Right in so many ways, in case it’s not immediately obvious (and it might not be at this scale, so click on the image to see a bigger version), this is a beautiful visualisation of all travelling in time done in film and television. Pay close attention to the legend when looking at certain trilogies though…we ended up discussing/arguing whether the Doc, at the end of Back To The Future II when he gets struck by lightning in the DeLorean, travelled temporally by Time Machine or by Force Of Nature. After about 25 minutes we realised that David McCandless had made the right choice in declaring the answer ‘Unknown’. Or should it be ‘Unknowable’?

There’s a couple of blog posts here that throw some light on the process, and also put questions like “What about Primer?” to bed. As well as it being about Time Travel, it floats my boat in other ways though…as David says:

“What I really love about this image, though, is the idea that this information has never been seen before. Despite the fact that it exists, in some way,somewhere, wrapped in various plots, it’s never been given form.”

I’ve e-mailed David to see if I can buy a print or print-res file of this from him. Apart from wanting it in my house, I think it’d make a perfect visual centre-piece for the Time-themed night (which I really need to write about soon as it’s next week).