Maybe Next Time

Maybe Next Time participates in a long tradition of literary narratives that play with the concept of time for philosophical and moral effect. Many consider The Time Machine by H. G. Wells the work that popularized the literary device of time travel. In the 1895 story, a scientist travels thousands of years into the future and then returns to recount his adventures. Several prominent writers of the 20th century tried the device in their own works, including Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Ursula LeGuin.

The time slip novel, in which the narrator travels through time by supernatural means, has become its own genre; Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle (1819) and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) both use this device. In his hugely popular A Christmas Carol (1843), Charles Dickens introduces travel backward and forward in time to give his protagonist, Ebeneezer Scrooge, a new perspective on his life, spurring him to rearrange his priorities and change his behavior accordingly.

This moral surfaces in the popular American film Groundhog Day (1993), a comedy in which a callous TV weatherman relives the same day until he chooses to act more kindly and selflessly toward others, which wins him friends and a romantic interest.