He that taketh this crystal, so, in his hand, at night, and wishes, saying ‘At a certain hour let it be’; the hour comes and he will go back eight, ten, even twelve years if he will, into the past, and do a thing again, or act otherwise than he did. The day passes; the ten years are accomplished once again; he is here once more; but he is what he might have become had he done that one thing otherwise. 

 Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. 

 Twelve of them I counted, twelve ships in a fleet. Men of war? Surely not—not men of war. Men of war in this day do not carry sail. And yet—merchantmen? Merchantmen do not go to sea in peace times in groups of twelve. 

 “Perhaps I ought to explain,” he continued. “You see, I’m a clockwork man.” 

 Autumn had passed into winter before I mustered courage to get into communication with the Being to whom I had previously had recourse. 

 If he did meet Savile, he was prepared to shake hands with him in the old way, and to realize what a neurotic fool he had been: also that Destiny had made an idiot of itself with the careless blundering born of the knowledge that nobody would ever know, nobody, that is, except himself; and, of course, Destiny safely relied on the assumption that nobody would believe him. 

 Nie zapominajcie, że to Francuzi, najwaleczniejszy naród europejski, że to są ludzie, których brawura i dzielność oślepia.

[Do not forget that the French, bravest among all the European nationalities, are a people blinded by their very own braggadocio and past prowess.] 

 “Time,” said George, “why I can give you a definition of time. It’s what keeps everything from happening at once.” 

—from the opening line of the book, although Cummings wrote a similar line in Chapter 5 of his earlier work, The Girl in the Golden Atom (in the same setting of the Scientific Club), which had no time travel, but only different rates of time passage.

 It’s true enough, what they’ve told you, as far as we can tell it. As to theories of time and space, I know no more than you do. I used to think they were obvious. I’ve heard the Professor talk two nights a week for three years, and I’ve realised that it isn’t all quite as simple as it seemed, though I don’t get much further. But the next room’s a fact. We lay things down on the central slab, and the room goes dark, and we go back in two minutes, and it gets light again, and they’re still there. And the Professor says he’s projected them 500,000 years ahead in the interval, and they don’t look any the worse for the journey. 

 A cat can’t live nowadays—turn me back to a better age, just for a day. 

 I know I love you, Ken! But today—during the marriage service—something seemed to reach out of the Past that made me—afraid! 

 [The same room, at the same time, on the same day, in 1928. Most of the furniture remains, but the tone of time has settled upon it, and there are some changes.] 

—from the stage directions

 Held in its shapeless form were men, who hung helpless in its grasp. 

 Don Feromeno nodded and smiled. “Then let us assume that your purely imaginary aircraft is capable of traveling at the rate of 24,000 miles per hour or that, in an hour's time, you can circumnavigate the earth. In that case, starting from Lima at noon on Monday, and rushing eastward, you would arrive in Barcelona at 6.30 P. M. on Monday, though your watch would show it to be 12.15 P. M. You would reach Calcutta at 1 A. M. Tuesday, although still only 12.20 on Monday by your watch. At Hawaii you would find time had leaped back to 7.30 A. M. Monday, despite the fact that your watch showed 12.45 of the same day, and at 1 P.  on Monday by your watch you would be back in Lima where the clocks would prove to that it was 2 P. M. despite the fact that you had been absent only one hour. 

 How’s this? We throw a modern section into the picture. The hero’s a young hoofer in a Broadway show, right? Now he sings and he dances, right? But one night backstage, he’s reading A Tale of Two Cities, in between numbers, see? And a sandbag falls and hits him on the head, and he dreams he’s back during the French Revolution, right? Well, this way we get in the modern dancing numbers—♫Charleston, Charlston♫—but in the dream part, we can still use the costume stuff! 

 I know from what you have shown me already, that you come of a race which has lived only on the earth’s surface, and any cave or tunnel by which you enter it implies the approach to a confined and narrow space, so that when you attempt to visualise the condition of a race which lives under the surface, your imagination is of a cave, and not of a country. 

 “Then you do not entirely despise science.”
   “Of course not,” he affirmed. “I merely distrust the scientific positivism of the past fifty years, the positivism of Haeckel and Darwin and of Mr. Bertrand Russell. I believe that biology has failed pitifully to explain the mystery of man’s origin and destiny. 

 P-p-peace! Ye half d-d-d-dressed dragon! Ye wot not w-w-what ye good Kynge Arthur will think of such an t-t-t-tantalizing reflection of c-c-cr-creation! 

