Category Archives: time travel

Kuttner’s “Endowment Policy”

Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was born today, April 7.  He, both alone and in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore, was one of the most prolific authors of the 1940s. One of the things he excelled at was time travel.  Over the next week or two I’m going to be looking at some of his time travel stories.  The one today is available in an ebook, but some of the others won’t be as easy to obtain.

Before going further, I want to address one thing, and that’s who wrote what in Kuttner and Moore’s collaborations.  By Moore’s own admission, they tended to work seamlessly together.  She said that at times the only way they could tell who had written what was by a few variations in how they spelled certain words.  So anything written with either by-line after their marriage in 1940 was to a lesser or greater degree a collaboration.  Often their work was published under pseudonyms, the two most common being Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell.  I looked at one of their science-fantasy works over at Adventures Fantastic. Continue reading

When Our Children’s Children Come to Visit

Our Children’s Children
Clifford D. Simak
Ebook $9.99

It’s been a little while since I posted about Simak here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read any more of his work.  I’ve just been slammed with work and haven’t had a chance to post.  I’ve got at least one more Simak post coming up.

This short novel was published in 1974 after being serialized in Worlds of If. Like much of Simak’s work, it involves time travel.

The plot is fairly straightforward.  Doorways open up all over the world, and people start pouring out of them.  The spokesman for the newcomers tells the President that they are refugees from 500 years in the future.  They are fleeing an alien invasion. Continue reading

Robert Silverberg in Thebes

“Thebes of the Hundred Gates”
Most recently reprinted in Hot Times in Magma City
ebook $2.99

In the comments to my previous post, Randy suggested that “Thebes of the Hundred Gates” was one Robert Silverberg’s best time travel stories.  I hadn’t read it, but I did have a copy on one of my ereaders.

So I read it.

I’ll agree with Randy.  It’s a very good story.  So Randy, thanks for the tip.

Here’s the situation: Continue reading

Going Up the Line

Up the Line
Robert Silverberg

I’m a sucker for a good time travel story.  It’s one of my favorite subgenres.   Robert Silverberg has written just about all subgenres in the field. Up the Line is definitely a well constructed time travel tale, although not entirely to my taste.

Before I go on, though, I want to note that this novel is currently out of print, and there’s no electronic version available. That’s why there’s not link above.

Up the Line was published in the summer of 1969, which means it was probably written in 1968, a year after the Summer of Love.  It reads like it, too.  Lots of sex.  Lots of drugs.  No rock n’ roll, though. Continue reading

Richard Cowper’s Time Out of Mind

Time Out of Mind
Richard Cowper

My local comic shop has a small selection of old paperbacks. I was poking around among them the other day.  There were several volumes by Richard Cowper (real name Colin Murray).  I’d seen copies in used book shops for decades but had never read one.

On something of a lark, I picked up Time Out of Mind.  With a gorgeous Don Maitz cover like that, how could I resist?  Plus it was only 175 pages.  Not anything I would end up investing a great deal of time on., so I was willing to give it a try.

It turned out to be a good investment.  Time Out of Mind was first published in the UK in 1973.  The US edition was published by Pocket Books in 1981.  The story shows its age in places.  The book opens in 1987, but most of the action takes place in the late 1990s.  Every now and then there’s a bit of outdated slang.  None of that was enough to put me off. Continue reading

Just One Damned Thing After Another

Just One Damned Thing After AnotherJust One Damned Thing After Another
Jodi Taylor
Night Shade Books
Trade Paperback $12.99
Ebook $3.99

I’d like to thank Brianna Scharfenberg at Night Shade Books for sending me the review copy of Just One Damned Thing After Another.  This is one of the most refreshing books I’ve read in a long time.  It’s a rare book that can make me laugh out loud (more than once) and a few chapters later nearly make me cry.

If you’re a fan of time travel, or if you’re a fan of madcap British comedies, or better yet if you’re a fan of both, then you’ll want to check out The Chronicles of St. Mary’s, of which Just One Damned Thing After Another is the first volume.  It goes on sale in the US today (June 7).  The title is from a quote by Arnold Toynbee. Continue reading

Weighing Shadows Through Time

Weighing ShadowsWeighing Shadows
Lisa Goldstein
Night Shade Books, 318 pgs.
Trade paper $15.99
ebook $15.99

One of my favorite subgenres of science fiction is time travel, so when Night Shade Books sent me a review copy of Weighing Shadows, I was looking forward to reading the book.  (Thank you, Brianna Scharfenberg, for sending the review copy.)  I wasn’t the target audience for the book, it turned out, but it’s still a well-written novel that will find an audience.

Ann Decker is working in a deadend job in a computer shop when a mysterious woman recruits her for a new job at a company called Transformations Incorporated.  At first Ann doesn’t know much about the job, but since she hates working in the computer shop, she takes it.

