The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1971 to 1979

The cover art was by Marvel Comics artist Jim Steranko.

   “In Entropy’s Jaws”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Infinity Two, 1971

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 doesnt make sense and admit them to our consciousness in what seems to be the right sequence. 






   The Partridge Family
“Albuquerque” song by Tony Romeo
First time travel (trust me): 26 Feb 1971

I first noticed a Partridge Family time traveler in the song “Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque” in which the young girl is obviously lost in time (although oddly, the key lyric line was omitted from the tv episode “Road Song”). If you listen closely, there are many other science fictional themes in the songs of Shirley Jones’s tv family, for example, the clones in One Night Stand (♫ I wish that I could be two people ♫) and, of course, the ubiquitous references to immortality (♫ Could it be forever? ♫).

 ♫ Showed me a ticket for a Greyhound bus
Her head was lost in time
She didn't know who or where she was
And anyone that helps me is a real good friend of mi––i––ine ♫
 




  Dragonriders of Pern #2
Dragonquest
by Anne McCaffrey
First publication: May 1971

In the first book, dragonriders from the past came forward to battle the falling Thread that most everyone had dismissed as a long-past threat. Now the Oldtimers butt heads with the present-day leaders, particularly with F’nor who rashly sets out on his own to destroy the Thread at its source on the Red Star.

 There must be some way to get to the Red Star. 




   Escape from the Planet of the Apes
by Paul Dehn (Don Taylor, director)
First release: 21 May 1971

Among the original Apes movies, only this one had true time travel; the others involved only relativistic time dilation, which (as even Dr. Milo knows) is technically not time travel. But in this one, Milo, Cornelius and Zira are blown back to the time of the original astronauts and are pesecuted in a 70s made-for-tv manner.

 Given the power to alter the future, have we the right to use it? 




   The Dancer from Atlantis
by Poul Anderson
First publication: Aug 1971

On a romantic cruise with his wife and his troubled marriage, forty-year-old Duncan Reid is snatched from the deck by a vortex and deposited around 4000 B.C., where he meets three others who were similarly taken: the Russian Oleg, the Goth Uldin, and the beautiful bull-breeder Erissa who remembers the gods of her time, remembers Atlantis, and remembers Duncan fathering her child.

 She was lean, though full enough in hips and firm breasts to please any man, and long-limbed, swan-necked, head proudly held. That head was dolichocephalic but wide across brow and cheeks, tapering toward the chin, with, a classically straight nose and a full and mobile mouth which was a touch too big for conventional beauty. Arching brows and sooty lashes framed large bright eyes whose hazel shifted momentarily from leaf-green to storm-gray. Her black hair, thick and wavy, fell past her shoulders; a white streak ran back from the forehead. Except for suntan, a dusting of freckles, a few fine wrinkles and crows-feet, a beginning dryness, her skin was clear and fair. He guessed her age as about equal to his. 


   “Dazed”
by Theodore Sturgeon
First publication: Galaxy, Sep/Oct 1971

In 1950, a 25-year-old man begins to think that his own generation—those who will soon be in charge—are taking the world in an Orwellian direction because of an imbalance that’s occuring, so he writes a personal ad seeking help in rebalancing the world, and he gets an instant answer that, among other things, takes him a few decades into the future.

 When he was in Lilliput there was a war between the Lilliputians and another nation of little people—I forget what they called themselves—and Gulliver intervened and ended the war. Anyway, he researched the two countries and found they had once been one. And he tried to find out what caused so many years of bitter enmity between them after they split. He found that there had been two factions in that original kingdom—the Big Endians and the Little Endians. And do you know where that started? Far back in their history, at breakfast one morning, one of the kings courtiers opened his boiled egg at the big end and another told him that was wrong, it should be opened at the small end! The point Dean Swift was making is that from such insignificant causes grow conflicts that can last centuries and kill thousands. Well, he was near the thing thats plagued me all my life, but he was content to say it happened that way. What blow-torches me is—why. Why are human beings capable of hating each other over such trifles? Why, when an ancient triviality is proved to be the cause of trouble, dont people just stop fighting? 




   Dinosaur Beach
by Keith Laumer
First publication: Sep 1971

Timesweep agent Ravel finds himself the only survivor of an attack on the Dinosaur Beach substation until his wife shows up, although their marriage still lies in her future.

 The Timesweep program was a close parallel to the space sweep. The Old Era temporal experimenters had littered the timeways with everything from early one-way timecans to observation stations, dead bodies, abandoned instruments, weapons and equipment of all sorts, including an automatic mining setup established under the Antarctic icecap which caused headaches at the time of the Big Melt. 




   Addio zio Tom
English title: Goodbye Uncle Tom (translated from Italian)
by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi, et. al. (Jacopetti and Prosperi, directors)
First release: 30 Sep 1971

The brutality and conditions depicted in this controversial documentary on American slavery were too horrific for me to fully watch. The controversy comes not from poor writing of the dramatized scenes, but from claims that the producers were racists (which they denied) and the thought that the film would incite race wars in the inflammatory US of the 1970s. The final 15 minutes come forward to the present day, although I couldn’t follow the plot or the message related to a man reading The Confession of Nat Turner while other men reenact Turner’s acts (again too horrific for me to watch).

The movie is set in a framing story in which the filmmakers supposedly take their cameras and helicopters back to the 1850s.

 The historic personages we met at Mrs. Carstons dinner table, like all the others we will meet on our journey into the past lived and breathed nearly a century and a half ago, when they never could have imagined that one day soon their scattered bones would be harvested by black hands. Now revisited in their actual surroundings, they will do and say exactly what they actually did and said once upon a time. 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
The Bird of Time by Jane Yolen, 1971 [differing time rates ]



   There Will Be Time
by Poul Anderson
First publication: 1972

The doctor and confidant of Jack Havig relates Jack’s life story from the time the infant started disappearing and reappearing to the extended firefight through time with the few other time travelers that Havig encountered.

 No, no, no. I suppose it’s simply a logical impossibility to change the past, same as it’s logically impossible for a uniformly colored spot to be both red and green. 


   “When We Went to See
the End of the World”

by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Universe 2, Feb 1972

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.” 




   “Against the Lafayette Escadrille”
by Gene Wolfe
First publication: Again Dangerous Visions, Mar 1972

I’m a little surprised at how much I am enjoying Gene Wolfe’s stories. This is a fantasy of a man who builds an exact replica of a Fokker triplane; then, one day on a flight, he sees a beautiful girl in a vintage balloon, an event that seems explicable only via time travel. The story puts me in the mood of Jack Finney’s wonderful non-time-travel story, “Home Alone.”

 I circled her for some time then, she turning slowly in the basket to follow the motion of my plane, and we talked as well as we could with gestures and smiles. 




   Slaughterhouse-Five
adaptation by Stephen Geller
First release: 15 Mar 1972

Billy Pilgrim’s life, unstuck in time, is faithfully brought to the big screen, including fellow patient Mr. Rosewater who, I believe, is reading a Kilgore Trout story.

 I have come unstuck in time. 




   “The Man Who Walked Home”
by James Tiptree, Jr.
First publication: Amazing, May 1972

After an accident at a temporal research facility in Idaho, a manlike monster shows up once a year at the same time every year.

As early as the 1930s, stories have addressed the issue of the Earth moving to a different position when a time traveler moves through time. This story addresses the issue by saying that the time traveler appears only once per year, but that doesn't really solve the problem for so many reasons, starting with the fact that a given position on the surface of the Earth will not be at “the same” position in the subsequent year.

 HE APPEARS ON THIS SPOT IN THE ANNUAL INSTANTS IN WHICH HIS COURSE INTERSECTS OUR PLANETS ORBIT AND HE IS APPARENTLY ABLE TO TOUCH THE GROUND IN THOSE INSTANTS. 


   “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket”
by James Tiptree, Jr.
First publication: Fantastic, Aug 1972

At 75, heiress Loolie Aerovulpa travels back to her nubile teenaged body to throw herself at her one true love, Dovy Rapelle.

 “Do you like me? Im attractive, amt I?” She opened the blanket to look at herself. “I mean, am I attractive to you? Oh, Dovy, s-say something! Ive come so far, I chartered three jets, I, I,—Oh, Dovy d-darling! 


   “Proof”
by F.M. Busby
First publication: Amazing, Sep 1972

Jackson, a reporter, wants proof that a time machine really works, and he also wouldn’t mind proof about who killed Seantor Burton 20 years ago.

 The Time Chamber. with its loose-hanging power cables and confused-looking control panel, didnt look much like Mr. Wells crystal bicycle. 




  
 Dancers at the End of Time #1
An Alien Heat
by Michael Moorcock
First publication: Oct 1972

The time machine from Moorcock’s earlier “Behold the Man‘ allows Jherek to pursue his romantic interest, Amelia Underwood, from Jherek’s own time to her Victorian age.