 No vision this! Reality! Empty space, two moments ago. Then a phantom, a moment ago. But a real tower, now! Solid. As real, as existent—now—as these rocks, these trees! 

1. Paradox (Summer 1929) Amazing Stories Quarterly
2. Paradox+ (Jul 1930) Amazing Stories
3. Anachronism (Dec 1930) Amazing Stories

 Cannes told of his life in that far future year, of his mystification at the circumstances surrounding the origin of that manuscript, which was used before it was made and could not hae been made if it hadn’t been previously used. He told us of the grandfather argument, and also of the time when he was actually and physically in two different places at one and the same time. 

—Paradox+

 As they watched, paralyzed, the building and air barge fell apart and hurtled toward the earth. The entire train had been split from end to end. The attacker now swung back and the then darted away. 

—The Sky Maniac

 The reader will have come to the conclusion the world of 6925 was inhabited by fools, or madmen. 

 This book has two authors, one contemporary with its readers, the other an inhabitant of an age which they would call the distant future. The brain that conceives and writes these sentences lives in the time of Einstein. Yet I, the true inspirer of this book, I who have begotten it upon that brain, I who influence that primitive being's conception, inhabit an age which, for Einstein, lies in the very remote future. 

 Before Northwood’s horrified sight, he vanished; vanished as though he had turned suddenly to air and floated away. 

 Dear Editor: Thus far the chief objection to time traveling has been this: if a person was sent back into the past or projected into the future, it would be possible for said person to interfere most disastrously with his own birth. —Arthur Berkowitz, 768 Beck Street, Bronx, N.Y. (Mar 1932)

Dear Editor: I write this letter to comment, not on the stories, which satisfy me, but on a few letters in the “Corner” of the March issue; especially Mr. Berkowitz’ letter. . . . Since he brought up the question of the time-traveler interfering disasterously with his own birth, I will discuss it. . . . Back he goes into time and meets his grandfather, before his father’s birth. For some reason John kills his grandfather. —Robert Feeney, 5334 Euclid, Kansas City, Mo. (Jun 1932)

Dear Editor: I read and enjoyed Mr. Feeney’s interesting letter in the June issue, but wish to ask: Why pick on grandfather? . . . This incessant murdering of harmless ancestors must stop. —Donald Allgeier, Mountain Grove, Mo. (Jan 1933) 

 In this, I have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the might genius of Moyen can return them! 

 The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door. 

 True, he says, the Masters are far advanced, an’ able to do lots o’ thingsas a result. They’ve learnt everything there was to be learnt, they can live on the earth, in the air, in the water, or underground; they can travel to the other stars; they know how the world come about an’ when it’s ending, they think great thoughts an’things I couldn’t even understand, but, he says, what about the Robots? 

 Then the car rolled swiftly forward, bumping on the ground, and then ceased to bump. I looked down, then shuddered. The ground was already far beneath! I too, was flying in the air! 

 We have purposely allowed our time travellers to become known to the people of the eras that they visit, for in this way the great drama of the story becomes apparent. 

 Is there a part of the Pacific that extends beyond time and space—an oceanic limbo into which, by some unknowable cataclysm, that island passed in a bygone period, even as Lemuria sank beneath the wave? And if so, by what abrogation of dimensional laws was I enabled to reach the island and depart from it? 

 

T  =	t  √ℓ - v²/c²

 

Master
   Traveller

 A terrestrial astronomer may reckon that the outburst on Nova Persei occurred a century before the great fire of London, but an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with equal accuracy that the great fire occurred a century before the outburst on the Nova. 

Jack Williamson, Master Traveller

In the 1930s alone, Williamson had five classic time travel stories culminating with “The Legion of Time,” to be followed by what has to be the first of the let’s-kill-Hitler stories and another seven decades of unmatched science fiction.

 And do you ever think that present-day New York will some time be as fragmentary and fabulous as Troy or Zimbabwe? That archaeologists may delve in its ruins, beneath the sevenfold increment of later cities, and find a few rusting mechanisms of disputed use, and potteries of doubtful date, and inscriptions which no one can decipher? 

 Let’s try and reduce it to rationality. The cage was—is, I should ay, since of course it still exists—that cage is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through Time, operated by a Robot. 

 Think! Think of hearing Lincoln’s own voice delivering the Gettysburg address! 

