran another 66 seconds of Newsom braggadocio, including Newsom calling President Trump a "stone-cold liar." MSNBC is the Democrat Talking Points Network.     MSNBC clearly implies Newsom is more macho since the air-time advantage is about 36 to 1. Newsom might like nothing better than to be arrested, with its attendant virtue-signaling opportunities. Then again, Gavin would learn that LA's Metropolitan Detention Center ain't The French Laundry. Soboroff served as Newsom's corner man. When Newsom accused Trump of "putting real people's lives at risk," Soboroff dutifully parroted: "So that's what this is really all about, putting real people's lives at risk." Jacob did stop short of wiping Gavin's brow with a wet sponge.   Soboroff never mentioned "real people" whose lives were not merely "put at risk," but ended, at the hands of illegal aliens. Mika touted the new Democrat spin that somehow Trump could have made it less violent by....doing nothing. She said that ICE's actions could be "triggering" people. Yeah, lawbreakers do tend to get upset when law enforcement comes for them! PS: We have the goods on this activist Soboroff. He was a key figure in defamation lawsuit against MSNBC (they settled it) for alleging Dr. Mahendra Amin performed unnecessary hysterectomies on female migrants. He’s attacked Democrats from the left on the issue of border security, he wrote a book lamenting Trump’s immigration policies, whom he accused of “torturing human beings” on multiple occasions. He also claimed Trump was attempting to “terrorize millions of people” by being “xenophobic.” Here's the transcript. MSNBC Morning Joe 6/9/25 6:00 am EDT JACOB SOBOROFF: And there have been threats, you know, previously, that if you stand in the way of your enforcement operations, you know, you could be subject potentially to arrest.  Are you saying that about Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom? Are they at risk of being arrested?  TOM HOMAN: I'll say it about anybody. You cross that line.  . . .  SOBOROFF: And then last night in the Emergency Operations Center, I spent some time with Governor Newsom as he monitored the situation here. And I asked him about what Tom Homan had said about arresting him. I want to play a little bit more of that sound for you right now, Mika. Watch this.  GAVIN NEWSOM: He's a tough guy. Why doesn't he do that? He knows where to find me.  But you know what? Lay your hands off four-year-old girls that are trying to get educated. Lay your hands off these poor people who are just trying to live their lives, man. Trying to live their lives, paying their taxes, been here 10 years.  The fear, the horror, the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let's just get it over with. Tough guy. You know, I don't give a damn. But I care about my community. I care about this community.  The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up. They need to stop. And we need to push back. And I'm sorry to be so clear, but that kind of bloviating is exhausting.  So, Tom, arrest me. Let's go.  MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Trump border czar Tom Homan and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of Florida speaking to NBC's Jacob Soboroff during a weekend of significant unrest in southern California.  . . .  SOBOROFF: The thing is, President Trump and Gavin Newsom have been talking behind the scenes at least since the beginning of this began. I asked him about a phone conversation that they had on Friday night, and he said that they had a relatively cordial conversation, and this didn't come up. I want to give you a little bit more of what Governor Newsom said about his conversation on Friday night, Mika, with the president. Watch this.  NEWSOM: Well, under his executive order, and specifically notes, and under what the DOD did, is they had to coordinate with the governor of the state. They never coordinated with the governor of the state. We talked for almost 20 minutes, and barely, this issue never came up. And I kept trying to talk about L.A. He wanted to talk about all these other issues. We had a very decent conversation.  SOBOROFF: When was this?  NEWSOM: This was late Friday night, about 1.30 plus his time.  SOBOROFF: After the protests that started here?  NEWSOM: After the protests. And he never once brought up the National Guard. He's a stone-cold liar. He said he did. Stone-cold liar. Never did. It was a very civil conversation. I've always wanted to approach engagement with the President of the United States in a respectful and responsible way.  But there's no working with the president. There's only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.  I mean, where's your decency, Mr. President? Stop. Rescind this order. It's illegal and unconstitutional. And I said it. I'll say it again. It's immoral. You're creating the conditions that you claim you're solving, and you're not. And you're putting real people's lives at risk.  SOBOROFF: So that's what this is really all about, putting real people's lives at risk. And, you know, you've heard reports that there are riots on the streets of Los Angeles. There are certainly some, there has been civil unrest, reports of looting overnight. But on a wide scale, that is not what's happening across the city of Los Angeles.  . . .  MIKA: I'm, I really want to focus on what the California governor said there, and these are his words, President Trump creating the conditions you claim you are solving. You know, it's sort of what caused what at this point?.  And some might argue that the situation is triggering a lot of people. 

From what we’ve seen from Mindseye so far, it seems like a cross between Watch Dogs, Cyberpunk, and a little GTA 5, especially the weapon wheel. The debut release from Build a Rocket Boy, the studio helmed by former Rockstar, Grand Theft Auto, and Red Dead Redemption producer Leslie Benzies, Mindseye is also a spiritual offshoot from the larger-scale multiplayer game and creation platform Everywhere. What you might have heard so far is that the central Mindseye campaign is around 15 to 20 hours long. However, speaking to PCGamesN as part of Summer Game Fest, the sandbox shooter’s assistant director explains that Mindseye will actually be launched with a lot more playable material. Continue reading New sandbox shooter Mindseye comes with 45 hours of extra content at launch MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best sandbox games, Best building games, Best upcoming PC games

The Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 brings Philips' signature Ambiglow technology to bear on the world of OLED gaming monitors. Adding a wash of lighting behind the screen that matches the image on display, it draws you into what you're watching or playing in a truly magical way. Philips combines this feature with a QD-OLED panel that boasts effectively infinite contrast and dazzling HDR, but there are a few downsides to this display. The Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 actually slipped under our radar when it was first released, but has finally found its way into our testing labs and is still widely available. If you're a fan of the Ambiglow technology and the immersive feel it can bring, this Philips panel is going to have strong appeal and make it one of the best gaming monitors you can buy. We've put it through its paces to see just what its 34-inch, 175Hz, OLED, Ambiglow combination brings to the party. Continue reading Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 review - OLED and Ambiglow in a gaming monitor MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best graphics card, Best gaming PC, Best SSD for gaming

Imagine combining the silence of space with the crushing, seemingly never-ending weight and darkness of the ocean floor. That's the elevator pitch for Barotrauma, a co-op submarine simulator filled with multiple warring factions and gigantic sea creatures. You've got to manage your vessel, complete missions, and work with others to make sure your sub can keep functioning. It's a simulation game with a focus on horror, and it is now set to get even better, as the new Home and Harbor DLC is coming to the game sometime next year. Continue reading Horror submarine sim Barotrauma is getting even tenser with new DLC MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best co-op games, Best submarine games, Best horror games

D-Bag ALERT! How Stupid Does Chris Murphy Think We Are? What He Just Said About Riots/Trump Is SHAMEFUL

So, ABOUT That INFAMOUS Pic of Motorcyclist Holding the Mexican Flag? GUESS Who He Is and Where He's BEEN

Mollie Hemingway Puts California City's Statement About Ending ICE Contract Into More Accurate Language

The Last of Us and Days Gone are two beloved first-party games that I have a soft spot for in their respective areas, with countless hours poured into both, from cruising around Oregon on Deacon's Bike to navigating Abby and Ellie's intense conflict.