According to the alien Yusharisp, Jherek’s time is at the end of the universe, which allows this story to be billed as the last love story of the universe. However, the phrase ’last story’ might be slightly inappropriate for the first story of a series that includes three other novels and five short stories. The first three novels, including this one, are gathered in an omnibus edition called The Dancers at the End of Time.

 “Yes,” said Jherek. “I have already met the time-traveller. Last night. At the Duke of Queens. I was so impressed by the costume that I made one up for myself.” 






   The End of Time Series
by Michael Moorcock
First book: Oct 1972

Every now and then, a time traveler finds his way to the End of Time where a small group of decadent immortals manipulate matter and energy with power rings.
  1. 1. An Alien Heat, Oct 1972 Dancer Trilogy 1
  2. 2. The Hollow Lands, 1974 Dancer Trilogy 2
  3. 3. Pale Roses, 1974 in New Worlds 7
  4. 4. The End of All Songs, Jul 1976 Dancer Trilogy 3
  5. 5. White Stars, Mar 1975 in New Worlds 8
  6. 6. Ancient Shadows, Nov 1975 in New Worlds 9
  7. 7. Legends from the End of Time, 1976
         aka Tales from the End of Time includes 3,5,6
     
  8. 8. Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming, Feb 1977
         aka A Messiah at the End of Time Expands Constant Fire
     
  9. 9. The Dancers at the End of Time, 1981 includes 1,2,4
  10. 10. Elric at the End of Time, Sep 1981 in Elsewhen
  11. 11. The Murderer’s Song, Aug 1986 in Tales/Forbidden Planet

 Our time travellers, once they have visited the future, are only permitted (owing to the proerties of Time itself) at best brief returns to their present. 


   “(Now + n, Now - n)”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Nova 2, Oct 1972

Investor Aram Kevorkian has the unique advantage that he can communicate with himselves 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.)) 


   “Stretch of Time”
by Ruth Berman
First publication: Analog, Oct 1972

Sylvia Fontis at Luna University has built a working time machine—she calls it the Dimensional Revolver—but she’s too scared to use it until Professor Kent comes up with an idea for an experiment.

 So what did you do, bring back the results of the Centauri Probe? Kill your grandmother? 




   The Brady Kids
directed by Hal Sutherland
First time travel: 16 Dec 1972

The kids, sans Alice and parents, starred in their own cartoon show with magical adventures including at least one time-travel incident where Marlon the wizard bird changes places with Merlin—all directed by Hal Sutherland, the soon-to-be director of the animated Star Trek.

 Boys: ♫Meet three sisters,
Girls: Now meet their brothers,
Marcia: Gregs the leader and a good man for the job.
Jan: Theres another boy, by the name of Peter,
Cindy: The youngest one is Bob.
Boys: See our sisters: Theyre all quite pretty.
Greg: First theres Marcia, with her eyes a sparklin’ blue.
Peter: Then theres Jan, the middle one, whos really groovy,
Bobby: And sister Cindy, too.
Boys: Lets get set now, for action and adventure, as we see things we never saw before.
Girls: Well meet Mop Top and Ping and Pong, the pandas, and Marlon who has voices by the score.
All: The Brady kids, the Brady kids, its the world of your friends the Brady kids!♫ 




   “The Greatest Television Show on Earth”
by J.G. Ballard
First publication: Ambit, Winter 1972/73

Wildly popular global tv stations are desperate for new material for their viewers, so the discovery of time travel in 2001 will be a fortuitous boon if it can live up to its hype.

 These safaris into the past cost approximately a million dollars a minute. After a few brief journeys to verify the Crucifixion, the signing of Magna Carta and Columbuss discovery of the Americas, the government-financed Einstein Memorial Time Centre at Princeton was forced to suspend operations.
Plainly, only one other group could finance further explorations into the past—the worlds television corporations.
 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
Green Darkness by Anya Seton, Nov 1972 [reincarnation ]



   Frankenstein Unbound
by Brian Aldiss
First publication: 1973

When the weapons of war-torn 2020 open time slips that unpredictably mix places and times, grandfather Joe Boderland finds himself and his nuclear-powered car in 1816 Switzerland along with the seductive Mary Shelley, a maniacal Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s monster.

 You know, Joe, you are my first reader! A pity you don’t remember my book a little better! 




   The Man Who Folded Himself
by David Gerrold
First publication: 1973

Reluctant college student Danny Eakins inherits a time belt from his uncle, and he uses it over the rest of his life to come to know himself.

 The instructions were on the back of the clasp—when I touched it lightly, the words TIMEBELT, TEMPORAL TRANSPORT DEVICE, winked out and the first “page” of directions appeared in their place. 








   Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon Stories
by Spider Robinson
First story: Analog, Feb 1973

At Mike Callahan’s bar, the regulars listen to the tall tales of all time travelers (and others including aliens, vampires, talking dogs, etc.).
  1. The Guy with the Eyes (Feb 1973) Analog
  2. The Time-Traveler (Apr 1974) Analog
  3. The Law of Conservation of Pain (Dec 1974) Analog
  4. Two Heads Are Better Than One (May 1975) Analog
  5. Unnatural Causes (Oct 1975) Analog
  6. A Voice Is Heard in Ramah . . . (Nov 1975) Analog
  7. The Centipede’s Dilemma (1977) in Crosstime Saloon
  8. Just Dessert (1977) in Crosstime Saloon
  9. The Wonderful Conspiracy (1977) in Crosstime Saloon
  10. Dog Day Evening (Oct 1977) Analog
  11. Mirror/rorriM off the Wall (Nov 1977) Analog
  12. Fivesight (Jul 1979) Omni
  13. Have You Heard the One . . .? (Jun 1980) Analog
  14. Pyotr’s Story (12 Oct 1981) Analog
  15. Involuntary Man’s Laughter (Dec 1983) Analog
  16. The Blacksmith’s Tale (Dec 1985) Analog
  17. The Mick of Time (May 1986) Analog
  18. The Paranoid (from Lady) (Winter 1988) in Pulphouse: Issue Two
  19. Callahan’s Lady (1989) 11 connected stories
  20. Lady Slings the Booze (1991) aka Kill the Editor
  21. The Callahan Touch Mary’s Place book
  22. The Immediate Family (Jan 1993) Analog
  23. The End of the Painbow (Jul 1993) Analog
  24. Off the Wall at Callahan’s 1994
  25. Callahan’s Legacy (1996) collection of quotes
  26. Post Toast (circa 1996) USENET group alt.callahans
  27. Callahan’s Key (2000) new novel
  28. Callahan’s Con (2003) new novel
  29. Too Hot Too Hoot (from Legacy) (Oct 2006) in This Is My Funniest

 And as Callahan refilled glasses all around, the time traveler told us his story. 


   “Linkage”
by Barry N. Malzberg
First publication: Demon Kind, Mar 1973

Donald Alan Freem is only eight, but he’s been institutionalized because of delusions that a time-traveling alien gave him the power to make people do whatever he wants.

 I made you say that. 








   Mad Magazine Movie Spoofs
cornballing by Alfred E. Newman
First time travel spoof: Mar 1973

As a kid, there were always too many comic books to read for me to have much interest in Mad, but in later years, I enjoyed the time-travel movie spoofs (though I’m unsure whether all the spoofs actually included time travel).
  1. The Planet That Went Ape and its sequels (Mar 1973)
  2. Superduperman: The Movie (Jul 1979)
  3. Bleak for the Future (Jan 1986)
  4. Peggy Got Stewed and Married (Apr 1987)
  5. Star Blecch IV: The Voyage Bombs (Jun 1987)
  6. Bleak for the Future Part II (Jun 1990)
  7. Iterminable Too Misjudgment Day (Jan 1992)
  8. Groundhog Deja Vu (Sep 1993)
  9. Star Blecch: Worst Contact (Dec 1996)
  10. Corntact (Nov 1997)
  11. Planet of the Remakes (Nov 2001)
  12. Interminable 3 Rise of the Bad Scenes (Aug 2003)

 For some reason which will never be satisfactorily explained, I have been transported back in time to 1960! I must remember that Im now eighteen and not forty-three! Its great to be young again and be back in the good old days when I had nothing to worry about except SATs . . . and acne . . . braces . . . and being flat chested and living with insensitive parents . . . and . . . hey, get me out of here and back to the present! 

—from Peggy Got Stewed and Married


   “Paths”
by Edward Bryant
First publication: Vertex, Apr 1973

A traveler from the future makes his way to Morisel’s office to warn the reporter about the consequences of continued mindless rape of the environment.

In addition to acknowledging that Ed Bryant’s stories are among my favorites, I can also add that he is a kind and generous mentor to writers in the Denver area, including myself!

 I dont want to seem cynical. You may be my ten-times-removed egg-father or something, but right now its awfully hard not to believe youre just a run-of-the-mill aberrant. I mean, here you crawl into my office close to midnight, spread yourself down, and then calmly announce youre a traveler from the future. 




