Named after S.M. Stirling's series, an Island in the Sea of Time (ISOT for short) is a specific type of Alien Space Bat: a community is teleported to a time and place in the past. Usually, these communities end up developing into their own nations, such as in both ISOT and the Ring of Fire series. In ISOT stories, "uptime" is an adjective used to reference people and things displaced to the past.