The Search

by A. E. van Vogt

When salesman Ralph Carson Drake tries to recover his missing memory of the past two weeks, he discovers he had interactions with three people: a woman named Selanie Johns who sold remarkable futuristic devices for one dollar, her father, and an old gray-eyed man who is feared by Selanie and her father.

Van Vogt combined this with two other stories and a little fix-up material for his 1970 publication of Quest for the Future.

— Michael Main

The Palace of Immortality was built in an eddy of time, the only known Reverse, or Immortality, Drift in the Earth Time Stream

“The Search” by A. E. van Vogt, Astounding, January 1943.

The End of Eternity

by Isaac Asimov

Andrew Harlan, Technician in the everwhen of Eternity, falls in love and starts a chain of events that could lead to the end of everything.

— Michael Main

He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned to him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century.

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, August 1955).

“—All You Zombies—”

by Robert A. Heinlein

A 25-year-old man, originally born as an orphan girl named Jane, tells his story to a 55-year-old bartender who then recruits him for a time-travel adventure.

— Michael Main

When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.

“‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959.

Unusual Tales #30

A Small Matter of Time

by Joe Gill [?] and Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio

The title suggests that Professor Amos Shute’s intrepid travelers are going back in time to four planets that are identical in every way to our own, but then again, perhaps those four planets were merely at earlier times to begin with. We won’t say one way or another, but we are glad that the Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, and World War III were all averted on some Earth.

— Michael Main

In what time period will you find yourselves when you land at your particular destinatoin!

“A Small Matter of Time” by Joe Gill [?] and Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio, Unusual Tales #30 (Charlton Comics, October 1961).

The Voyages of Ijon Tichy 20

Podróż dwudziesta

English release: The Twentieth Voyage Literal: Journey twenty

by Stanisław Lem

After the time mish-mash of Ijon Tichy’s seventh voyage, it wasn’t clear whether Ijon would ever ply the channels of time again, but here he is, traveling back in time to persuade himself to go forward in time and take up the helm of THEOHIPPIP—a.k.a. Teleotelechronistic-Historical Engineering to Optimize the Hyoerputerized Implementation of Paleological Programming and Interplanetary Planning. It takes a few attempts for older Ijon to convince younger Ijon to head to the future on a one-man chronocykl, but when he does, the younger Ijon begins the unexpectedly hard task of righting history’s wrongs. As a sophisticated time traveler yourself, you’ll spot what’s happening early on, while you also get a tour of history from the formamtion of the Solar System to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. You’ll also recognize the fun Lem has at the expense of the bureaucracies of mid-20th-century Poland.

— Michael Main

Zresztą Bosch nie powstrzymał się od niedyskrecji. W „Ogrodzie uciech ziemskich,” w „piekle muzycznym” (prawe skrzydło tryptyku) stoi w samym środku dwunastoosobowy chronobus. I co miałem z tym robić?

Even so, Bosch couldn’t refrain from certain indiscretions. In the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” in the very center of the “Musical Hell” (the right wing of the triptych), stands a twelve-seat chronobus. Not a thing I could do about it.

English

[ex=bare]“Podróż dwudziesta” | Journey twenty[/ex] by Stanisław Lem, in Dzienniki gwiazdowe, expanded third edition, by Stanisław Lem, (Czytelnik, 1971).

“Willie’s Blues”

by Robert J. Tilley

A music historian travels back to the 1930s to uncover the real story of how Willie Turnhill rose from an extra in the Curry Band to tenor sax virtuoso ever.

— Michael Main

He thinks of me now as the one person who’ll be able to say who’s the original and who’s the plagiarist when “the other guy” does eventually turn up!

“‘Willie’s Blues’” by Robert J. Tilley, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1972.

Oxford Historians 1

Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

We may never know just how young Kivrin Engle wrangled her academic advisor and the powers-that-be at the University of Oxford into sending her to previously off-limits, 14th-century England, but her timing was not ideal given that she’dd just been exposed to a recently re-emerged influenza virus. Oh, and the inexperience tech who also got hit with the virus with the virus after the drop may have sent Kivrin to the wrong year.