   ドラえもん
English title: Doraemon (translated from Japanese)
created by Fujiko F. Fujio
First episode: 1 Apr 1973

Doraemon, an imperfect, talking, cat-shaped robot from the futute, imperfectly helps young Nobita through coming-of-age problems. Neither the short-lived 1973 anime series nor the 26-year-long 1979 series made it to English-language tv, but English dubs of the third revival (665 episodes and counting) began airing on the Disney channel in 2014 as Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future.

The original manga comic was created by Fujiko F. Fujio.

 I wouldnt get bogged down in the details right now. The thing to focus on is that ve come here to save you from a horrible fate. 

—“All the Way from the Future World”




   Time Enough for Love
by Robert A. Heinlein
First publication: Jun 1973

During his 2000 years of misadventures, Lazarus Long has loved and lost and loved again, so now he’s to die, unless Minerva can think of an exciting adventure: perhaps visiting his own childhood?

 This sad little lizard told me he was a brontosaurus on his mothers side. I did not laugh, people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply. 


Pendulum Classics (1973)

Marvel Classics 2 (1976)

Academic Industries (1984)

   Pendulum Classics’ The Time Machine
aka Marvel Classics Comics 2
adapted by Otto Binder and Alex Niño
First publication: Jun 1973

There’s a papal dispensation (straight from Clifford Simak) that allows me to list all comic book adaptations of The Time Machine, even if they appeared after 1969. This Alex Niño version was printed as a small black and white graphic novel at least twice (Pendulum Press B&W 1973 and Academic Industries Pocket Classics 1984,). I haven’t seen it directly, but I recently found out that it was colored and printed as the second issue of the Marvel Classics series (cover by Gil Kane), which I first read in Pullman in early 1976. The storyline follows the 1960 movie closely.

 As a trial, Ill just pull the future lever a short ways. 




   Idaho Transfer
aka Nuclear Escape
by Thomas Matthiesen (Peter Fonda, director)
First release: 15 Jun 1973

A group of secretive scientists develop time travel near Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, discovering a near-future apocalypse. Since anyone much over age 20 can’t survive traveling, they’re in the process of sending a group of young people, including Isa and her withdrawn sister Karen, beyond the apocalypse to rebuild civilization. Things go wrong (not the least of which are the plot, the dialogue,the acting, the sound track, and the requirement that the young Jane Fonda lookalikes must strip to travel through time), but even so, the film has a certain unprepossessing appeal.

 You see, Dad and Lewis are trying to get it together, to secretly transfer a lot of young people into the future, bypassing the eco-crisis or whatever it is. Start a new civilization. 




   “12:01 P.M.”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sep 1973

Myron Castleman is reliving 59 minutes of one day over and over for eternity.

 And Myron Castleman would be permitted to lie forever, piling up experiences and memories, but each of only an hour’s duration, each resumed at 12:01 PM on this balmy spring day in Manhattan, standing outside near the Grand Central Tower. 




   Star Trek: The Animated Series
directed by Hal Sutherland and Bill Reed
First time travel: 15 Sep 1973

This series has a special place in my heart because of the day in 1974 when Dan Dorman and I visited Hal Sutherland north of Seattle to interview him for our fanzine, Free Fall. He treated the two teenagers like royalty and made two lifelong fans.

I think the series had only one time-travel story, “Yesteryear” (written by D.C. Fontana), which was the second in Sutherland’s tenure. In that episode, Spock returns from a time-traveling mission to find that he’s now in a reality where he died at age 7, and hence he returns to his own childhood to save himself.

 Captains Log, Supplemental: When we were in the time vortex, something appears to have changed the present as we know it. No one aboard recognizes Mr. Spock. The only answer is that the past was—somehow—altered. 


   “Road Map”
by F.M. Busby
First publication: Clairion III, Oct 1973

When Ralph Ascione dies, he is reincarnated as a female baby—but in what year and exactly which female?

 A new sound came; in the blurred distances, something moved. Vaguely seen, a huge face looked over him and made soft, deep clucking noises. Then he understood. 




   Love, American Style
First time travel: 23 Oct 1973

Even today, these vignettes hold a certain charm, although they’re also full of plot holes, and the one time travel episode has logic holes sufficient to drive a Delorean through. Even so, the episode “Love and the Time Machine” is the earliest presentation that I remember where a time machine provides multiple opportunities for a spurned suitor to court the object of his desire.

 Just think, Doctor, the time barrier broken at last. This puts you up there with Albert Einstein! Isaac Newton! Leonard Nimoy!! 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
“Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind” by Philip José Farmer, Nova 3, 1973 [memory tricks ]

Dragonriders of Pern #2.1: “The Smallest Dragonboy” by Anne McCaffrey, 1973 [no time travel ]

“A Witch in Time” by Janet Fox, Sep 1973 [differing time rates ]

Sleeper by Woody Allen, 17 Dec 1973 [long sleep ]



   “Big Game”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Before the Golden Age, 1974

Jack Trent hears a half-drunken story of time travel and the real cause of the dinosaur extinction.

Asimov wrote this story in 1941, but it was lost until I found it in the Boston University archives in the early ’70s. Okay, maybe that fan who found it wasn’t me, but it could have been!

 Jack looked at Hornby solemnly. “You invented a time machine, did you?”
   “Long ago.” Hornby smiled amiably and filled his glass again. “Better than the ones those amateurs at Stanford rigged up. I’ve destroyed it, though. Lost interest.”
 




   “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts”
by Philip K. Dick
First publication: Final Stage, 1974

Addison Doug and his two fellow time travelers seem to have caused a time loop wherein everyone is reliving the same events with only vague memories of what happened on the previous loop.

 Every man has more to live for than every other man. I dont have a cute chick to sleep with, but Id like to see the semis rolling along the Riverside Freeway at sunset a few more times. Its not what you have to live for; its that you want to live to see it, to be there—thats what is so damn sad. 


   “The Marathon Photograph”
by Clifford D. Simak
First publication: Threads of Time, 1974

I feel for one character in this story: Humphrey, who wants no more than to figure out the various goings on—past, present and possibly future—in this out-of-the-way place where Andrew Thornton comes to fish and write a geology text, Andrew’s friend Neville Piper finds a cube with the a hologram of the Battle of Marathon alongside the bear-maulted body of the mysterious Stefan from the even more mysterious Lodge, and that long-lost mine that Humphrey has been researching is finally found without Humphrey ever being told of it.

 Humphrey did mind, naturally, but there was nothing he could do about it. Here was the chance to go up to the Lodge, probably to go inside it, and he was being counted out. But he did what he had to do with fairly good grace and said that he would stay. 


   “Master Ghost and I”
by Barbara Softly
First publication: The Tenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, 1974

A 17th century soldier inherits a house with a squatter from the future.

 “D-dark?” he stammered. “Ill switch on the light.” 




   CBS Mystery Radio Theater
created by Himan Brown
First time travel: 31 Jan 1974

The fun mp3 files include radio news, weather, commercials and more from the 70s, all surrounding the mystery story hosted by E.G. Marshall. Here are the time-travel episodes that I’ve found so far, including two (in July 1976 and March 1977) by Grand Master Alfred Bester.
  1. The Man Who Asked for Yesterday (31 Jan 1974) to the previous day
  2. Yesterday’s Murder (27 Jun 1974) heroine redoes her life
  3. Come Back with Me (2 Jul 1975) hero relives favorite times
  4. Assassination in Time (26 Sep 1975) to Lincoln’s assasination
  5. The Lap of the Gods (25 Nov 1975) sea captain in the 1820s
  6. A Connecticut Yankee . . . (8 Jan 1976) to Camelot
  7. There’s No Business Like (19 Jan 1976) to 2076
  8. The Covered Bridge (23 Mar 1976) a feminist to the 1770s
  9. Time Killer (5 Apr 1976) before Great Depression
  10. Future Eye (19 Jul 1976) 2976 detective to 1976
  11. Now You See Them, Now You Don’t (12 Mar 1977) back from World War V
  12. A Point of Time (15 Nov 1977) overthrow dictator in 2200
  13. The Time Fold (16 Mar 1978) from 1979 to far future
  14. Time Out of Mind (18 May 1978) to World War II
  15. The Winds of Time (16 Oct 1978) heroine secures closure
  16. The Time Box (18 Feb 1980) to the 1880s
  17. The Man of Two Centuries (29 Apr 1981) Huron travels centuries
  18. The Old Country (24 Mar 1982) back to World War II

 This is our bicentennial year: a time to pause and count our blessings. And among the greatest of these are the men and women of letters who flourished in our native land, who created a literature that was both typically American and universally admired. 

