During the November Twitter chat for #the21ders, one of the questions was:

If your book were a holiday, what would it be?

In case you aren’t aware, there are days out there commemorating pretty much everything, and sure enough, I found Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day! Which happens to be celebrated on Dec. 8 every year.

So…

Happy Pretend to Be A Time Traveler Day!

According to NationalDayCalendar.com, people started celebrating time travelers in 2007. Both this site and NationalToday.com include some really fascinating facts about time travel and its history both in media as well as some associated theories. Like: is it actually possible? While my main character, Jenny, is much more concerned about how the time jump has affected her life, there are other characters in YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED who are intrigued by the science.

I hope Jenny and the passengers of Flight 237 will become some of your favorite time travelers, but in the meantime, here are some other time travelers I love!

Books!

If you think about it, A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens is sort of a time travel novel. Scrooge travels to the past and the future. I really loved this version of the tale by Cynthia Hand–THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLLY CHASE. Bonus: if you decide to read now, it fits right in with the holiday season!

I absolutely adored ONCE UPON A KISS by Robin Palmer. It’s about a girl from 1986 who chokes on Fun Dip and wakes up in 2016. Unlike my book, where everyone around Jenny has aged 25 years, Zoe is dropped into a different century with all the same people, just a different life. She’s the most popular girl in school, has a boyfriend she doesn’t know what to do with, and her best friend is a nerd she apparently doesn’t associate with. More people should check this book out!

As soon as I read OPPOSITE OF ALWAYS by Justin A. Reynolds earlier this year, I knew it would be one of my favorite reads of 2020 (so be prepared for me to talk about it again in a couple of weeks!). It’s a Groundhog Day take on time travel, with Jack repeating the same four months on an endless loop, making different mistakes every time, trying to save Kate’s life. WOW! I could not put this book down!

Movies!

First and always. My family just finished a re-watch of the Back to the Future series, and I’m toying with the idea of doing a live re-watch of Back to the Future II sometime during 2021 leading up to release. It’s just so fun to see how the writers expected 2015 to look–a year that’s now five years in the past. They got a few things right. And yes, this movie is totally on my YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED watch list, a post I plan to do later. However, it’s so much more than just time travel!

I actually really enjoy Groundhog Day (mentioned above) as well. Phil, a TV weatherman, is sent to Punxsutawney, PA, to cover Groundhog Day and keeps repeating the day. Bill Murray is perfect for this role because he’s so great at playing a jerk, but he’s also great at showing character change.

Time travel is not a new concept to the Star Trek universe. It’s all over the original TV show and a major plot point in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (yes, my parents raised me on Star Trek!). But I really enjoyed how it was incorporated with the new movie series in 2009. Basically, it created a separate timeline so the old one could still exist and this one could too.

Side note on this movie discussion: one where I am not on board with the time travel? Avengers: Endgame. You seriously don’t want to get me started on why Captain America staying in the past screws up so many things. It kind of ruined it for me. Moving on…

TV Shows!

Oh, I loved this show so much when I was a kid! How Scott Bakula’s character would leap into the lives of people in the past and correct mistakes they had made. It’s time travel and living someone else’s life for a while and a seemingly endless quest to get back home. Gosh, now I’m wondering if it’s streaming somewhere so I can watch Quantum Leap all over again…

I confess I came really late to Doctor Who, and I’m nowhere near caught up. We’re paused somewhere in the Peter Capaldi seasons. I expect to go back at some point, but I’ve just had so many other things to watch lately. My favorite Doctor so far has been David Tennant. I love how crazy, creative, and varied this show is. I also love all of the supporting characters. Okay, writing about it is making me think I need to make it a priority again.

The Flying House is a cartoon from the early 1980s made in Japan. It’s about kids who find a spaceship shaped like a house in the woods, with a professor and robot inside. It turns out the “flying house” is a time machine, and it takes them back to Bible times. I watched this as a very small child, and yes, it was telling Bible stories, but it also was probably the very first time travel show I ever watched. After all these years, I still remember this show and the magic of the flying house!

What are your favorite time travel stories? And if you were going to pretend to be a time traveler, who would you choose?