Day of the Hunters

by Isaac Asimov

• Release: November 1950
• Format: Short Story
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

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.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Age of Reptiles (252 Ma to 66 Ma: Mesozoic/Triassic/Jurassic/Cretaceous): the Cretaceous
• Circa AD 1940 to 1949: “. . . the war was on then . . .”

Time Travel Methods

• Wellsian Time Machines: “I got back in the machine, returned, and broke it up.”

Themes

• True Histories: true history of the extinction of the dinosaurs

Real-World Tags

• Cold War: Asimov says that the “story, alas, seems to have a moral.”
• Dinosaurs
• Extinction Events

Groupings

• Future Fiction · Science Fiction · et al (periodical)
• Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

1. From an unnamed midwestern university, the 1940s ⋙ to a few minutes or hours earlier. Multiple round trips. Note: test runs.
2. From an unnamed midwestern university, the 1940s ⋙ to the Cretaceous. Round trip. Note: the professor’s big jump.