—host E.G. Marshall in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court


   “If Ever I Should Leave You”
by Pamela Sargent
First publication: If, Feb 1974

A nameless narrator (called Nanette by an overly zealous copy-editor in the If publication) tells of time-traveler Yuri’s return as a dying old man and of the subsequent times when she visited him. I enjoyed that beginning part of the story, but the ending, as the narrator herself ages, spoke to me more deeply.

I met Pamela Sargent in Lawrence, Kansas, at Jim Gunn’s writing workshop. She was insightful and kind to the writers her came to learn from her and other talented writers.

 All the coordinates are there, all the places and times I went to these past months. When you're lonely, when you need me, go to the Time Station and Ill be waiting on the other side. 




   Future Tense
created by Eli Segal
First time travel: 7 May 1974

Professor Eli Segal and his students at Western Michigan University created quality new productions of radio shows that were mostly taken from old episodes of X Minus One and Dimension X. According to otr.org, the first season of Future Tense 18 stories (13 based on X-1 scripts, two based on DX scripts, and 3 original scripts) and these first aired as 16 episodes in May of 1974. The second season had ten episodes (8 based on X-1 scripts and 2 original scripts) which aired in July 1976, At least three episodes involved time travel. Now why couldn’t I have gone to WMC?
  1. The Old Die Rich (7 May 1974) sleuth forced into time machine
  2. The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway (July 1976)    art critic from 25th century
  3. An Imbalance of Species (July 1976) from “A Sound of Thunder’

 Stay tuned now for excitement and adventure in the world of the future! Entertainment for the entire family produced right here in Kalamazoo. 




   “The Birch Clump Cylinder”
by Clifford D. Simak
First publication: Stellar 1, Sep 1974

When a contraption drops onto the Coon Creek Institute causing various objects to appear and disappear from out of time, Old Prather calls together three former students: someone with expertise in time travel (our discredited time-travel researcher and narrator, Charley Spencer), one whos a mean-spirited, world-famous mathematician (Leonard Asbury), and with no preconceptions about the matter (the lovely composer, Mary Holland, who broken more than one heart on the campus).

 A time machine has fallen into a clump of birch just above the little pond back of the machine shops. 


   “Renaissance Man”
by T.E.D. Klein
First publication: Space 2: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories, 5 Sep 1974

When the new time machine randomly grabs a random man from the future, all the waiting bigwigs and reporters are delighted that they managed to catch a scientist for the six-hour interview.

 We knew wed pull back someone from the Harvard Physics Department, because were here in the building right now. But it could have been just anyone. We might have found ourselve questioning a college freshman . . . Or a scrubwoman . . . Or even a tourist visiting the lab. 




  Dancers at the End of Time #2
The Hollow Lands
by Michael Moorcock
First publication: Oct 1974

Still in pursuit of Amelia Underwood, Jherek again travels to Victorian England where he runs into her husband (oh, yes, that quaint Victorian Mrs. nomenclature) and a disbelieving H.G. Wells.

 “No true Eloi should be able to read or write.” Mr. Wells puffed on his pipe, peering out of the window. 


   “Retroflex”
by F.M. Busby
First publication: Vertex, Oct 1974

Haldene tracks down a man named Cochrane, who turns out to be a killer from the future.

 The one calling himself Cochrane is not of this era, but of a time far forward. 


   “If This Is Winnetka,
You Must Be Judy”

by F.M. Busby
First publication: Universe 5, Nov 1974

Larry Garth skips from year to year in his life (not linearly, of course), waiting to meet his once and future wife, Elaine.

 He lit a cigarette and leafed through the cards and minutiae that constituted his identity in the outside world. Well . . . knowing himself, his drivers permit would be up-to-date and all credit cards unexpired. The year was 1970. Another look outside: autumn. So he was thirty-five, and the pans clattered at the hands of Judy. 


The story also appeared in the 1979 anthology, The Gollancz/Sunday Times Best SF Stories

   “Let’s Go to Golgotha!”
by Garry Kilworth
First publication: Sunday Times Weekly Review, 15 Dec 1974

A typical family of four decide to go with their best friends to see the cruxifiction of Jesus.

 If youre talking about time-tours, why dont you come with us? Were going to see the Cruxifiction. 






   Sesame Street
created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett
First time travel: 20 Dec 1974

From his early days, Kermit brought news reports to Sesame Street. I don't know when he first reported from back in history, so I’ll arbitrarily say that the first one was his interview of Christopher Columbus in Episode 700 shortly before Christmas in 1974.

In the 35th anniversary special, “The Street We Live On,” Grover takes Elmo on a trip through time to see how the street was in the past. Also, in a PBS special, “Elmo Saves Christmas,” the red guy visits a future Christmas.

 Columbus: But, say, what time is it?
Kermit: Oh, its about, ah, 1492. 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, 1974 [time dilation ]

Land of the Lost by Sid Krofft and Marty Krofft, 7 Sep 1974 [parallel universes ]

   “Trying to Connect You”
by John Rowe Townsend
First publication: The Eleventh Ghost Book, 1975

A man realizes the mistake he made with Elaine, and he desperately searches for a phone booth to call her before she leaves the country forever, but others want the phone booth, too, for a series of disasters that haven’t yet happened.

 Twenty-four hours after I left her, I knew I was wrong and knew what I should have said. 




   “Anniversary Project”
by Joe Haldeman
First publication: Analog, Oct 1975

One million years after the invention of writing, Three-Phasing (nominally male) brings a 20th century man and his wife forward in time to teach the ancestors of man how to read.

 “Pleasta Meetcha, Bob. Likewise, Sarah. Call me, uh . . .“ The only twentieth-century language in which Three-phasings name makes sense is propositional calculus. “ George. George Boole.” 




  Time at the Top #2
Time at the Top
by Edward Ormondroyd
First publication: Nov 1963

At the end of the first book, motherless Susan Shaw has finally convinced her father to at least try the whole elevator-to-1881 business. After that, well, of course her father will marry the widowed Mrs. Walker, and Susan will live happily ever after in the past with her new sister and brother, Vicky and Bobbie. Unless—no, it couldn’t be!—what if Mr. Shaw sees things differently?

 Mr. Shaw rallied. “No, no, thank you, frog in my throat. Im all right. Really pleased to meet you, too. Im ah – its just that – oh, look here, Im having a hard time taking all this in. I mean, Susans told me an incredible story about herself and you –” 




   “Timetipping”
by Jack Dann
First publication: Epoch, Nov 1975

People, animals (or at least parts of them), and a reluctant wandering Jew are tossed back and forth through alternate realities at various times.

 Nothing was for certain, anything could change (depending on your point of view), and almost anything could happen, especially to forgetful old men who often found themselves in the wrong century rather than on the wrong street. 




  
 Humboldt #1
Time Piper
by Delia Huddy
First publication: 1976

In the first of two books Luke meets an out-of-place girl named Hare, and given all the tachyon flying around, he begins to suspect that Tom Humboldt—the head of Luke’s summer research project—has pulled Hare from the past.

A sequel, The Humboldt Effect, picks up Luke’s life several years later.

 She was strange, remote, and beautiful, and she called herself “Hare.” 








   The Chronopath Stories
by Steven Utley
First story: Galaxy, Jan 1976

I’ve read only the first of this series of stories which predates Utley’s better known Silurian tales. The first-person narrator, Bruce Holt, tells of his power (which he didn’t ask for and has no control over) of traveling through time and being deposited in other beings’ minds for a brief few seconds at a time.
  1. Getting Away (Jan 1976) Galaxy
  2. Predators (Oct 1976) The Ideas of Tomorrow
  3. To 1966 (Spring 1977) Chacal
  4. Spectator Sport (Jul 1977) Amazing
  5. The Maw (Jul 1977) F&SF
  6. Time and Hagakure (Winter 1977) Asimovs
  7. Where or When (Jan 1991) Asimovs
  8. The Glowing Cloud (Jan 1992) Asimovs
  9. Now That We Have Each Other (Jul 1992)   Asimovs
  10. One Kansas Night (Jun 1994) Asimovs
  11. Living It (Aug 1994) Asimovs
  12. Staying in Storyville (Dec 2006) in When or Where
  13. Life’s Work (Dec 2006) in When or Where
  14. The Here and Now (Mar 1998) Asimovs

 What do you want me to do? Go back and find out where Captain Kidd buried his loot? 

—“Getting Away”




   Time Travelers
by Jackson Gillis (Alexander Singer, director)
First aired: 19 Mar 1976

ABC-tv picked up this failed pilot (a proposed revival of The Time Tunnel) and aired it as a made-for-tv movie in which Dr. Clinton Earnshaw and his government-sent sidekick Jeff Adams venture back to 1871 to track down a cure for a modern-day epidemic.

 For your information, medical historians have been digging into that puzzle for years without any luck at all. So unless somehow—miraculously—you have discovered Dr. Hendersons diaries in the last couple of hours . . . 




