Absolutely Inflexible

by Robert Silverberg

Whenever one-way jumpers from the past show up, it’s up to Mahler to shuffle them off to the moon where they won’t present any danger of infection to the rest of humanity, but now Mahler is faced with a two-way jumper.

Even a cold, a common cold, would wipe out millions now. Resistance to disease has simply vanished over the past two centuries; it isn’t needed, with all diseases conquered. But you time-travelers show up loaded with potentialities for all the diseases the world used to have. And we can’t risk having you stay here with them.

“Absolutely Inflexible” by Robert Silverberg, Fantastic Universe, July 1956.

Hopper

by Robert Silverberg

I haven’t yet read this short story that Silverberg expanded to a novel in 1967, though perhaps some day I will spot the Ace Double paperback that packaged it along with four other stories and the short novel, The Seed of Earth.

“Hopper” by Robert Silverberg, in Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956.

The Assassin

by Robert Silverberg

Walter Bigelow has spent 20 years of his life building the Time Distorter that will allow him to go back to save Abraham Lincoln.

The day passed. President Lincoln was to attend the Ford Theatre that night, to see a production of a play called “Our American Cousin.”

“The Assassin” by Robert Silverberg, in Imaginative Tales, July 1957.

MUgwump Four

by Robert Silverberg

Oh, dear! Albert Miller has dialed a wrong number on the Mugwump-4 exchange, and the mutants who answered have decided that the only solution is to catapult him into the future where he won’t be able to upset their plans for World Domination.

— Michael Main

At this stage in our campaign, we can take no risks. You’ll have to go. Prepare the temporal centrifuge, Mordecai.

“Mugwump Four” by Robert Silverberg, Galaxy Magazine, August 1959.

The Nature of the Place

by Robert Silverberg

Paul Dearborn is quite certain that he’ll go to hell, a prospect that bothers him in only one way: the uncertainty of what it will be.

And the only thing that bothers me is that I just had to read this in the month of my own sixtieth birthday. Oh, that no-goodnick Silverberg!

He thought back over his sixty years. The betrayals, the disappointments, the sins, the hangovers. He had some money now, and by some standards he was a successful man. But life hadn't been any joyride. It had been rocky and fear-torn, filled with doubts and headaches, moments of complete despair, others of frustrated pain.

“The Nature of the Place” by Robert Silverberg, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1963.

The Time Hoppers

by Robert Silverberg

The High Government of the 25th century has directed Joe Quellen (a Level Seven) to find out who’s behind the escapes in time by lowly unemployed Level Fourteens and put a stop to it.

Suppose, he thought fretfully, some bureaucrat in Class Seven or Nine or thereabouts had gone ahead on his own authority, trying to win a quick uptwitch by dynamic action, and had rounded up a few known hoppers in advance of their departure. Thereby completely snarling the fabric of the time-line and irrevocably altering the past.

The Time Hoppers by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, May 1967).

Hawksbill Station

by Robert Silverberg

Jim Barrett was one of the first political prisoners sent on a one-way journey to a world of rock and ocean in 2,000,000,000 BC; now a secretive new arrival threatens to upset the harsh world that he looks after.

One of his biggest problems here was keeping people from cracking up because there was too little privacy. Propinquity could be intolerable in a place like this.

“Hawksbill Station” by Robert Silverberg, in Galaxy, August 1967.

Hawksbill Station

by Robert Silverberg

The novelization pads out the original nine sections of the novella and adds five new chapters with Barrett’s backstory as a revolutionary, right to the point where he’s sent back to the station. I didn’t get much from the new chapters, and between the novel and the original story, I would recommend reading the original only.

So Hawksbill’s machine did work, and the rumors were true, and this was where they sent the troublesome ones. Was Janet here too? He asked. No, Pleyel said. There were only men here. Twenty or thirty prisoners, managing somehow to survive.

Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, October 1968).

The Masks of Time

by Robert Silverberg

To me, this seemed like Robert Silverberg’s answer to Stranger in a Strange Land, although this time the stranger is Vornan-19, who claims to be from the future.

There’s no economic need for us to cluster together, you know.

The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg (Ballantine Books, May 1968).

Up the Line

by Robert Silverberg

Up the Line by Robert Silverberg, 2-part serial, Amazing Stories, July and September 1969.

In Entropy’s Jaws

by Robert Silverberg

John Skein, a communicator who telepathically facilitates meetings between minds, suffers a mental overload that causes him to experience stressful flashbacks and flashforwards, some of which lead him to seek a healing creature in the purple sands and blue-leaved trees by an orange sea under a lemon sun.

Time is an ocean, and events come drifting to us as randomly as dead animals on the waves. We filter them. We screen out what doesn’t make sense and admit them to our consciousness in what seems to be the right sequence.

“In Entropy’s Jaws” by Robert Silverberg, in Infinity Two, edited by Robert Hoskins (Lancer Books, 1971).