 It is a difficult situation, but I hope I shall convince you. Very few men can have had the chance of convincing their great-great-great grandfathers of anything. I am now an anachronism. You see, I was born in the year A.D. 2108,—or should it be, I shall be born in 2108?—and I am—or will be—a refugee from the twenty-second century. I assure you that you will be married shortly, but I can’t remember when—I think I told you I was bad at dates. 

 I could not help wondering, as we settle swiftly over the city, whether our historians and geologists and other scientists were really right in saying that Denver had at one period been far from the Pacific. 

 “I wish I could remember how that time machine was built and operated,” said Dr. Bird reflectively, as he sat in his private laboratory in the Bureau of Standards some time later, “but Jumor did his work well. I can’t even remember what the thing looked like.” 

 They said we could hope to be received only as impostors and fakirs. 

 If I could go back into the past, there is one event which I should most certainly change: my rescue of Paul Arkwright! 

 “That is a space-port where the ships come in from the stars,” the girl said. (Of course, all conversations recorded in Smith’s notes have been translated into our English—if they were not, no one would be able to read them.)
   “Ships from the stars!” Dick ejaculated. 

 No man or woman of Eos has the authority to direct, check, or in any way influence the free decision and impulses of another without that other’s full and intelligent consent. We demand the right to follow the natural inclinations of our characters. We demand the right to marry. 

Master
   Traveller

 The twentieth century. It had a remote sound, an unreal significance. In this age, with the sun a brick red ball and the city of Denver a mass of ruins, the twentieth century was a forgotten second in the great march of time, it was as remote as the age when man emerged from the beast. 

Clifford D. Simak, Master Traveller

“The World of the Red Sun” is the first of Clifford D. Simak’s many time travel contributions which spanned a total of 56 years.

 Time was a fourth dimension, he had said. An extension as real as the three of what we call space, and not completely distinguishable from them. A direction in which motion would carry one into the past, or into the future. 

 It means, I take it, that in only forty years from now the great game of sovereign states will be over. It looks also as if the parliamentary game will be over, and as if some quite new method of handling human affairs will have been adopted. Not a word of patriotism or nationalism; not a word of party, not an allusion. But in only forty years! While half the human beings already alive in the world will still be living! You cannot believe it for a moment. Nor could I, if it wasn't for two little torn scraps of paper. 

 For the last few seconds the light has been fading, now it is completely dark. There is a revolver shot, a woman’s scream, a moment’s silence, then the sound of a woman sobbing, exactly as at the beginning of Act I. 

 I, Doctor Michael Claybridge, living in the year 1926, have listened to a description of the end of the world from the lips of the man who witnessed it; the last man of the human race. That this is possible, or that I am not insane, I cannot ask you to believe: I can only offer you the facts. 

 Beyond the fourth there is a fifth dimension. . . . Eternity, I think you would call it. It is the line, the direction perpendicular to time. 

 You have always considered me a hopeless dreamer; and I am the last person who would endeavor or even wish to dispute your summary. It might be added that I am one of those dreamers who have not been able to content themselves with dreams. Such persons, as a rule, are unfortunate and unhappy, since few of them are capable of realizing, or even approximating, their visionary conceptions. 

 A. MERRITT, WHO IS WELL KNOWN TO MANY OF THE READERS OF AMAZING STORIES, HAS CALLED OUR ATTENTION TO MANY SIMILARITIES IN DESCRIPTIONS, CHARACTERIZATIONS AND SITUATIONS IN THE STORY "BEYOND THE VEIL OF TIME" BY B.H. BARNEY, PUBLISHED IN THE FALL-WINTER ISSUE OF AMAZING STORIES QUARTERLY, AND DESCRIPTIONS, CHARACTERIZATIONS AND SITUATIONS IN HIS TWO BOOKS "THE MOON POOL" AND "THE FACE IN THE ABYSS". MR. MERRITT OBJECTS PARTICULARLY TO THE UTILIZATION OF THE CONCEPTION AND THE NAME OF "THE DREAM-MAKERS", WHICH FORMED AN ESSENTIAL PART OF HIS "FACE IN THE ABYSS". 

—an announcement in the June 1933 Amazing Stories

 You know some of the modern theories about the fourth dimension. How Einstein and others suppose that the fourth dimension of sapce is time. Well, I don’t want to claim any one else’s laurels, but that was my view even before the name of Einstein was heard of. I’ve been working at it for thirty-five years. It’s my belief too that the fourth side of space is time, and that, in a sense, all time exists simultaneously and eternally—although on some other plan than ours—just as all space exists simultaneously and eternally. 

