Men Would Be Nice. But No. It's Raining Time Travel Awesome.

Raise your hand if you loved Ken Grimwood's novel, Replay.

Oooh, oooh. Me.

Replay was published thirteen years ago, so it might have been off your radar, but it's about a man who dies (on page!) in the opening scene and gets the opportunity to return to his life as a teenager with full knowledge of the lessons and choices he made the first time around. I guess it took awhile for Hollywood to come around, too, because Warner Brothers is just now ferreting out a director for the project. And who should be at the forefront of consideration but Romert Zemeckis of Back to the Future fame. This time: less camp. Let's hope.

While we're on the topic of films that rain awesome, let's talk about Looper. Hate the title, but it really says it all, doesn't it? Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt of Inception fame, Looper is a sci-fi time thriller about a group of hitmen who go back in time to kill criminals before they perpetrated their crimes. Levitt calls Looper, which also stars Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt and is set to release later this year, the most important film of his career.

One more film tidbit: Remember the "Safety Not Guaranteed" movie? They're looking for extras to fill a football stadium in Burien, Washington on May 7th. From this announcement alone, I was able to mine a MacGyver-eque YouTube video and a link to a forum where the ad's author claims it as a joke written for Backwoods Home Magazine.

But movies are not where the storm of awesome ends, dear Vortexers. More time travel, you say? I aim to please.

TweetyPop is a new app for the I-pad that lets you "time travel through Twitter space." Watch this demo if you're all up into returning to a specific time in Twitter history and zapping read tweets like the sci-fi nerd we all are here.

Is there any wonder that the most entries for the L. Ron Hubbard's speculative fiction Writers of the Future contest for the past few cycles have been time travel oriented? Um. No. Coordinating Judge K.D. Wentworth blames Hollywood, but we were on that bus miles ago, weren't we?

Finally, Michael A. Burstein speculates on reasons the Chinese government banned time travel stories from their cultural radar early last month.

Happy Monday, everyone!