Son of Man

by Robert Silverberg

Son of Man by Robert Silverberg (Ballantine Books, June 1971).

When We Went to See the End of the World

by Robert Silverberg

Nick and Jane are disappointed when they discover that they are not the only ones from their social group to have time-tripped to see some aspect or other of the end of the world.

“It looked like Detroit after the union nuked Ford,” Phil said. “Only much, much worse.”

“When We Went to See the End of the World” by Robert Silverberg, in Universe 2, edited by Terry Carr (Ace Books, 1972).

(Now + n, Now - n)

by Robert Silverberg

Investor Aram Kevorkian has the unique advantage that he can communicate with himself 48 hours yore and 48 hours hence, until he falls in love with Selene who dampens his psychic powers and his trading profits.

“Go ahead, (now + n),” he tells me. ((To him I am (now + n). To myself I am (now). Everything is relative; n is exactly forty-eight hours these days.))

“(Now + n, Now - n)” by Robert Silverberg, in Nova 2, edited by Harry Harrison (Walker, October 1972).

What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

by Robert Silverberg

When all eleven families on Redford Crescent receive a newspaper from the middle of next week, the result is a hastily called neighborhood meeting and an assortment of get-rich-quick plans.

— Michael Main

Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper?

“What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper” by Robert Silverberg, in Infinity Four, edited by Robert Hoskins (Lancer Books, November 1972).

Breckenridge and the Continuum

by Robert Silverberg

Wall Street investor Noel Breckenridge has been summoned to the far future, possibly to tell stories, but is there a larger purpose?

— Michael Main

Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.

“Breckenridge and the Continuum” by Robert Silverberg, in Showcase, edited by Roger Elwood (Harper and Row, June 1973).

Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine

by Robert Silverberg

“Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine” by Robert Silverberg, in Ten Tomorrows, edited by Roger Elwood (Fawcett Gold Medal, September 1973).

Many Mansions

by Robert Silverberg

With eleven years of marriage behind them, Ted and Alice’s fantasies frequently start with a time machine and end with killing one or another of their spouse’s ancestors before they can procreate. So naturally, they each end up at Temponautics, Ltd. Oh, and Ted’s grandpa has some racy fantasies of his own.
In Silverberg’s Something Wild Is Loose (Vol. 3 of his collected stories), he posits that this story is “probably the most complex short story of temporal confusion” since Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941) or “—All You Zombues—” (1959), but I would respectfully disagree. In particular, I would describe Heinlein’s two stories as the most complex short stories of temporal consistency in that there is but a single, static timeline and (in hindsight) every scene locks neatly into place within this one timeline. By contrast, Silverberg story involves multiple time travel choices by the characters in what I would call parallel universes. The confusion, such as it is, stems more from what appears to be alternate scenes in disconnected universes rather than temporal confusion per se.

— Michael Main

On the fourth page Alice finds a clause warning the prospective renter that the company cannot be held liable for any consequences of actions by the renter which wantonly or wilfully interfere with the already determined course of history. She translates that for herself: If you kill your husband’s grandfather, don’t blame us if you get in trouble.

“Many Mansions” by Robert Silverberg, in Universe 3, edited by Terry Carr (Random House, October 1973).

Trips

by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg’s introduction to “Trip” in the collection Trips, vol. 4 of the Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg (Subterranean Press, 2009), states that he wrote the story with the goal of being the ultimate alternative universes story, and he lived up to that goal, devising nearly a dozen alternative Bay Area universes for his hero Cameron to express his wanderlust. Admittedly, there’s no actual time travel because the story was part of an anthology of ultimate sf, and Silverberg left the time travelin’ to Philip K. Dick’s “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts.” But there is a world that Cameron thinks is a 1950s San Francisco (it isn’t) and there’s a chance that Cameron experiences the passage of time at rates that differ from world to world.

Warning: The first publication of the story in that ultimate anthology (Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology) was “cut to shreds” by a ham-handed editor at Charterhouse, so your best bet is to read it in one of Silverberg’s later collections.

— Michael Main

There’s an infinity of worlds, Elizabeth, side by side, worlds in which all possible variations of every possible event take place. Worlds in which you and I are happily married, in which you and I have been married and divorced, in which you and I don’t exist, in which you exist and I don’t, in which we meet and loathe one another, in which—in which—do you see, Elizabeth, there's a world for everything, and I’ve been traveling from world to world.

“Trips” by Robert Silverberg, in The Feast of St. Dionysus (Charles Scribner’s Sons, March 1975).

Gianni

by Robert Silverberg

“Gianni” by Robert Silverberg, Playboy,February 1982.

The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve

by Robert Silverberg

“The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve” by Robert Silverberg, Omni, March 1982.

The Man Who Floated in Time

by Robert Silverberg

“The Man Who Floated in Time” by Robert Silverberg, in Speculations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Alice Laurance (Houghton Mifflin, April 1982).