   “Birth of a Notion”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Amazing, Apr 1976

The world’s first time traveler, Simeon Weill, goes back to 1925 and gives some ideas to Hugo.

 That the first inventor of a workable time machine was a science fiction enthusiast is by no means a coincidence. 




   “An Infinite Summer”
by Christopher Priest
First publication: Andromeda, May 1976

For purposes that only they can know, people from the future—Thomas Lloyd calls them “freezers”—put a small number of people into a kind of suspended animation. Nobody can see the frozen except for those who have been previously frozen and then thawed. Thomas himself is among this select group: frozen in 1903 on the verge of proposing to his beloved Sarah; unfrozen shortly before World War II, at which point he can but view his still-frozen Sarah.

 Thomas James Lloyd, straw hat raised in his left hand, his other hand reaching out. His right knee was slightly bent, as if he were about to kneel, and his face was full of happiness and expectation. A breeze seemed to be ruffling his hair, for three strands stood on end, but these had been dislodged when he removed his hat. A tiny winged insect, which had settled on his lapel, was frozen in its moment of flight, an instinct to escape too late. 


   “Balsamo’s Mirror”
by L. Sprague de Camp
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1976

MIT student W. Wilson Newbury has a creepy Lovecraftian friend who is enamored with the 18th century, so naturally they visit an Armenian gypsy who makes them passengers in the bodies of an 18th century pauper and his father.

This story gave me a game that I play of pretending that I have just arrived as a passenger in my own body with no control over my actions or observations. How long does it take to figure out who and where I am? So, I enjoyed that aspect of the story, but I have trouble reading phonetically spelled dialects.

In his autobiography, de Camp says he based the setting of the story on his time as a graduate student at MIT in 1932, when Lovecraft (whom de Camp didn’t know) lived in nearby Providence: “I put H.P. Lovecraft himself, unnamed, into the story and stressed the contrast between his idealized eighteenth-century England and what he would have found if he had actually been translated back there. To get the dialect right, I read Fielding’s Tom Jones.”

 I didnt say that we could or should go back to pre-industrial technology. The changes since then were inevitable and irreversible. I only said . . . 


1982 paperback edition   “Room 409”
by Nance Donkin
First publication: A Handful of Ghosts, Nov 1976

A thirteen-year-old Australian boy on vacation in England gets a key to a room that existed during World War II but no longer does.

 He didnt seem to fit in at all well with the modern decor of the place, but I got the key from him and went towards the lift. 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
The Nonsuch Lure by Mary Luke, 1976 [reincarnation ]

Dragonriders of Pern #3 (Harper Hall #1): Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey, Mar 1976 [no time travel ]

“I See You” by Damon Knight, F↦SF, Nov 1976 [viewing the past ]

The story also appeared in this 1996 collection.   “Execution”
by George Clayton Johnson
First publication: Scripts and Stories written for “The Twilight Zone”, 1977

A man without conscience who’s about to be hung in 1880 is transported to a scientist’s lab in 1960.

Serling turned Johnson’s story into a 1960 Twilight Zone episode, but I’m uncertain whether the story was published before Johnson’s 1977 restrospective collection. Johnson is also well-known for Logan’s Run, with Jenny Agutter but (sadly) no time travel.

 Commonplace, if somewhat grim, unsocial event known as a necktie party. The guest of dishonor, a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow man, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswelll, in the last quiet moment of a violent life. 

—Opening narration of the Twilight Zone episode


   The Crisis Stories
by James Gunn
First story: Analog, Mar 1977

Bill Johnson travels from the future to affect important political change at moments of crisis, but each time he makes a change, he also forgets all personal details about himself.
  1. Child of the Sun (Mar 1977) Analog
  2. The End of the World    (Jan 1984) Analog
  3. Man of the Hour (Oct 1984) Analog
  4. Mother of the Year (Apr 1985) Analog
  5. Touch of the Match (Feb 1985) Analog
  6. Will of the Wisp (May 1985) Analog
  7. Crisis! (May 1986) fix-up novel

 But each time you intervene, no matter how subtly, you change the future from which you came. You exist in this time and outside of time and in the future, and so each change makes you forget. 




   The Rook
by Bill DuBay
First publication: Eerie 82, Mar 1977

As you know, post-1969 comic books are not normally permitted on the list, but seeing as how Restin Dane, aka The Rook, is the great, great grandson of Wells’s original traveler (not to mention that the Rook and his Time Castle rescued the traveler at the Alamo in his debut “castling” adventure), how can I not make an exception?

 Mister . . . I dont know who you are, where you came from, or where you got them fancy guns . . . but I want tthank God and San Houston fr sendin’ ya! My name’s Crockett . . . and before you got here, I thought fro sure Id wake up tomorrow shakin’ hands with th’ devil! 




   “Air Raid”
by John Varley
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spring 1977

Mandy snatches doomed people from the past in order to populate her war-decimated time.

 I had to choose between a panic if the fathead got them to thinking, and a possible panic from the flash of the gun. But when a 20th gets to talking about his “rights” and what he is “owed,&rdauo; things can get out of hand. 


   Time Storm
by Gordon R. Dickson
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spring-Summer 1977

Marc Despard, along with his teenaged friend Girl and their leopard Sunday, travels through an Earth ravenged by storms that push and pull swathes of land from one time to another.
Although the book was published in Oct 1977, it’s first half appeared as two long extracts in the first two issues of Asimovs Science Fiction (“Time Storm” in Spring 1977 and “Across the River” in Summer 1977).

 In the weeks since the whole business of the time changes started, I had not been this close to being caught since that first day in the cabin northwest of Duluth, when I had, in fact, been caught without knowing what hit me. 




   Star Wars
by George Lucas (Lucas, director)
First release: 25 May 1977

I’m just checking that you’re awake. Of course, in Star Wars, time travel no there is. Nevertheless, it gets onto the list simply because the fan-friendly George Lucas instigated an inclusive advertising campaign that sent me a colorful pressbook and an invitation to the opening in May 1977 because (along with Paul Chadwick and Dan Dorman) I was publishing an sf fanzine called Free Fall. Alas, I couldn’t use the invitation because I was falling in love with Janet in Scotland on the day of the premiere.

 I find your lack of faith disturbing. 




   “The Astronomical Hazards of the
Tobacco Habit”

by Dean McLaughlin
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Summer 1977

Whenever an effect of an action occurs before that action itself (i.e., an endochronic property), I consider it to be time travel, with the canonical example being Asimov’s Thiotimoline research first published in 1948. According to McLaughlin, Asimov continued that research, using the profits to establish a foundation that funds further research into such phenomena.

 Dr. Isaac Asimov
Director: Thiotimoline Research Foundation
Trantor MA31416
 


   “Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation”
by Larry Niven
First publication: Analog, Aug 1977

A mathematician named Quifting has a way to use a time machine to end the war with the Hallane Regency once and for all.

 Did nobody ever finish one of these, ah, time machines? 


   “Joelle”
by Poul Anderson
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fall 1977

Canadian Eruc Stranathan is one of the few people in the world who can merge his mind with computer hardware, taking him to mental vistas beyond that of mere humans. At a conference to explore the possibilities of the technology, he meets the beautiful American Joelle who shares his ability. The two fall deeply in love, but because of security restrictions, it’s fifteen months before she can show him the capabilities of her mind-machine connection.

The time-travel connection is slight in this long story, but it is relevant to Joelle. As I read though, I wondered whether the story could have been much more had the time-travel element been taken more to heart.

 He swept out of the cell, through space and through time, at light-speed across unseen prairies, into the storms that raged down a great particle accelerator. 


Freff’s interior drawing for the story   “Lorelei at Storyville West”
by Sherwood Spring
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fall 1977

A writer who’s working on a book about Dixieland singers interviews the one man who might have a 1955 tape recording of Ruby Benton whose voice always drew comparisons to the most outstanding singer you’d ever heard. The man does indeed have a recording as well as a theory about why Ruby disappeared from the clubs of Storyville West at the particular time she did.

 The tatoo was obviously her social security number, but it was preceded by an “A” and followed by a space and five additional digits. 


   The Orion Series
by Ben Bova
First story: Weird Heroes 8 (Nov 1977)

Orion the Hunter is tasked by mighty Ormazd to continually battle evil Ahriman, the Dark One. Bova’s first tale chronicles a time thousands of years in the past when Orion is part of a nomadic hunting clan that includes the beautiful Ana whom he has bonded with and loved throughout time.
  1. Title Publication
  2. Floodtide (Nov 1977) in Weird Heroes 8
  3. Orion (1984) incorporates “Floodtide”
  4. Vengeance of Orion (1988)
  5. Orion in the Dying Time (1990)
  6. Orion and the Conqueror    (1984)
  7. Orion among the Stars (1995)
  8. Legendary Heroes (Dec 1996) Dragon Magazine
  9. Orion and King Arthur (2012)

 But even from this distance I could see she was the gray-eyed woman I had known in other eras; the woman I had loved, thousands of years in the future of this world. The woman who had loved me. 

