After taking a year of Spanish at the University of Colorado, I undertook a three-year project of translating Gaspar’s novel to English, which is available in a pdf file for your reading pleasure. Even with the unpleasant twist at the end, it was still a fine, farcical romp through history.
—Tiene usted razón—clamaba empotrado en un testero del coche un marido cansado de su mujer.—En cuanto se abra la línea al público, tomo yo un billete para la vispera de mi boda.
“Quite right,” called a married man jammed into the front of the bus, thinking of his tiresome wife. “As soon as the ticket office opens to the public, I’m booking passage to the eve of my wedding.”
And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago.
This may be the earliest use of something akin to a “wheel of time.”
Side note: The trio of stooges are also the first time travelers we’ve seen in film who fret over changing the course of history. Who woulda thunk?
My favorable impression is no doubt reflective of the time when I read it (the summer of 1970, nearly 13, while moving from Washington State to Alabama). Perhaps the fiction doesn’t hold up as well decades later up, but the issues of time that it brings up still interest me and it was my first exposure to the idea of a geographic timeslip. And, similar to Asimov, Hoyle served to cultivate my interest in the natural sciences.
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.