Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction -- Paul A. Harris, Arkadiusz Misztal, and Jo Alyson Parker -- part 1: Variations on J. T. Fraser's Hierarchical Theory of Time -- 1 President's Address: Time in Variance -- Raji C. Steineck -- 2 Out of Plato's Cave -- Steve Ostovich -- 3 From the Biotemporal to the Ecotemporal in Atilio Caballero's La última playa -- Lucia Cash Beare -- 4 Founder's Lecture: Is Time Out of Joint? Or at a New Threshold? Reflections on the Temporality of Climate Change -- David Wood -- 5 Slow Time: The Suspension of a Tension -- Paul A. Harris -- part 2: Variant Narratives -- 6 Temporal Otherness and the "Gifted Child" in Fiction -- Adam Barrows -- 7 The Seductive Quality of Variable Time in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- Sue Scheibler -- 8 In the Forest of Realities: Impossible Worlds in Film and Television Narratives -- Sonia Front -- 9 "Out of Repetition Comes Variation": Varying Timelines, Invariant Time, and Dolores's Glitch in Westworld -- Jo Alyson Parker and Thomas Weissert -- 10 Time in Variance and Time's Invariance in Richard McGuire's Here -- Arkadiusz Misztal -- part 3: Measuring Time's Variance -- 11 Variance in Time Morphologies in Production and Consumption of Incense in Medieval Japan -- Vroni Ammann -- 12 Understanding Computation Time: A Critical Discussion of Time as a Computational Performance Metric -- David Harris-Birtill and Rose Harris-Birtill -- 13 Variations of Narrative Temporalities in John Farrow's 1948 Film The Big Clock -- Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard -- 14 Transcending Temporal Variance: Time-Specificity, Long Distance Performance and the Intersubjective Site -- Emily DiCarlo -- 15 Temporal Experience in George Benjamin's Sudden Time -- Martin Scheuregger -- Index.

This interdisciplinary volume of essays explores how the notion of time varies across disciplines by examining variance as a defining feature of temporalities in cultural, creative, and scholarly contexts. Featuring a President's Address by philosopher David Wood, it begins with critical reassessments of J.T. Fraser's hierarchical theory of time through the lens of Anthropocene studies, philosophy, ecological theory, and ecological literature; proceeds to variant narratives in fiction, video games, film, and graphic novels; and concludes by measuring time's variance with tools as different as incense clocks and computers, and by marking variance in music, film, and performance art.