—“Floodtide”, reprinted in the March 1983 Analog






   DC Superhero Cartoons
First time travel: 10 Dec 1977

As you know, I was forced to ban all post-1969 comic books from The List because comic books pretty much fell to pieces after that date. If I discover many more superhero cartoons like these ones, I will be forced to expand the ban.
  1. The Protector (10 Dec 1977) The All New Super Friends Hour
  2. The Time Trap (30 Sep 1978) Challenge of the Super Friends
  3. New Kids in Town (31 Oct 1998) Superman
  4. The Savage Time (9 Nov 2002) Justice League
  5. Day of the Dark Knight! (2 Jan 2009) Batman: The Brave and the Bold   
  6. Staring at the Future (30 Oct 2013) Teen Titans Go!

 It is the fifth century, A.D., the place is Britain, and I am Merlin Ambrosius. 

—“The Day of the Dark Knight!”, Episode 4 of Batman: The Brave and the Bold


   The Backspace Stories
by F.M. Busby
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Winter 1977

After fixing the smog problem by reversing the direction of Earth’s spin, Pete’s flaky friend Sam shows up with device that includes a calendar display and a grey backspace button. That, of course, was in the 1977 story, “Backspace”. I don’t know whether there were any earlier stories of Peter and Sam before the backspace button appeared, but there were several others afterward in Asimovs Science Fiction. In the second story (“Balancing Act”), Sam could still “edit” time, even though he’d burned out the backspace button by stopping World War III. It’s unclear whether this second sort of editing involves time travel, but it is fun to speculate on what I might edit if given the chance.
  1. Backspace (Winter 1977) enter the backspace button
  2. Balancing Act (16 Feb 1981) editing Pete’s bloopers and more
  3. Backup System (26 Oct 1981) Sam’s death causes backspacing
  4. Wrong Number (21 Dec 1981) aliens v. Russia

 My friend Sam is the only person I know who edits events. Which is to say, he does something in his head and the past changes; the alterations, of course also reflect into the present and the future. 

—“Backup System”


I lament that the sf zines of today have relatively few interior illustrations such as this pen and ink drawing by Roy G. Krenkel for Garrett’s story.   “On the Martian Problem”
by Randall Garrett
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Winter 1977

Ed’s “Uncle Jack’ writes to him with an explanation about why the recent Martian landers show such a different Mars than that which Jack himself has visited and written about.

 To the Reader of this Work:
In submitting Captain Carters strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.
My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he spent at my fathers home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called Uncle Jack. . . .
very sincerely yours,
Edgar Rice Burroughs
 

—from the foreward to A Princess of Mars



No Time Travel.
Move along.
Dragonriders of Pern #4 (Harper Hall #2): Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey, Feb 1977 [no time travel ]

   The Mirror
by Marlys Millhiser
First publication: 1978

In 1978, 20-year-old Boulder woman exchanges places with her grandmother on the eve of their respective weddings.

Janet and I read this in April, 2011.

 Here, at last, was the man in Grandma Brans wedding picture in the hall. 


The story also appeared in this 1986 collection.   “Threads of Time”
aka “The Threads of Time”
by C.J. Cherryh
First publication: Darkover Grand Council Program Book IV, 1978

Although I’ve enjoyed many of Cherryh’s novels (first suggested to me by my academic advisor, David B. Benson), this particular vignette was a plotless mishmash of alien artifact time-gates and time cops patrolling the baddies who would wipe out history as we (or the qhal) would know it.

 But never go back. Never tamper. Never alter the past. 




   A Traveller in Time
adapted by Doame Devere Cole
First episode: 4 Jan 1978

The BBC adapted Alison Uttley’s children’s book in a miniseries of five half-hour episodes, faithfully taking young Penelope Taberner Cameron back to Elizabethan England and the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. If you can find the British DVD, you'll even hear Simon Gipps-Kent regale Penelope with Greensleeves”.

 ♫Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off, discourteously♫
 


I’m not sure when this commemorative plate was issued for the cartoon.

   A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court
produced, directed and plagiarized by Chuck Jones
First airing: 23 Feb 1978

This half-hour Warner Brother’s cartoon was shown on tv a few times and then released on VHS as Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court. With the help of Way Bwadbuwy, Bugs finds himself in Camelot, whereupon he brings about a dragon-powered steampunk age.

 Never again—never, never again—do I take travel hints from Ray Bradbury! Huh! Him and his short cuts! 


   “Grimes at Glenrowan”
by A. Bertram Chandler
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 1978

Bertram’s widely traveled, spacefaring captain John Grimes had at least one adventure through time which he told to a pretty reporter named Kitty on the Rim World of Elsinore. It seems that when Grimes was a much younger spacehand on leave in his native Australia, he once ran into two former crewmates who had figured out how to project themselves and Grimes into their own nefarious ancestors in the 1880 outback.

I’m still searching for other time travel stories about Grimes or Chandler’s Rim Worlds.

 “I built it,” said Kelly, not without pride.
“What for?” I asked. “Time Travel?” I sneered.
“Yes,” he said.
 




   Mastodonia
aka Catface
by Clifford D. Simak
First publication: Mar 1978

Asa Steele buys a farm near his boyhood farm in southwestern Wisconsin where the loyal Bowser and his simple friend Hiram talk to a lonely time-traveling alien who opens time roads for the three of them.

 Maybe it takes gently crazy people and simpletons and dogs to do things we can’t do. Maybe they have abilities we don’t have. . . . 


interior art by George Barr   “The Small Stones of Tu Fu”
by Brian Aldiss
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 1978

A time traveler enjoys spending time with the aged poet Tu Fu in 770 A.D.

 Swimming strongly on my way back to what the sage called the remote future, my form began to flow and change according to time pressure. Sometimes my essence was like steam, sometimes like a mountain. 




   The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams
First time travel: BBC Radio, 29 Mar 1978

Apart from the original radio programs that I listened to in Stirling on my study abroad, the travails of Arthur Dent dodging Vogons never inflamed my passion—and I’m not quite sure where time travel slipped into the further radio shows, books, tv shows, movies and video games (which I won’t list here, apart from noting Tim’s favorite quote from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: “There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!” Still, those original radio shows got me laughing, including the first moment of time travel in the 4th episode.

The radio series spawned six books and at least one time-travel infused short story.
  1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
  2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
  3. Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)
  4. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984)
  5. “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe” (1986) in The Hitchhiker’s Quartet
  6. Mostly Harmless (1992)
  7. And Another Thing . . . (2009) by Eoin Colfer

 For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said, “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far, far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space, to a distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. 

—from the 4th radio episode


   “The Last Full Measure”
by George Alec Effinger
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/Jun 1978

Corporal Bo Staefler lands and dies on Normandy Beach on D-Day, after which an alien brings him back to life and asks him to do it all again (and again), making sure to pay attention to all the details.

 He went through every moment, every step, every ragged breath, every slow, wading, stumbling yard through the cold water to the beach. And it all felt the same, as though he were just a spectator. The shell exploded. Staefler died a second time. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #5
The White Dragon
by Anne McCaffrey
First publication: Jun 1978

Young Jaxom of Ruatha Hold is a lord, so of course, he’s not supposed to impress himself on a dragon. But then again, the stunted white dragon Ruth wasn’t supposed to be big enough to fly with a rider either. Nevertheless, amidst the Thread and Oldtimers on Pern, Jaxon does impress Ruth, and together they do a few other things that they’re not meant to be doing either.

The story incorporates the novella, “A Time When” (1975), which appeared only as a limited edition at Boskone where McCaffrey was the Guest of Honor.

 Before Jaxom could remind Ruth that they weren’t supposed to go between time, they had. 


   “One Rejection Too Many”
by Paula Nurse
First publication: Asimov’s Clarke’s Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 1978

A time-traveling writer gets more and more fed up with Isaac Asimov’s demands for rewrites on his story submissions.

 Anything you can do to expediate the publishing of Vahls story will be most appreciated, so that he will feel free to return to his own time. 


interior art by Freff

   “The Adventure of the Global Traveler”
aka “The Global Consequences of How the Reichenbach Falls into the Wells of Iniquitie”
by Anne Lear
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 1978

Apparently, that trip over the Reichenbach Falls didn’t kill Moriarty after all. Instead, he survived to build a Time Velocipede (which he showed off to some guy named Wells) only to be trapped back in the time of Shakespeare and the Globe Theater.

 Having learned early of the dangers attendant upon being unable to move the Time Machine, I had added to its structure a set of wheels and a driving chain attached to the pedals originally meant simply as foot rests. In short, I converted it into a Time Velocipede. 




   “Nebogipfel at the End of Time”
by Richard Lupoff
First publication: Heavy Metal, Sep 1978

The end of time is as much of a magnet for time travelers as Hitler’s birth, although for a different reason.