— Ruthie Mariner

You know what he said when I told him he should run at least one unmanned? He said, “If something unfortunate does happen, we can go back in time and pull Miss Engle out before it happens, can’t we?” The man has no notion of how the net works, no notion of the paradoxes, no notion that Kivrin is there, and what happens to her is real and irrevocable.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Bantam Spectra, July 1992).

Oxford Historians 2

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last

by Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis (Easton Press, 1998).

The Magic Tree House 12

Polar Bears Past Bedtime

by Mary Pope Osborne

In the Arctic, a native seal-hunter and the animals of the north show Jack and Annie their way of life while the kids solve the final riddle in their quest to join the Ancient Society of Master Librarians.

— Michael Main

The tree house was on the ground. There were no trees and no houses, only an endless field of ice and snow.

Polar Bears Past Bedtime by Mary Pope Osborne (Random House, April 1998).

Scherzo with Tyrannosaur

by Michael Swanwick

The director of Hilltop Research Station extinguishes various fires while hosting a donor dinner in the Cretaceous and planning predatory behavior of his own to keep the donor funds flowing, all while ensuring that the mysterious beings known only as the Unchanging remain in the dark about a quagmire of time travel violations.

— Michael Main

It would bring our sponsors down upon us like so many angry hornets. The Unchanging would yank time travel out of human hands—retroactively.

“Scherzo with Tyrannosaur” by Michael Swanwick, Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 1999.

Ransom

by Albert E. Cowdrey

Time travel agent Maks Hamilton is told by mysterious kidnappers that if he ever wants to see his own son again, he must travel back three centuries—just before the Troubles—to abduct another boy.

Despite the characters’ belief that they can change history, up in the ITTDB Citadel we all agreed that the characters are an unreliable source and this story actually lives in a carefully crafted single static timeline along with a nice bootstrap paradox.

— Michael Main

I want you to bring someone from the past to the present—someone who would otherwise die only a few hours afterward. Surely that’s possible.

“Ransom” by Albert E. Cowdrey, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2002.

Infinity Ring 1

A Mutiny in Time

by James Dashner

This first book of the multi-author series tells of how teens Dak (a history buff and odd duck), Sera (a science nerd), and Riq (a member of the secret Hystorians society) end up as the only ones who can save the world by fixing breaks in time that changed what was meant to be. Their first mission—saving Columbus from a mutiny that was meant to fail—is a disquieting choice that I would not choose as an introduction of history to children. For starters, they are choosing to save the man who brought genocide to the Americas. And to boot, in the broken world where the mutiny succeeded, his three ships still completed their voyage with no noticable change to subsequent centuries (apart from Columbus resting at the bottom of the Atlantic).

— Michael Main

Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.

“A Mutiny in Time” by James Dashner (Scholastic, August 2012).

The Chronicles of St. Mary’s 1

Just One Damned Thing after Another

by Jodi Taylor

Fresh from finishing her Ph.D., Madeline Maxwell (aka Max) runs into her high school mentor who encourages her to apply for a position with a cloistered group of historians called St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research.

— Michael Main

Think of History as a living organism, with its own defence mechanisms. History will not permit anything to change events that have already taken place. If History thinks, even for one moment, that that is about to occur, then it will, without hesitation, eliminate the threatening virus. Or historian, as we like to call them.

Just One Damned Thing after Another by Jodi Taylor (Accent Press, June 2013).

Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

After Farway Gaius McCarthy fails his final examination at the Central Time Travelers Academy, he puts together a rogue time travel crew to swipe valuable artifacts from the past at moments when they won’t be missed. And it’s all roses until a mysterious girl sidetracks them on the Titanic and steers them into a multiverse of fading timelines.

As you might guess, we enjoyed Far and his friends, but the thing that sealed an Eloi Bronze Medal was the fact that when a particular timeline actually managed to branch (not an easy feat) and the traveler then jumped to the future, she found her another self—the her that was born on that timeline—waiting for her. Most branching timeline stories ignore this issue entirely.

— Michael Main

“There’s nothing to return to.” Eliot’s knuckles bulged at the seams, but she didn’t yell. “When the Fade destroys a moment, it’s lost. Forever.”

Invictus by Ryan Graudin (Little, Brown, September 2017).

