Know of any stories/novels where somebody travelled into the past and couldn't

[raccoon]

get back to the time they started out from?

[BadgerKid]

1. The Time Traveler's Wife? n/t

[DFW]

2. Funny you should mention that

I have never written anything of the sort, but have been encouraged to do so with a story line that not only has the main character doing just that, but does so on purpose.

[raccoon]

11. Do that and post it here. I hope your protagonist is going back to the

20th Century. :-)

[DFW]

17. 19th actually

20th doesn't work for the story I had in mind.

It's a long story (and that's the whole idea, isn't it?)

[Journeyman]

3. Rod Serling's "The Odyssey of Flight 33" . . .

Set on a passenger plane that crosses the time barrier and gets thrown back to prehistoric times. In their attempt to fly back to the 1960s, the pilots accidentally make it to 1939 - and they are running out of fuel. The story ends on a very modern, dissonant, unsure note.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Bradbury's 'The Sound of Thunder'.

Not the SyFy channel movie version, but the original story.

[Frosty1]

5. Outlanders series by Diana Gabaldon

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_1_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=outlanders+series+by+diana+gabaldon&sprefix=Outlanders

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. I haven't read those books in ages.

[fl_dem]

14. Loved that series.....

I may have to go back and reread them!!! I was a little confused at the ending....with the newspaper article...?

[catnhatnh]

6. Close...

Michael Chricton's "Timeline":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_%28novel%29

Some can't, some die in the past, some are driven mad by problems with the time machine. One chooses the past and others successfully return...

[raccoon]

7. Read that one--it was good. I remember one dude stayed in the Middle Ages. nt

[GodlessBiker]

8. Walking into the Senate and having the doors locked is about the same thing.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. :rimshot:

[FBaggins]

12. Robert Heinlein's "Door into Summer" is close (and pretty good)

How close it is to what you're looking for depends on how you define "time travel" and "couldn't return". The only actual "time travel" is backwards... and the only way to "get back" is to wait for time to pass again (though he does much of this while frozen).

Either way, it's an entertaining story from one of the SciFi greats.

[raccoon]

13. Read that several times, and I loved it. nt

[Pab Sungenis]

15. "Rant" by Chuck Pahlaniuk

although if I explain how that figures in, it would ruin the story.

[subterranean]

16. Not a book, but an episode of The Outer Limits

called "The Man Who Was Never Born."

(SPOILER ALERT!)

A man (played by Martin Landau) travels to the past to prevent a catastrophic event from occurring. He succeeds, but at a cost to himself: In the altered course of events, he never existed.

[classof56]

21. Oh, I remember that one! For some reason it comes to mind often.

Such an intriguing premise. If I'm recalling correctly, the last scene was of the woman who helped him, floating in space, weeping. Keep thinking maybe that was the actress Shirley Knight? Anyway, a really haunting tale that clearly made an impression back in my younger days!

[subterranean]

23. Yes, the actress was Shirley Knight.

It's up on YouTube if you want to watch it again.

[classof56]

24. I thank you, and I'll check that out! n/t

[krispos42]

18. Leo Frankowski's "Conrad Stargard" series

Mid-1980's engineer from Poland gets transported back in time accidently to 1231 Poland... 10 years before the Mongols invade.

It's 5 books, if I recall correctly. I read it literally dozens of times when I was a teenager



In a similar vein, although not quite what your thinking of, is the "Lost Regiment" series. Basically, a Civil War regiment aboard a ship gets blown off course into the Bermuda Triange. There's a bright light and when they wake up, they're on another planet. Turns out that the mystery of the Bermuda Triange (and a few other places around the globe) are actually one end of an ancient intersteller transit system. The world the Union troops land on is populated by "lost" humans from earlier times and lost civilizations (such as the Carthaginians), and the humans are oppressed and enslaved by an alien humanoid race known as "the Horde". It makes for quite a culture and technological shock, as republican Union troops with guns work with sword-swinging royalty in an oppressively feudal system.

It's a 9-part series on that one.

[YankeyMCC]

19. Jack L Chalker's "Downtiming the Nightside"

the time travel 'device' alowed people to return but in several instances characters got stuck in the past.

[Orrex]

20. Julian May's "Saga of Pliocene Exile"

I read it almost 20 years ago, and I can't remember whether I'd care to read it again, but there you have it.

The basis for the series involves a one-way time portal to the distant past.



Also, Crichton's wholly unreadable Timeline involves an archaeologist getting stuck in the past and his team going back to rescue him.
Spoiler: In the end, one of his colleagues semi-voluntarily elects to stay in the 14th century

[LWolf]

22. Close:

"Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict."

[Flying Dream Blues]

25. The Little Book by Selden Edwards

A family tale of time-traveling from turn of the century (20th) Vienna and the modern day US. It's a great story...

[bluescribbler]

26. One of the earliest

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain

I'm surprised nobody else mentioned it.