This article was written by Katie Davis

Courtesy of Graham Hardy Fantastic Fiction

Many people would probably consider H. G. Wells' The Time Machine to be the first well-known use of time travel in literature, since the notion is stated blatantly in the title after all. Though the use of a machine is a definite part of the time travel genre, we forget that even Dickens' extremely recognizable A Christmas Carol uses elements of traveling forward and backward through the years.

Of course, since time travel was a popular occurrence in classic literature, it continued to be so in modern classics such as Slaughter House Five and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Soon many science fiction movies and TV series came to employ time travel quite often such as in Planet of the Apes or Lost.

Perhaps this constant presence of time travel in pop culture is why it is not surprising that Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel, The Time Traveler's Wife was a bestseller and is soon to be released as a major motion picture.

Though the widespread enjoyment of the book is not at all surprising, it is rather bizarre to consider how the notion of time travel is so deeply ingrained in our cultural subconscious. Why have these adventures in time continued to be so popular throughout many historical periods? Why have they become seemingly timeless?

One of the more obvious attractions of much time travel in literature and film is the seemingly first-hand experience of the unknown. When a beloved character travels to the past, we suddenly see history as something to experience, something alive and fascinating to us. Likewise when, a character travels far into the future, this unknown era becomes not just something to speculate about and forget, but something to look forward to and dream about.

Since it was labeled in the category of science fiction, I started The Time Travelers' Wife expecting some such adventures into the great vast abyss of the past and future such as the main character travels back to the Civil War or forward to a time of flying cars and silver suits.

This novel doesn't quite make it back to the Civil War, but it does make it back to the eighties. The main character, Henry, is born in 1963, and so lives most of his young adult life in the eighties and early nineties. Therefore when he is older, he occasionally time travels back to this period and is able to re-experience the punk music scene he was so much a part of in his younger years.

A Violent Femmes concert or sporting a dyed-green Mohawk aren't such far-away experiences for readers of the present, though it's still interesting to compare our not so distant past with our present in order to discover otherwise opaque insights into strengths and weaknesses of our current world.

As Henry's wife Clare points out, "if you're a time traveler, you can always go back. Most people are glued to the present; you get to be there again and again."

However, it seems that this sort of remembrance or experience of the past can be achieved through other genres such as historical fiction. If I want to feel what it's like to be a pilgrim coming to America on the Mayflower, I could just as easily read a book set in the 1600s instead of a time travel story.

Yes, it may be interesting that in tales of time travel a modern-day character is the one experiencing the past. It's true their reactions will be quite different from those of characters who supposedly reside in said time period, but since we are members of a modern day audience, our own reactions to historical fiction could be just as appealing as the reactions of a modern-day character experiencing epochs of the past through time travel.
Something besides a contemporary view of the primeval must attract audiences to the time travel sub-genre of science fiction.

Part of the excitement of time travel is related to the technological gadgetry (often created by a kooky scientific genius) necessary for a successful voyage into the great unknown folds of time. For example in Back to the Future, the scene where Marty McFly drives the souped up DeLorean DMC-12 back in time while keeping it at exactly 88 mph is one of the most well-known of the entire film.

However, in The Time Traveler's Wife, there is no such nutty professor or hi-tech device. Henry's involuntary time traveling is caused by a genetic disease, and he simply disappears without the aid of anything. Though for many time travel stories the scientific discovery is a great source of intrigue, for this particular novel, the attraction must come from elsewhere.

As I progressed further in the novel, I found that some of my favorite scenes involved instances when Henry traveled back in time and interacted with himself at a younger age or traveled forward to interact with an older self. In one particular instance when he encounters a younger self, he feels the need to impart useful knowledge such as pick pocketing or lock picking to help himself survive as a child time traveler.

This strange situation of encountering one's self reminds me of the oddness of watching a home video. Though we know that the gurgling babies or cart wheeling ten year olds on the screen are inseparable from and an absolute part of us, it is often unsettling to encounter these other versions of ourselves that may seem so different from the present.

We may be critical of our previous actions or delighted by what we see, but there's no denying that these interactions are fascinating to us and provide us with a heightened awareness of the way we've grown and changed over the years. I imagine it to be just as eye-opening for Henry as he interacts with himself as a child.

In another scene from the novel, Clare is with Henry in the present, but literally bumps into an older Henry time traveling from the future. As she interacts with one and then the other, she is amazed that they seem to be so dissimilar, yet are essentially the same person.

This instance, despite the abnormal sci-fi elements, rings true when we consider how drastically real people can change over time. After long absences, an old friend can seem like a complete stranger or an enemy can seem more like a potential lover, and even if we may not be aware of it, others probably detect drastic shifts in us as we mature and grow. Though in the real world these differences usually occur over extensive periods of time, with the use of time travel, these transformations in a fictional character's personality become instantly apparent.

Thus it occurs to me why almost every long-running sitcom seems to have a flashback episode.  The audience is enlightened with scenes from the characters' earlier lives, explanations of how the current group joined up, or clarifications vital to understanding a mystery from the show's present. The show may also illustrate a look into the future during the series finale to let the audience know that it all turns out alright in the end - or not. The use of time travel in these instances is not to depict adventures into unknown worlds or peculiar scientists with complicated gizmos, but instead for deeper insight into the characters.

Unlike Henry we don't have the ability to instantaneously disappear to another era, yet we still long to connect with our pasts and futures through the use of photographs, videos, journals, and time capsules. This is why we enjoy it so much when Scrooge encounters his happier self with the ghost of Christmas past, Marty Mcfly runs into his parents as teenagers, or Henry eats Oreos with his nine year old self. We envy these personal connections that transcend time and so strive to forge such links with mementos of our own.

We long to keep these connections because we understand that we and those close to us will inevitably change as time goes by. This is part of what makes us human and so in literature, film, and television, we long for characters that reflect the complicated and multifaceted nature of real people.

Using time travel as the whimsical medium, Audrey Niffenegger achieves a realistic portrayal of human nature as she allows us to see many aspects of Henry and Clare through the years. Without involving a journey out of this world or a nutty scientist, she fills these fictional persons with such life that we can't help but relate to their spirits with incredible sympathy and love.

It is almost as if we are watching a home video of old friends.

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