Scrooge isn't the first time traveler in literature. Stories of people leaping forward in time appear in both the Mahabarata and the Talmud, as well as in 15th century Japanese literature. One of the earliest instances of backward time travel was described in the 1733 science-fiction story 'Memoirs of the Twentieth Century,' by the Irish author Samuel Madden. But the tight-fisted businessman remains one of the most famous, shaping our modern conception of Chrismas and serving as a model for redemption.
