Back To The Future (1985)

Come With Us On Now On A Journey Through Time And Space

You know the story. In this sci-fi classic, Don Sindulfo Garcia invents, and uses, a time machine to travel into the past to marry his niece. Wait - that's not right! We need to go back...to the future.

The concept of time travel in fiction pre-dates 'Back To The Future' almost 300 years, in a book called 'Memoirs Of The Twentieth Century'. In it, Irish writer Samuel Madden imagines a series of letters from the 20th century that explain the rise and fall of certain powers. It's interesting, in a historical sense, but the lack of a protagonist (and the political nature of it all) make for one dry and long-winded affair. A better beginning would be about 150 years later in 1887 (yes, I know we're skipping quite a few entries) to a book by Spanish playwright Enrique Gaspar called 'El Anacronópete'. Enter the protagonist, Don Sindulfo Garcia.

You see, now we can travel back and re-write the introduction with some minor changes. We'll just replace Garcia with two characters - Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown, and instead of marrying his niece, he can just kiss his mother. Now we've got a story! The reason you've likely never heard of 'El Anacronópete' is that it fell into obscurity until 1999 when a Spanish science fiction club discovered and resurrected it. Even then, it wasn't published until 2012 where the title was eventually translated to 'The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey'. So there - H.G. Wells wasn't the first to write about a time machine; beat by a Spaniard.

As much as I love those stories, their machines are big and bulky - hardly alluring. 'The Time Ship' uses, well...a ship and I can't imagine Rod Taylor getting into his contraption and saying "ain't she a beaut!". The DeLorean on the other hand - now that's a vision, and I'm not even a car person. Originally known as the DMC-12, the DeLorean, much like the 'The Time Ship', almost fell into obscurity too. Writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale wanted Doc and Marty to use a fridge instead of a car but, thankfully, changed their minds in the end.

Maybe, in some alternate timeline, there's a version of us watching Marty set the dials in a retro-looking fridge to minus 88 degrees with Doc using the ice-dispenser to cool his glass of "Great Scotch!". And perhaps in that same world 'The Time Ship' wasn't lost in time, and sits on bookstore shelves - just above Wells' 'The Time Machine'.