 Miles away the ground split from a center in radiating crevasses. I saw men far beyond it halt in dismay and turn back. A violent shaking of the ground sent me to the floor. 

 Furthermore, this young man can’t possibly be Adams Mayhew! Why Mayhew would be nearly eighty, if he were alive today, and this man is still in his twenties. 

 How many of us have wished that we might escape from the dull reality of the present into the glamor and romance of yesterday?
But if we could journey back into the mystery of the past, should we find contentment—or unhappiness? 

 From the looks of the Brontosaurus  . . . we are in the Pleistocene period. 

 The year of grace 1935! A dull year, a comfortable year! Nothing much happened. The depression was over; people worked steadily at their jobs and forgot that they had every starved; Roosevelt was still President of the United States; Hitler was firmly ensconced in Germany; France talked of security; Japan continued to defend itself against China by swallowing a few more provinces; Russia was about to commence on the third Five Year Plan, to be completed in two years; and, oh, yes—Cuba was still in revolution. 

 I must have a subject. And there is a certain—risk. Not great, now, I’m sure. My apparatus is improved. But, in my first trial, my subject was—injured. I’ve been wondering, Mr. Webb, if you— 

 To return to my dream, this person thought that either you or I should go among these subhumans, and yoiu, though willing to go, were a shade less willing than I. So it was decided that I was to go, and when I asked this person, who had been thinking to us about these creatures, how I should come to them, seeing that they were either on another planet or in another time, the way thither was made clear to me, for all I had to do was to wish to be there with them, and there, wherever or whenever it was, I should be.
I am much inclined to think it was not on another planet, but on the same planet in another time. 

 In addition to his various tricks of magic, this young Chinaman had another typically Oriental trait, namely that of being able to commune with his ancestors. 

 Professor Stringer threw open the laboratory door and turned on the lights. We saw it then, an odd machine, shiny and rounded, occupying the center of the workshop floor. I had been drinking, you will recollect, and my powers of observation were not at their best. It was the same with the others. When I questioned them later, they could give no adequate description of it. “So this,” said Olson Smith rather flatly, “is a time machine.” The doctor walked about—a little unsteadily I noticed—and viewed it from all angles. “The passenger,” said the Professor, “sits here. Notice this lever on the graduated face of the dial; it controls the machine. Turn it this way from Zero and one travels into the past; throw it ahead and one travels into the future. The return of the lever to Zero will return the machine to the point of departure in time. The electronic flow. . . .” he went into obscure details. “Will it work?” demanded the Doctor. 

 Past, present, future—all one. And we, moving along the dimension called time, intersect them. I can’t grasp it. But I can’t deny it. If only there were proof— 

 It’s a paradox. 

 Of course! It has always been known that you would ‘appear’ sooner or later. 

Master
   Traveller

 I’m over the Caroline Islands, longitude 158° 23´ west, latitude 8° 30´ north. There’re millions of people drowning all around me. What shall I do? 

H.L. Gold, Master Traveller

H.L. Gold wrote the earliest story of different eras living side-by-side because of some sort of time storm or, as he called it, an “Inflexure.” But even without that innovation, Gold would deserve an award for the volumes of time travel stories he published as the first Galaxy editor.

Master
   Traveller

 They stand about, little misshapen men with huge heads. But their heads contain only brains. They had machines that could think—but somebody turned them off a long time ago, and no one knew how to start them again. That was the trouble with them. They had wonderful brains. Far better than yours or mine. But it must have been millions of years ago when they were turned off, too, and they just hadn’t thought since then. Kindly little people. 

John W. Campbell, Jr., Master Traveller

Campbell’s three time travel stories were published under his pseudonym of Don Stuart before he took over the reins of Astounding, and even together they would not justify the prestigious Master Traveller Citation. But the number of classic time travel yarns he brought to light at Astounding and Analog make him more than worthy.

 Into the future she had gone, William said, and I had no reason to doubt him. The cat took the matter in a calm way and seemed in no wise injured by its uncanny transit. 

 Greetings from Hollywood. Ladies and gentlemen: I think you’ll be as intrigued with our play tonight as I was when I discovered it was a most unusual love story, the story of a modern scientist in love with a girl whom he meets in another century. 

—I’ll Never Forget You