Time Travel discussion

I will admit, this year seemed to be a little less active than previous years, so my New year wish is for more members to enjoy participating in discussions and activities (groupreads, monthly book prize contests, movie talk etc) that our hosts Amy, Lincoln and Nathan work very hard at delivering. I am less frequent myself but of my own doing due to my recent new time consuming hobbies and voluntary work in my astronomy society. But this group is always my real home.

So my personal time travel highlights of the year:

Favourite time travel experience of 2015:
Seeing

Back to the Future 2

on the big screen again celebrating the arrival of the fictional future October 21st 2015 in the film. Great fan loving audience, wonderful experience. Never seen so many Docs, Marty's and Lorraine's around me (I wore a BTTF t-shirt but maybe I should have also cos played too)

Favourite time travel book of 2015:
Well I have been very lacking in the book reading dept with a long reader's block but I broke that nonsense with a fantastic groupread book called

Syncing Forward

which I rated 5 stars.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Wonderfully engaging personal perspective drama that was emotional and poignant with a different kind of time travel plot device than we are used to.

Favourite new release time travel movie of 2015:
This year was quite a muted affair for new release time travel movies. Only Terminator: Genysis was the highest profile which turned out disappointing but still fun thanks to Arnie's likeable return. The time travel was meaty but the film tried too hard to be retro. Predestination and Project Almanac were disappointing (although Predesitnation was by far the more artistic and well executed). Ironically my third favourite new release time travel movie turned out to be one that is not marketed as such. Insidious 3! I enjoyed the first two supernatural movies for which the second film introduced the time travel element but this third movie threw in a great chunk of time travel goodness and oh man did I have a blast with this one. Btw, quite similarly, Paranormal Activity 4: The Ghost Dimension also turned out to have some time travel too! Not as enjoyable as Insidious though. My second favourite is Tomorrowland which I missed in the cinema but watched on Blu Ray during Christmas. A fine childrens holiday film it turned out to be too.

But my absolute favourite of the year is a very low key indie movie called

Coherent

which came out in UK in February but was out since 2013 in the states. Its about a group of partners invited to a house dinner which coincides with the passing of a comet. Exhilerating and mindscrewing gem of a movie.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...


Favourite time travel movie/tv series on the box in 2015:
I make it a personal duty (and personal enjoyment) to see as many time travel movies as possible which includes foreign movies. It so happens my favourite time travel movie this year is a Japanese animated film that is a follow up movie to a magnificent animated series called

Steins Gate.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Its a complete saga and quite a rollercoaster ride that starts off whimsical but evolves into a powerful epic. There is a subtitled and dubbed version of the tv series (I watch all on Netflix but I bought the movie on Blu ray). You can watch the dubbed version as its splendidly voiced by excellent voice actors. The film is only in subtitles. This was my time travel highlight on the box but I am also enjoying an interesting series on Netflix called Man in the High Castle which may or may not have time travel but depending on the way it rolls, methinks there is that possibility.

Favourite time travel game of 2015:
Well, of all my time travel entertainment experiences, at the cinema or on Netflix, Amazon Prime, blu ray, TV, or games, the one that has made the biggest impact for me was the stunning 5 part game called

Life is Strange.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The time travel was unique and drove the narrative into dramatic, heart rendering directions. This was a series that was so well acted with a remarkable storyline that was so well driven that it drew more range of emotional reactions from me than any movie or TV series was able to do (only the tv series, Steins Gate came close, in that respect). I invested in Life is Strange long before its release but I never imagined it would have this impact. In fact it has taken the gaming industry by surprise as this relatively small profile game beat out the monster commercial games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto to winning or being runner up in the best game of the year awards. For those of you that do not play games, dont fear this one, you dont have to be a gamer to enjoy this, its all about making choices, not about your ability to move a joypad quickly shooting aliens.

Other gaming highlights this year were Lost Echo (lovely story driven time travel game available on the Iphone or android mobile phones). Burial at Sea parts 1 and 2 which are substantial new story additions to the game, Bioshock Infinity and bloody brilliant, albeit complex time travel story too. However, Bioshock and its DLC stories are geared towards gamers as in needing some skill with a joypad. And finally, an underrated and poorly marketted but hugely enjoyable FPS game called Timeshift, if you enjoy games like Half Life, you'll sure as heck love Timeshift as I did.

Favourite short movie of 2015:
I am quite the addict for short movies in general but I have taken particular enjoyment in building a definitive list of time travel short movies for you guys that are available to watch online.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I watch all of them (of course!) and comment on each to give you all an indication of whether its a short worth investing your time on (bearing in mind that we all have different tastes). This year I added quite a number of new short movies and my favourite of this year has to be a wonderfully hilarious Jackie Chan/Ground Hog Day style mash up called

Rope-A-Dope

and its even more epic sequel Rope-A-Dope 2 but there are a few great quality shorts.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

There are 84+ short films for you to enjoy. If you know of any not on the list then let me know, I'll add it!

Favourite unorthodox time travel moment of 2015:
Well I had to put it that way, as being a very practical amateur astronomer, I wanted to include that seeing two galaxies in the same field of view on my telescope eyepiece for the first time at a dark skies camp in Wales, gave me tingles. It was called Bodes Nebula, a pair of galaxies for which it took its light photons an epic 12 million years to crash into my eyeballs.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I suspect many of you live in rural areas with relative dark skies. Good telescopes are affordable these days, if you have any interest at all in the weird space-time continuum out there, than go grab a pair of binos and look up for Andromeda galaxy or buy a telescope to peer even deeper into the past.



SO those were my highlights. Thanks again to Amy, Lincoln and Nathan for all their great work in running this group. And to all of you for being friendly time travel friends and enthiusiasts.

I'll end off with a special fond remembrance of John, our moderator who passed away a couple of years ago. Time is a healer but I still miss him. He welcomed me on board and many of you too, always encouraging and praising the positives in us and a great friend to all of us. As he knowingly approached his end in this world/dimension, his passionate wish was for our time travel group to be the best group on Goodreads but not by numbers, by quality of discussions, activities and most of all enjoyment. So my new year wish is for that wish to keep coming true and look forward to future group reads (I'll try take part in more too!) and time travel discussions with you lovely folks.

Happy New Year everyone!

Happy New Year Tej, and fellow time traveller enthusiasts.

2015 went by so fast, I can't believe it.

After reviewing my book read in 2015, I surprisingly see that I did not read very much time travel.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 3 stars
Time's Echo 5 stars
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency 2 stars
Shadow of Night 4 stars
Beautiful Wreck 4 stars

Hopefully can participate in the group reads a bit more this year.

A somewhat belated Happy New Year to everyone. I'm trying to get more active in my groups this year.

2015 was an interesting year for me. In November, as part of NaNoWriMo, I started work on writing a time travel book of my own, so I spent a good part of the year researching anything I could get my hands on. I think it's coming along nicely despite the fact that I now know why a lot of stories tend to gloss over dealing with paradoxes.

The best time travel book I found in 2015 was Lightning by Dean Koontz. Totally worth the read if you haven't. Also enjoying The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories even though I haven't finished it yet.

Movie-wise I liked Predestination, Triangle, and I actually enjoyed Terminator Genisys because it finally did what I was hoping for for half the series and address what would happen if they went back out of order.

Tv-wise I liked Twelve Monkeys (glad to hear it didn't get cancelled) and the fifth season of Lost.

Also read pretty much every entry on TvTropes even remotely related to time travel. Good times.

Hope everyone has a great year in year to come.