The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

Tess is a geologist (because, of course, geologists control the time travel of the giant ancient machines) and a member of the Daughters of Harriet (Senator Harriet Tubman, that is, from 19th-century Mississippi). On the surface, the Daughters are time travel scholars, but in reality, Tess and her fellow Daughters are fighting a pitched changewar for women’s rights against the oppressors known as the Comstockers. One more thing: While she’s at it,Tess also hopes to also save the souls of her teenaged self and her underground feminist punk friends in the 1990s, with a particular focus on their vigilante killing spree and young Beth’s abortion.

— Michael Main

All five Machines had limitations, but the hardest to surmount was what travelers call the Long Four Years. Wormholes only opened for people who remained within twenty kilometers of a Machine for at least 1,680 days.

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz (Tor, September 2019).

ドロステのはてで僕ら

Dorosute no hate de bokura English release: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes Literal: We at the end of the Droste

by 上田誠, directed by 山口淳太

For the first sixty minutes, a perfect static timeline seemed to be emerging from Kato’s video stream from two minutes in the future. We might even get some philosophical commentary on free will! Alas, that was not to be as the final ten minutes presented a more commonplace ending, although the single-take nagamawashi was executed with perfection and garnered this fun film an Eloi Medal.

P.S. Don’t skip the end-credits!

— Michael Main

Your monitor and the shop’s TV are linked with a two-minute delay.

[ex=bare]ドロステのはてで僕ら | We at the end of the Droste | Dorosute no hate de bokura[/ex] by 上田誠, directed by 山口淳太 (at limited theaters, Japan, 5 June 2020).

Goodbye, Howard Henning

by John E. Stith

Did you ever wonder what happens when a time traveler makes a mistake? Don’t miss Stith’s “Story behind the Story” at the end of the web page.

— Michael Main

This isn’t Germany. And this can’t be 1924.

“Goodbye, Howard Henning” by John E. Stith, in Nature Futures, 15 July 2020.

Giving Up the Ghost

by Aeryn Rudel

An assassin jumps back into her 17-year-old body where she takes care of her mission and has a little time left over.

— Michael Main

My target is a few blocks from here, which is why the Department of Temporal Enforcement chose me for the assignment. Proximity is important. The less you move around, the less likely the time stream gets fucked up.

“Giving Up the Ghost” by Aeryn Rudel, in Flashpoint Science Fiction, 26 June 2021.

Secret Agent Moe Berg #6

Billie the Kid

by Rick Wilber

In an alternate history leading up to a 1945 atomic bomb in southern California, young Billie “the Kid” Davis grows up in the mid-20th century, playing shortstop better than any of the boys, flying B-25s with her Dad, and eventually—with Moe Berg and the woman-with-many-names—taking on that bomb.

— Michael Main

This is your moment, Billie. Coming up right now. Save the worlds, Billie. Change everything. You can do it.

“Billie the Kid” by Rick Wilber, Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October 2021.

Captain Nova

English release: Captain Nova

by Lotte Tabbers and Maurice Trouwborst, directed by Maurice Trouwborst

Captain Nova Kester travels back from a devastated future to warn an energy mogel about the impending climate cataclysm, but only young Nas takes her seriously. That happens when time travel causes you to revert to 12 years old.

— Michael Main

Luister, jongedame: De mensen denken al eeuwen dat ze leven in het einde der tijden. Het zou handig ziln als je jezelf ietsje minderbelangrijk maakt.

Listen, young lady: People have thought for centuries that the end of time is drawing near. It would help everyone if you showed just a little less. . . self-importance.

English

Captain Nova by Lotte Tabbers and Maurice Trouwborst, directed by Maurice Trouwborst (Cinekid Film Festival, 13 October 2021).

Paean for a Branch Ghost

by Filip Wiltgren

In the far future, a woman who had lived through the Sobibor extermination camp manipulates the system to go back and rescue the rest of her family.

— Michael Main

“Twentieth century,” said Davos, and I whistled, long, and low, and falling. “Special assignment,” he said, and I whistled again. I’d never heard of anyone going that far back.

“Paean for a Branch Ghost” by Filip Wiltgren, Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022 [e-zine · webzine].