Jennifer’s Lover

by Robert Silverberg

“Jennifer’s Lover” by Robert Silverberg, Penthouse, May 1982.

Dancers in the Time-Flux

by Robert Silverberg

“Dancers in the Time-Flux” by Robert Silverberg, in Heroic Visions, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Ace Fantasy Books, March 1983).

Needle in a Timestack

by Robert Silverberg

Nick Mikklesen and his wife Janine know that Janine’s ex-husband is out to break up their marriage by altering the past.

In the old days, when time was just a linear flow from then to now, did anyone get bored with all that stability? For better or for worse it was different now. You go to bed a Dartmouth man and wake up Columbia, never the wiser. You board a plane that blows up over Cyprus, but then your insurance agent goes back and gets you to miss the flight.

“Needle in a Timestack” by Robert Silverberg, Playboy,June 1983.

Homefaring

by Robert Silverberg

A grand experiment takes McCulloch into the mind and body of an intelligent creature—an intelligent giant lobster—of the far future.

“It is not painful to have a McCulloch within one,” his host was explaining. “It came upon me at molting time, and that gave me a moment of difficulty, molting being what it is. But it was only a moment. After that my only concern was for the McCulloch’s comfort.”

“Homefaring” by Robert Silverberg (Phantasia Press, July 1983).

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg

Charles Phillips is a 20th-century New Yorker in a future world of immortal leisurites who reconstruct cities from the past.

— Michael Main

He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them. That he knew. He knew that his name was Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities, not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg and Parks and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and Buenos Ares and a multitude of others, all at the same time.

“Sailing to Byzantium” by Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1985.

Project Pendulum

by Robert Silverberg

Ricky and Sean Gabrielson, 23-year-old identical twins, are the first men to travel through time, taking ever larger swings that send one backward and one forward.

This was the first book that I read in the rare books room of the University of Colorado library from the Brian E. Lebowitz Collection of 20th Century Jewish American Literature.

Hi there. You’re not going to believe this, but I’m you of the year 2016, taking part in the first time-travel experiment ever.

Project Pendulum by Robert Silverberg (Walker, September 1987).

House of Bones

by Robert Silverberg

“House of Bones” by Robert Silverberg, in Terry’s Universe, edited by Beth Meacham (Tor, June 1988).

In Another Country

by Robert Silverberg

“In Another Country” by Robert Silverberg, [Error: Missing '[/ex]' tag for wikilink]

Enter a Soldier, Later: Enter Another

by Robert Silverberg

“Enter a Soldier, Later: Enter Another” by Robert Silverberg, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1989.

A Sleep and a Forgetting

by Robert Silverberg

Mike is pulled out of his quiet tenured life as a professor in the Department of Sinological Studies at the University of Washington because his lifelong friend Joe Hedley seems to be receiving transmissions in Mongolian. When Mike arrives, he not only understands the transmission, but can talk back as well.

Time travel and alternate histories often overlap, usually when some incident of time travel to the past creates the alternate timeline. This story is an intriguing alternative where a supposedly alternate past history is discovered through the two-way transmission through time, but the origin of the alternate timeline remains a mystery.

Weirder and weirder, I thought. A Christian Mongol? Living in Byzantium? Talking to me on the space telephone out of the twelfth century?

“A Sleep and a Forgetting” by Robert Silverberg, Playboy,July 1989.

Letters from Atlantis

by Robert Silverberg

Letters from Atlantis by Robert Silverberg (Athenium, October 1990).

Hunters in the Forest

by Robert Silverberg

“Hunters in the Forest” by Robert Silverberg, Omni, October 1991.

Thebes of the Hundred Gates

by Robert Silverberg

Thebes of the Hundred Gates by Robert Silverberg (Axoloti Press, January 1992).

The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg

The story of Ms. Fellowes and Timmie is augmented by the story of what his tribe did during his time away.

He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him more dearly than anything in the world.

The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg (Doubleday Foundation, October 1992).

Crossing into the Empire

by Robert Silverberg

Mulreany is a trader who travels back to 14th century Byzantium with Coca-Cola and other treats.

One glance and Mulreany has no doubt that the version of the capital that has arrived on this trip is the twelfth-century one.

“Crossing into the Empire” by Robert Silverberg, in David Copperfield’s Beyond Imagination, edited by Janet Berliner and David Copperfield (HarperPrism, December 1996).

Against the Current

by Robert Silverberg

“Against the Current” by Robert Silverberg, in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2007.

Time Patrol homage

Christmas in Gondwanaland

by Robert Silverberg

“Christmas in Gondwanaland” by Robert Silverberg, in Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds, edited by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois (Subterranean, May 2014).

Needle in a Timestack

written and directed by John Ridley

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. Each volume in the series contains stories of four or five travelers.

— Michael Main

Needle in a Timestack written and directed by John Ridley (unknown streaming services, 14 October 2021).