 For what seemed like hour upon hour they arrived. Some by strange, grotesque vehicles. Some by spectacularly announced projection. Some by chronion gas, or drugs, or spiritual exercise, or by sheer mental power. Some involuntarily. Some unknowingly. At one point not far inland from the beach, across the first row of dim, ugly dunes, there suddenly appeared an entire city. 




   “Scrap from the Notebooks of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”

by K.W. MacAnn
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep/Oct 1978

Mephistopheles agrees to take Faust into Hell and one other destination in time.

 Faust and Mephistopheles entered the tavern and shed their heavy overcoats. 


   “Stalking the Timelines”
by Kevin O’Donnell, Jr.
First publication: Analog, Sep 1978

A catlike being lives the life of a soldier in many different times and places, but always with the same goal of stamping out war.

  . . . but in all the lines Im big, tough, and smart enough to know how to take good orders and not hear bad ones. 


   “The Very Slow Time Machine”
by Ian Watson
First publication: Anticipations, Sep 1978

In 1985, a small inpenetrable living pod appears out of nothing at the National Physics Laboratory. A window on one side shows the pod’s occupant: a delirious man who grows younger and saner through the years, although generally doing little other than sitting and reading, leading the observers to conclude that his quarters are in fact a VSTM taking him back through time at the rate of one year for each year of his life.

As of writing this, I am only partway through my reading and wondering so many things: When the man in the world at large who will eventually enter the machine realize that he is the traveler? From his perspective, what happened to the machine (and him!) when it materialized in 1985? (Ah! That question is answered shortly after it occurs to me.) For that matter, why doesn’t he himself, while in the pod, already know that he will reach 1985? To what extent does his very appearance cause the technology that permits his trip to occur? VCIS! (Very Cool Idea-Story!), although it offers little in plot or character.

 Our passenger is the object of popular cults by now—a focus for finer feelings. In this way his mere presence has drawn the worlds peoples closer together, cultivating respect and dignity, pulling us back from the brink of war, liberating tens of thousands from their concentration camps. These cults extend from purely fashionable manifestations—shirts printed with his face, now neatly shaven in a Vandyke style; rings and worry-beads made from galena crystals—through the architectural (octahedron and cube meditation modules) to life-styles themselves: a Zen-like “sitting quietly, doing nothing”. 




Mork and Mindy lived at 1619 Pine Street in Boulder

   Mork and Mindy
produced by Anthony W. Marshall and Garry Marshall
First time travel: 14 Sep 1978

There’s a scene in the first episode where Mork explains that he’s traveling from the 1950s Happy Days to 1978—but that scene did not air until subsequent reruns. The other time travel that I know of is in the penultimate episode where the couple travel via Mork’s ruby red, size eight, time-travel shoes.

 Wait! I have one last request! I would like to die with dignity, with honor, . . . and with my penny-loafers on. 




   “Fair Exchange?”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine, Fall 1978

John Sylva has invented a temporal transference device that allows his friend Herb to enter the mind of a man in 1871 London and to thereby attend three performances of a lost Gilbert & Sullivan play.

I read this story as I was starting my graduate studies in Pullman in 1978. Sadly, there was no second issue of Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine.

 We cant be sure how accurate our estimates of time and place are, but you seem to resonate with someone in London in 1871. 




   The Avatar
by Poul Anderson
First publication: Oct 1978

No, this book has nothing to do with Cameron’s more widely-known movie, although critics have noted a similarity between the movie and an earlier Anderson story, “Call Me Joe.” As for The Avatar, it’s a political story of time-space portals (Tipler cylinders known in the book as T-machines) left behind by the “Others.” Wealthy Daniel Broderson wants to use results of a portal exploration team for the benefit of all mankind, while the authoritarian leaders of Earth thinks that mankind isn’t ready for the full truth.

The title avatar of Anderson’s book is present as one of the portal exploration team members right from the start of the goings-on, but the name avatar isn’t used until the conclusion of the book—and the meaning of the word is the one that predates our modern digital view.

 For us, approximately eight Terrestrial years have passed. It turns out that the T-machine is indeed a time machine of sorts, as well as a space transporter. The Betans—the beings whom we followed—calculated our course to bring us out near the date when we left. 




   “Time Warp”
by Theodore Sturgeon
First publication: Omni, Oct 1978

On the hidden planet of Ceer, Althair tells all the little pups and pammies of the time when he accompanied the brave Will Hawkins and the chief pilot Jonna Verret as they traveled back in time to save Earth from the Meercaths from Orel who had the power to blow up the Earth and would use it whether the Earthlings revealed the secret of time travel or not.

In my first semester of graduate school, I bought the first issue of Omni, which included this story. But I forgot about it until Bill Seabrook (a baseball fan and sf reader from Tyne-and-Wear) sent me a pointer to this story as well as J.B. Priestley’s time plays.

 Well arrive on Orel before they leave and stop them. 


   “One More Time”
by Jack Gaughan
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 1978

One thing you can be certain of when you meet a nostalgic physicist in a science fiction story: There’s gonna be some time travelin’. In this case, the nostalgic narrator travels from 1978 back to pastoral American days at the end of the Great Depression with the goal of helping his father stand up to a domineering wife.

Gaughan was better know as a prolific sf artist, but he also produced this story and one other for Asimov’s Science Fiction.

 So I told him.
From beginning to end (well not end, I didnt tell him of his own funeral) and tried to leave nothing out that was pertinent to the plan. I didnt know what else to do. The year 1939 may have been ready for Buck Rogers or Brick Bradford and his Time Top, but was it ready for the hard, cold reality of time travel?
 




   Classics Illustrated’s The Time Machine
adapted by Wallace C. Bennett
First aired: 5 Nov 1978 (made-for-tv)

For me, the updated framing took this made-for-tv movie too far away from the original novel, and the production values were so low that it never got much airing, even if we do get looks at pilgrim witch hunts, the old west, and a dreamy Weena who speaks English.

 In tonights Classics Illustrated presentation, a young scientist hurtles the barrier of time and finds himself locked in a struggle to prevent the destruction Earth in the world of the future—an exciting new version of H.G. Wells’s masterpiece, The Time Machine. 


   “The Humanic Complex”
by Ray Russell
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1978

An amnesiac receives a visit from a tiny creature from the future who offers to grant him any three wishes he wants, but somehow the wishes keep being deflected in a theological direction.

 This may sound pompous, but . . . I wish to know whether or not there is a God. 




   Superman: The Movie
by Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Mario Puzo, et. al. (Richard Donner, director)
First release: 15 Dec 1978

The humor didn’t quite click for me, but I did enjoy other parts including Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, the John Williams score, and a well-presented Superman mythos including his first time-travel rebellion against the don’t-mess-with-history edict of Jor-El.

 In times of fear and confusion, the job of informing the public was the responsibility of the Daily Planet, a great metropolitan newspaper whose reputation for clarity and truth had become the symbol for hope in the city of Metropolis. 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
“A Time-Span to Conjure With” by Ian Watson, Andromeda 3, 1978 [despite title, no time travel ]

“Thirty Love” by Jack C. Haldeman II, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 1979 [precognition ]

   “Garbage”
by Ron Goulart
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jan 1979

“Garbage”—which I read during the 1978 Christmas when Janet visited me in Washington—was my first exposure to Goulart, who is the Mel Brooks of short science fiction. In the story, Product Investigation Enterprises agent Dan Tockson sends a typevox memo to his boss explaining what went wrong in an investigation into a Florida food with were-ish side effects.

There was no time travel in the food investigation, but at the start of Tockson’s memo, he refers to a previous investigation that took him to 15th century Italy. I found one later Tockson story, “Ask Penny Jupiter,’ but it was timetravelless.

 “Youre angry because I stayed in fifteenth-century Italy so long?”
Im not especially mad,” you answered, growling. “but the Time Travel Overseeing Community wasnt much pleased. You shouldnt have dropped in on Leonardo da Vinci with those tips on aerodynamics.’
 


   “Palely Loitering”
by Christopher Priest
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1979

At age ten, Mykle jumps off the time-flux bridge at a sharp angle and goes far into the future where he sees a lovely girl named Estyll, and as he grows older, he is drawn to the future and to her over and over again.

 One of these traversed the Channel at an angle of exactly ninety degrees, and to walk across it was no different from crossing any bridge across any ordinary river.
One bridge was built slightly obtuse of the right-angle, and to cross it was to climb the temporal gradient of the flux-field; when one emerged on the other side of the Channel, twenty-four hours had elapsed.
The third bridge was built slightly acute of the right-angle, and to cross to the other side was to walk twenty-four hours into the past. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow existed on the far side of the Flux Channel, and one could walk at will among them.
 




   Happy Days
created by Garry Marshall
First time travel: 6 Mar 1979

Some time after this show jumped the shark, Mork (who made his first appearance in a 1978 Happy Days episode) returns from the 70s to visit Richie and the gang, where they want to know about cars and girls of the future.

