Time-Travel Fiction

At least that’s the firm belief everywhere on the island: a tualala can go forward in time and bring you back any single item you specify, for a price. We used to spend the night watches speculating on what would be the one best thing to order.

Ah! I’ve got it! On June 21st, 528, there was a total eclipse of the sun, but in 1879 there was none...now to wait...that will prove everything!

But one of Mr. Lupescu’s friends, now, was captain of a ship, only it went in time, and Mr. Lupescu took trips with him and came back and told you all about what was happening this very minute five hundred years ago.

And now, I realize, Mr. O’Breen, why I was inclined to trust you the moment I saw yoiur card. It was through a fortunately preserved letter of your sister’s, which found its way into our archives, that we knew of the early fiasco of Harrison Partridge and your part therein. We knew, too, of the researches of Dr. Derringer, and how he gave up in despair after his time traveler failed to return, having encountered who knows what unimaginable future barrier.

Not that he would necessarily have suspected anyway that he had come into possession of films that had been made more than fifty years in the future.

It works!! It works!!! I am a genius!! We are in 2046!!!

There is that element of wonder, too, you know. Every man in the place knows that someone is going to get clipped with that crane.

Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.

Project yourselves for into the fture...to the year one million A.D. The Earth is almost unfit for human life!
—Captain America in All Winners Comics 21

It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.

Here; if you can remember the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War’s going to end. This one, I mean.

Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimentional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry.

I hand him an empty can and say I want it filled with green paint—it should have orange polka dots.

Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. If our lives are written in the Book of Acts, then no effort is worth the candle. For there will be those who will eternally strive to be good and yet shall fail. There will be others who care not nor strive not and yet will thrive. Why? Only because it is so written. And by whom? By the omnipotent God. Who, my friends, has then written into our lives both the good and the evil that we do ourselves! He moves us as pawns, directs us to strive against odds, yet knows that we must fail, because he planned it that way.

This can’t be the stone age!—I’m just putty in the hands of a girl like you!
—from the cover of Bob Hope 43

Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother.

Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother.

Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline.
— Professor Ralph S. Halford to Asimov at the conclusion of his Ph.D. oral exam on May 20, 1948.

But searching down time, Troy-Poole now found only the old combination of Troy and Poole he knew so well. Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, each preceding the other. As far back as he could sense, there was always a Poole hovering over a Troy. Now he would become the next Poole, enmesh the next Troy in the web of time, and go his own way to bloody death.

...shifting a molecule of hydrogen that in our past really was never shifted.

It’s supposed to work by producing a displacement in the hyper-temporal field by means of a powerful mesotronic stasis of the continuum—and anyone near the machine’s field will immediately be projected into the future!
——Hugh Martinson in “Adventure into the Future”

It was a time-travel story about a man who went back to prehistoric times—told from the point of view of the cave man who encountered the time traveler.

Tomorrow, my tomorrow, is the day of the President’s death.

He lifted his foot to step over a Raggedy Ann doll smiling through its neglect as it lay there in the middle of the walk, a foundling not yet missed. He had not quite put his foot down again...

Every man can have Temp and if you save your money you can have Permanent, which they say, is as close to heaven as man can get.

I am going to set up an interference in the time rhythm at this particular spot. Then the chimpanzies will enter it with my time capsules—since I know you won’t— and they will deposit the capules here a million years ago!

The sky, the sky is wrong, Sebastian! The constellations are all twisted up. Halley’s comet is back where it must have been a few thousand years ago! Sebastion, I’ve got it! That sky! That sky is the sky of about 5000 years ago!
—from “The Temple of the Pharaohs”

I just stepped off the path, that’s all. Got a little mud on my shoes! What do you want me to do, get down and pray?

The inhabitants of the future resent you two hiding on a tropical isle, as it were, while they drop off the cliff into hell. Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them. It is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave. I am the guardian of their collective resentment against you two.

We have Time Machines for sale—simple little machines of paper and ink, tubes and wires that, coupled with your own mind can soar down the years of
Eternity.
—from a Dimension X advertisement

The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.

It would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that thre was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thutmosis III, to the sailing of Columbus.

I turned toward the ticket windows knowing that here—on the third level at Grand Central—I could buy tickets that would take Louisa and me anywhere in the United States we wanted to go. In the year 1894.

Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs.

Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around but Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in ‘By His Bootstraps.’ Damnedest tour de force I ever read; there just aren’t any switcheroos left after that.

We’re obviously stranded in the fourth dimension... We’ve both escaped that monster by plunging into the color-stream...which must be the stream of time!

Here within this brain of mine has been conceived a thing which will probably destroy a billion human lives in the coming years. D. triconus toxin in a suitable aerosol requires only a countable number of molecules in the lungs of a man to kill him. My brain and mine alone is responsible for that vicious, murderous discovery.