It turns out that Transformations Incorporated is based in the future and specializes in time travel.  They’re trying to improve things in their time period by manipulating events in the past.  It’s not long before Ann is approached a resistance group within Transformations Incorporated. The bulk of the novel concerns Ann’s struggles with deciding where her loyalties lie, although it’s not hard to see what her final conclusion will be.  The number of times a person can travel in time is limited, so the missions operatives are sent on are chosen carefully.  Ann’s first mission is to ancient Crete, her second to the Library of Alexandria, and the third to France in the Middle Ages. Continue reading

Visiting the City Beyond Time

city_256City Beyond Time Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis
John C. Wright
Castalia House, 168 pgs.
ebook $4.99

Okay, class, wake up. Put the phones and tablets away. You can text, Facebook, and download porn on your own time. Which brings us to today’s topic: time. Yes, Simone, I realize that a great deal of time has passed since I last posted here. This isn’t my only blog, you know. Have you kept up with the reading for the others? I thought not.

As I was saying. I’ve been attempting to redeem my time in these evil days, and one of the ways I’ve been doing that is with ebook apps on my phone. Anytime I find myself cooling my jets, I take advantage of the opportunity to get some reading done.

I began reading a collection of essays by John C. Wright not too long ago and was really impressed with both what the man had to say and how he said it. I’m still reading the book. It’s one I want to savor rather that rush through. I’ll post a review at some point when I’ve finished, probably at Adventures Fantastic.

Anyway, I decided to see if Mr. Wright’s fiction was as good as his nonfiction. I’d heard positive things about his work for a number of years now. I decided to start with City Beyond Time. It was short, which is always a plus when reading on a phone. And time travel is one of my favorite subgenres of science fiction.

City Beyond Time is a combination short story collection and novel. The setting is Metachronopolis, a city at the end of time controlled by the Time Wardens. They manipulate history for their own ends. This is nothing new in science fiction. Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories are probably the high water mark for temporal police, but the concept goes back to the pulps.

Only these time cops aren’t exactly the good guys. They’re more like the cops you find in a noir novel by Raymond Chandler. Shady and on the take, with an agenda of their own.

There is one character who shows up in the first and last stories, a private eye named Jake Frontino. He’s from the 1930s. (More Chandleresque stuff; always a good thing.) The initial and final story are tied together in some subtle ways.

No, Martin, Chandler hasn’t reached his expiration date. His work has passed the test of time.

And speaking of time, in “Murder in Metachronopolis”, the lead story, Jake has to solve a murder where time travel plays a role in the murder. This was a creative an innovative story where the tale isn’t told in chronological order. Rather the sections are mixed to provide a greater depth to the narrative.

“Choosers of the Slain” concerns a defeated warrior king in some future or alternate world. He’s about to make his final stand, a stand from which he won’t emerge alive, when a young girl appears and tries to convince him to come with her to the future.

“Bride of the Time Warden” was one of the most riveting tales in the book. The potential wife of a Time Warden living sometime in the 20th century is asked to spend the night alone in the library of the family mansion. It’s a ritual that all potential brides have to pass through before they can marry into the family. During the night she meets her future self, a bitter woman who tells her not to marry this man. Then she meets her son who asks her to please marry him. This was one of my favorites.

I’m sorry, Simone, what did you say?  Yes, it did appeal to the romantic in me.

In “Father’s Monument” a son struggles to honor the dying wish of his estranged father and build a monument so visitors from the future can find the father. All the son has to do is believe the father’s story…

“Slayer of Souls” is a bit of Lovecraftian horror dressed up in time travel. It’s about a homeless man who is given a book by a book vendor. A book he shouldn’t open.

Henry Kuttner is one of all time favorite authors. His story “Happy Ending” (reviewed here) is a time travel story that is told in three sections, with the events in each section preceding the events of the prior section.  It’s a technique I’ve not seen used often.

Wright takes the concept and runs with it, scoring a touchdown with “The Plural of Helen of Troy”.  In this one Jake is working a case he already knows the outcome of, except where the Time Wardens are concerned, no outcome is certain.

Here’s a quote from that story that really stuck with me:

But how can you have hope in this city?  Hope comes when you have an unknown future waiting like a Christmas gift, shining in its pink-bowed wrapping paper, and every tomorrow is a new surprise to open.

Hope is when you can change your future.  But if the Time Wardens can step through a crystal into your tomorrow, and they can change your tomorrow, but you cannot, then all the gifts have already been opened and all the toys are theirs.

There’s a deep undercurrent of philosophy in these stories.   They aren’t simply adventure tales or clever little time paradoxes or mish-mashes of historical figures.  While some the stories in City Beyond Time contain those things, they also transcend the tropes of time travel and deal with some pretty serious issues.  The relationship between father and son, the objectification of women, and the role of free will in a person’s life to name a few.

These stories and the overarching narrative that contains them is science fiction for people who think and feel on a deep level.  I highly recommend City Beyond Time.  It’s one of those books that’s all too rare these days, one in which the rereading is every bit as good as the reading.

