temporal loop n.

= time loop n.

Time Travel

  • 1975 National Lampoon June 67/1 page image

    We’ve been stuck in a temporal loop, my boy, and I’ve come to get us out of it. Sit. I’ll explain.

  • 1977 T. Dicks Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters v. 53 page image Terrance Dicks bibliography

    In horrified tones, Kalik hissed, ‘Do you mean all those creatures are actually living in there?’ Vorg nodded proudly. ‘That is so, your worship, all happy and content in their own miniaturised environments. The incorporation of a simple temporal loop ensures that they repeat the same basic patterns hour after hour...’

  • 1978 E. S. Rabkin Fantasy Literature: Gut with a Backbone in CEA Critic (vol. 40, no. 2) Jan. 10 page image Eric S. Rabkin

    When Wallas in Robe-Grillet’s The Erasers kills the man whose murder he had been dispatched earlier to solve, we are caught in a temporal loop that throws good old comfortable Aristotelian cause-and-effect to the winds.

  • 1980 D. Broderick Ballad of Bowsprit Bear’s Stead in U. K. LeGuin & V. Kidd Edges 55 page image Damien Broderick bibliography

    ‘Do we have any evidence in the historical records of Marx and Smith still being here after the conference?’ ‘We don’t have any post-Earth record of them, period. That could mean anything. If you want to take them you you’ll just have to risk precipitating a temporal loop.’

  • 1984 W. Salomon As Time Goes By in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 70 page image Warren Salomon bibliography

    All I had to do was approach him, convince him of the futility of his mission, send him back to the exact moment he had come from, and the temporal loop would be complete. It would be a perfect zero as far as he was concerned—a non-event.

  • 1992 N. Spinrad On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction Nov. 313/1 page image Norman Spinrad

    He…must ultimately fail and get zapped back to the present by another plot device, so that Twain can come into possession of his journal in the first place, and, even more importantly, close the temporal loop seamlessly, so that the author can avoid having to deal with an altered present, multiple time lines, or time-travel paradoxes.

  • 1998 H. G. Stratmann Phoenix in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Oct. 71/2 H. G. Stratmann bibliography

    I beg your forgiveness for intruding, but it is necessary. This critical temporal loop must be closed, lest civilization itself collapse.

  • 2011 B. McAllister The Messenger in Asimov’s Science Fiction July 84 page image Bruce McAllister bibliography

    They have fun because they know it won’t change anything. It can’t. It’s Non-Paradoxical. Anything they do is already in the temporal loop.


Research requirements

antedating 1975

Research History

The 1977 citation is from a novelization of the 1973 serial "Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters". The term is apparently not used in the original; at least, it is not found in the subtitles that are available online.

Since the term was clearly widespread and understood in the 1970s, we're hoping to find an earlier example.

Last modified 2024-07-09 19:56:57
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.