But Ann walked straight into that door and fell. I couldn’t figure out how she came to do it; it was as though she expected the door to open by itself or something. That’s what Ted said, too, going over to help her up. “Be careful, honey,” he said, and laughed a little, making a joke of it. “You’ll have to learn, you know, that doors won’t open themselves.”

But it’s a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always have—or do—or will. I don’t know, verbs get all mixed up. We don’t have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.

Of course! that’s it! I forgot to connect the plug to the electric outlet!
—Harry in Mystery Tales 10, Apr 1953, explaining why his time machine did’s work the first time

You don’t understand. Look at the short, hairy, twisted body—the neck bent, the head thrust forward, those enormous brows, the short flat nose...
—from And Adam Begot

Yes. Let’s see. Infinity over pi minus the two quadrants cubed...
—from Captain Science 5

Air power in the Civil War? Well, It’s been a pretty well-kept secret all these years, but we had it. The Major and me invented it ourselves.

Then, undressing in my bedroom, I remembered that Major Bowes was dead. Years had passed, half a decade, since that dry chuckle and familiar, “All right, all right,” had been heard in the nation’s living rooms.

If there was such a thing as a 1990 almanac, and if it was in that package, wild horses couldn’t get it away from me.

A fantastic time machine enables Mickey and Goofy to live in different periods of history. Right now they are aboard Mickey’s unarmed merchant vessel off the Carolinas in the early 1700’s—and off to starboard is a treacherous pirate ship...
—— Mickey Mouse 114

And now, my little papoose, I shall take you off in my time machine.

How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?

“Look, don’t you get it? I’m a time traveler. They picked me to send to the future. I’m important.”
   “Ummm. But you must realize that we have time travelers turning up continuously these days.”

Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!

We saw you reading the future with it over at the carnival!

I saw the ghost in my own living room, alone, between three and four in the morning, and I was there, wide awake, for a perfectly sound reason: I was worrying.

We must never forget our rights are based on our FAITH IN GOD. We claim them in Jefferson’s words, Not under the charters of kinds or legislatures, but under the King of Kings.
—from the first issue

Do you remember the time a few weeks back when all of upper Manhattan and the Bronx were without electricity for twelve hours because of the damndest overload cut-off in the main power board? I won’t say we did that, because I am in no mood to be sued for damages. But I will say this: The electricity went off when my uncle Otton turned the third knob.

Dear Mr. Lewis,
   We think you should consult a psychiatrist.
Sincerely,
Doyle P. Gates
Science Fiction Editor
Deep Space Magazine

A two-year forecast on the market was worth a billion!

Nothing from Ross. Nothing from any of them then but stares and shuddering breaths.
    Because the twisted bodies on the floor were theirs, all three of them.
    And all three...dead.

She had the gun in her hand. I went into the mesh cage, not knowing what to expect and yet too afraid of her to refuse. I didn’t want to wind up dead of starvation, no matter how much money she gave me—but I didn”t want to get shot, either.

To any man even remotely interested in politics, let alone one as involved as I am, every 1st Tue of every 4th Nov must seem like one of the crucial if-points of history.

The theory said that a man returning through time could alter the social and technological trends of the people and times to which he returned, in order to change history that was already past.

I am Chronos, the spirit of time! Do not destroy the sacred sun dial! Come closer and I shall initiate you into the mysteries of time which you pursue so hotly.

Somehow we have stepped out of our own time into another.
—from “A Hole in His Head”

They didn’t use that style of furniture in Los Angeles—or anywhere else that you know of—in 1954. That thing over there in the corner—you can’t even guess what it is. So might your grandfather, at your age, have looked at a television.

“By God and all the saints,” he said. “Time travel.”
    Harold snorted impatiently. “My dear Peter, ‘time’ is a meaningless word taken by itself, just as ‘space’ is.”
    “But barring that, time travel.”
    “If you like, yes.”

What if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved?

It is instead one of the seven or eight great philosophical questions that remain unanswered, the problem of whether man has or has not free will.

I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I’ve got his signature. As a memento, you know.

In rapid succession, he asked for five million dollars, three functioning oil wells, a motion-picture studio, perfect health, twenty-five more dancing girls, immortality, a sports car and a herd of pedigreed cattle.

We fought in Korea. We fought in China. In Germany and Yugoslavia and Iran. It spread, farther and farther. Finally the bombs were falling here. It came like the plague. The war grew. It didn’t begin.

There isn’t going to be anything. It’s all black after tomorrow.

Space-time—is cute?

We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads, buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead.

Men in strange garb appear. It seems that they unfasten the machine and take it away. Actually they are setting up the machine, but since time is running backwards—so do they!