And speaking once again of time, class, we’re out of time.  So for our next meeting your assignment is to write a five page paper on the significance of the private eye trope in City Beyond Time, with emphasis on how that trope is applied to 1950s movie icons.

Murder in Utopia: A Visit to Hollow World

Hollow World Cover 1200 x 1900Hollow World
Michael J. Sullivan
Tachyon Publications
trade paper $15.95,
ebook $7.99 Kindle, Nook
audio $24.49

I’m a sucker for a time travel story. After space opera and hard science, it’s my favorite subgenre of science fiction. So when Michael J. Sullivan contacted me and asked if I’d like a review copy of his latest novel, which involves time travel, of course I said “Yes.” I’d like to thank Mr. Sullivan for providing me with an ARC of Hollow World.

This is the story of Ellis Rogers. He’s discovered the secret to time travel. There’s only one problem. It’s a one-way trip.

Rogers doesn’t have the most ideal life. His son committed suicide some years ago, and he and his wife have been estranged ever since. They share a house, but not really a life. He has a best friend he hangs out with, a buddy from high school.

Even so, he doesn’t want to take that one-way trip. Then he gets a double whammy. First, it’s a terminal diagnosis from his doctor. Shortly after that he discovers that his wife had an affair with his best friend just after his son died.

And suddenly that one-way trip doesn’t seem so bad. Rogers sets the machine for 200 years in the future and throws the switch. Only there’s a flaw in his math, and instead of traveling two hundred years, he travels two thousand.

The world he finds is one that’s mostly underground, called Hollow World. There are occasional forays to the surface to various historical sites. Rogers comes out near one and stumbles onto a murder. Continue reading

Traveling the Time Streams of Fiction River

FR-Timestreams-ebook-cover-e1375815894720Fiction River: Time Streams
WMG Publishing
Series Editors: Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Volume Editor: Dean Wesley Smith
ebook: $6.99
trade paper: $15.99

My two favorite subgenres in science fiction are space opera and hard science, but a (very) close third is time travel. There are just so many things you can do with time travel, the possibilities are almost endless.

I reviewed the first volume of Fiction River, Unnatural Worlds and interviewed Kris Rusch over at my other blogging gig on the Amazing Stories (TM) website. Time Streams is the third installment of this bimonthly publication, and it’s top notch. There’s not a bad story to be found among the 14 tales presented here.

Starting off the magazine is Sharon Joss with “Love in the Time of Dust and Venom” in which an elderly Japanese man with only months to live tries to find out what happens to the village in which he and his ancestors grew up. The village was made unihabitable in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. “This Time I Return for Good” by Michael Robert Thomas is an epistolary adventure that unfolds with each letter to reveal what’s really going on. Scott William Carter takes us to something that resembles Ray Bradbury country when a man and his remaining son discover “The Elevator in the Corn Field”.

The terrorist in J. Steven York’s story meets his match when he encounters a man who gets his instruction from a “Radio Free Future”. In “Unstuck” by D. K. Holmberg, a man whose life is in a rut becomes unstuck in more ways than one in this bittersweet tale. Ray Vukcevich tells you what gets written in “Your Permanent Record”. Vukcevich is an author whose work has not always clicked with me, but I really liked this one.

Dean Wesley Smith gives us a dark tale of researching the past through time travel in “Waiting for the Coin to Drop”. Lee Allred’s “Nice Timestream Youse Got Here” was a delight, the story of a time cop that reads as though it was written by Damon Runyon, and just a great deal of fun. In Jeffrey A. Ballard’s “The Highlight of a Life” a regretful scientist gets what most people only wish for, a second chance.

Mike Resnick teams up with new writer Lou J. Berger to give us the story of a man who is essentially invisible and how he uses time travel to form “A Beautiful Friendship”. Michael A. Stackpole envisions the conflicts among a group of people who can travel through time in an attempt to “Fix” things to their liking.

“The Totem of Curtained Minds” is only Ken Hinkley’s third story, and I want to know one thing: where can I find his first two? This is a hardboiled tale of a prisoner who manages to pull off the ultimate escape and find rehabilitation in the process. It was my favorite in the book. A close second for favorite was Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s tale the economics of time travel, in the frightening “September at Wall and Broad”. Finally, Robert T. Jeshonek wraps up the volume wtih “Time, Expressed as an Entree” in which a creature that feeds on time discovers the passage of time is relative.

I liked the first volume of Fiction River very much, but I loved the third volume. (I’ve not read the second, How to Save the World, yet. Yet. If it’s anywhere near as good as the other two, it will be worth reading.) Editor Dean Wesley Smith has compiled an outstanding volume of time travel stories, no two alike. I highly recommend it.

Each volume has a theme and a different editor. The next volume, which should be out shortly, is entitled Christmas Ghosts and is edited by Kristine Grayson, the romance author persona of Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Look for a review of it at Adventures Fantastic in December or late November. Fiction River is available in print and electronic format by subscription ($99.99 print/$39.99 electronic) or single issue.  This is one of the best and most exciting publications in the field today.  Check out an issue and see why I say that.