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This article offers a mediological reading of the theme of time travel, taking H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine as a starting point, then analyzing the development−during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries−of the many stories that have been written on this theme. There are at least three basic mediological hypotheses: the close relationship between the perception of time and the medium of cinema (the latter influencing and perhaps even determining the former); the particular relationship between certain media and certain types of time travel, with reciprocal influences; an open reflection on why the theme is still so present in today’s imagination, and on what relationship there might be between the difficulty of imagining the future (most time travel is in the past) and the perception we have of society and the idea of society.