 In 1979, . . . both are faster. 


   “Ahead of the Joneses”
by Al Sarrantonio
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar 1979

Harry Jones’s neighbor has a compulsion to own every modern gadget that’s bigger and better and more whiz-bang than whatever Harry’s got.

 Eat your heart out Harry Jones! 




   “Loob”
by Bob Leman
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr 1979

Tom Perman remembers his home town differently, but in his actual life, the town is run-down and neither his grandmother nor her elegant house exist—a situation Tom can explain only through changes made to the past by loob, the town idiot; although ironically, it’s only through those changes that Loob himself even exists.

 Their only dreams are of winning prizes on television giveaway shows. 


   “The Dead of Winter”
by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 1979

Four miners, trapped over winter in a mountain cabin, run out of food, but three people in a love triangle show up from the future with a couple of candy bars, a flask of drink, and a fued.

 “Oh, well—” He runs his pasty white hands through hispockets while Cole and the girl do the same. “I have a candy bar or two, I believe,” and he brings them out. “Cole, you have a bottle, dont you?"
The guy with the black hat scowls at him, but brings a flask out of his hip pocket and lays it on the table.
 


interior art by
Vincent Di Fate
   “The Pinch-Hitters”
by George Alec Effinger
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 1979

Sandor Courane and four other up-and-coming sf writers are snagged from their hotel at a 1979 convention in New Orleans only to wake up the next morning as five insignificant major league ballplayers in 1954—and the aging Sandor is hitting only .221.

 I felt angry. I wanted to show that kid, but there wasnt anything I could show him, with the possible exception of sentence structure. 


   “The Agent”
by Christopher Priest with David Redd
First publication: Aries 1, 28 Jun 1979

Egon Rettmer—citizen of neutral Silte, but an agent for the Nord-Deutschland in their war against the Masurians—uses time travel for his communiques and, as he realizes on the eve of the N-D invasion, theres the potention to use it for more, maybe even to get a good start with that entrancing visitor, Heidi.

 She was behaving towards him, literally, as if he had been in two places at once . . . as if, this morning, he had met her and told her of the escape plans he had only half started to form a few minutes ago! 




   Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
First publication: Jul 1979

Dana Franklin, a 26-year-old African-American woman living in modern-day California, finds herself transported back to the antebellum south whenever young redheaded Rufus is in trouble.

 Fact then: Somehow, my travels crossed time as well as distance. Another fact: The boy was the focus of my travels—perhaps the cause of them. 


   “The Merchant of Stratford”
by Frank Ramirez
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jul 1979

The world’s first time traveler sets out to visit a retired Will Shakespeare, carrying a long a case of books that he hopes will be a unique treat for the immortal bard.

 In my storage case were volumes for his perusal—a concise history of the world through the year 2000, a selection of the greatest poets since the master, selected volumes of Shakespearean criticism, and the massive one-volume Armstead Shakespeare, the definitive Shakespeare, published in 1997. 




   Xanth
by Piers Anthony
First time travel: Jul 1979

Deborah Baker first introduced me to this series of books in 1982, and I read the first nine in the 1980s. The books are set in a pun-infested world in which people have individual magic powers that they must discover. The first time travel that I remember was in the 1979 Castle Roogna where characters could step into a tapestry that took them to the past.

 It was embroidered with scenes from the ancient past of Castle Roogna and its environs, eight hundred years ago. 




   Time after Time
by Nicholas Meyer, Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes (Meyer, director)
First release: 31 Aug 1979

Apart from the hero in The Time Machine movie, this is the earliest that I’ve seen of the H.G.‑Wells-as-time-traveler subgenre. Our hero chases Jack the Ripper into the 20th century.

 Ninety years ago I was a freak; today I am an amateur. 

—Jack the Ripper in the twentieth century


   “Jenning’s Operative Webster”
by J.E. Walters
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 1979

For a fee, Jenning’s time-travel agency which will send Webster back through the time stream to inhabit other’s bodies in an attempt to alter some important event such as the loss of a son in Vietnam.

 The fabric of time is a delicate, almost whimsical thing. Our success rate runs at nearly eight-two percent, and within the industry that is an enviable rate. But we just can not guarantee success. 




   Jubilee
by Derek Jarman and Christopher Hobbs (Jarman, director)
First release: Sep 1979

In this early punk movie, John Dee, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, calls forth an angel who transports the three of them to an anarchistic (but largely unintelligible) 20th century England.

 Now shall one king rise up against another. And there shall be bloodshed throughout the whole world, fighting between the devil, his kingdom, and the kingdom of light. 


   The Alternities, Inc. Stories
by John M. Ford
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Oct 1979

I read the first of Ford’s stories in which a small group of men and women, ever hopeful of finding their Homeline, march through a narrow tube where hatches to alternate worlds and alternate times appear every 100 kilometers. I think that most of the Earthlike worlds have a corporation—Alternities, Inc.—which has tried to turn a profit on the tubes.
  1. Mandalay (Oct 1979) Asimov's
  2. Out of Service (Jul 1980) Asimov's
  3. Slowly By, Lorena (Nov 1980) Asimov's
  4. Intersections (26 Oct 1981) Asimov's

 Clever people he worked for.
But not clever enough to preven the Fracture, when Augustan Romans had tumbled into the waters of the Spanish Main and bandannaed urban guerillas shot the hell out of the Sun Kings palace at Verasilles. Not clever enough to point the way to Homeline, except as a hundred-kilometer march from line to line through a hexagonal sewer in Space4.
 

—“Mandalay’




   Roadmarks
by Roger Zelazny
First publication: Oct 1979

As Red Dorakeen tries to avoid assassination, he travels on a highway that links all times via mutable exits that appear every few years.

There are other Zelazny works that drew me in much deeper (try Seven Princes of Amber). Still, Roadmarks has some interesting techniques. For example, Zelazny said that the second of the two storylines, which take place off the Road, was written as separate chapters and then shuffled into no particular order.

 It traverses Time—Time past, Time to come, Time that could have been and Time that might yet be. It goes on forever, so far as I know, and no one knows all of its turnings. 


   “Life Trap”
by Barrington J. Bayley
First publication: The Seed of Life, Nov 1979

Marcus, an aspirant to the highest rank afforded to members of the Arcanum Temple, undergoes an experiment to determine what awaits us after death, and the answer certainly involves time in a macabre manner.

 Although the secret of death has been imparted to the full membership of the Temple, not all have understood its import. 


   “Twist Ending”
by Barry B. Longyear
First publication: Asimov's Science Fiction, Nov 1979

An intelligent Dromaeosaurus named GerG (or maybe just an actor playing GerG in a story, it’s hard to tell), prepares to travel 70,000,000 years into the future in order to pave the way for all the soon-to-be-extinct dinosaurs to escape.

 There exists but one node of time/future open within the range of our frames. You must go there and prepare the way for our exodus. Else, the supernova shall extinguish us all. 




   Fangface
produced by Jerry Eisenberg
First time travel: 3 Nov 1979

Sherman Fangsworth, a cross between Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil and a teen werewolf, had at least one adventure in time when he and his buddies were accidentally transported back to the 18th century by a modern-day pirate (“A Time-Machine Trip to the Pirate’s Ship”).

 After my time machine warms up, well be transported to the deck of the Silver Swan, the Spanish fleet’s most prized treasure ship. And after we pirate her valuable cargo, Ill be the riches man in the world—ha ha ha ha ha! 


   “Closing the Timelid”
by Orson Scott Card
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dec 1979

Centuries in the future, Orion throws an illicit party in which the partygoers get to experience complete death in the past.

 Ah, agony in a tearing that made him feel, for the first time, every particle of his body as it screamed in pain. 


   “Written in Sand”
by Robert Chilson
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 1979

Paul Enias travels from 21st century Egypt back to the third century where he becomes Pausanias, falls in love with the slave Taia, and takes advice from Appolonius about which of 750,000 available books to bury in clay jars for future Egyptians to discover.

 Odd that the book-man should shrug off the value of books, but Pausanias had too much to do to ponder it, overseeing the copying, the shipping of the books up the Nile, the reorganization of his new estate, and of course there was taia, then a new—bride. 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
“Time Shards” by Gregory Benford, Universe Anthology #9, 1979 [recordings from the past ]

“Back to Byzantium” by Mark J. McGarry, Asimov’s, Feb 1979 [ancestral memory ]

Dragonriders of Pern #6 (Harper Hall #3): Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey, Mar 1979 [no time travel ]

“Illusions” by Tony Sarowitz and Paul David Novitski, Asimov’s, Jun 1979 [just trust me: ]

“The Thaw” by Tanith Lee, Asimov’s, Jun 1979 [long sleep ]

 


138 items are in the time-travel list for these search settings.
Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (
main@colorado.edu)