The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1943 to 1949

A translation appeard in the all-Boucher issue of Urania (10 Feb 1991). Strangely enough, “snulbug” translates as “snulbug” in Italian; however “Elsewhen” is “Viaggio nel tempo.”

   “Elsewhen”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: Astounding, Jan 1943

Private detective Fergus O’Breen investigates Harrison Patrigde, inventor and ne’er-do-well, who accidentally invents a short-range time machine, causing him to envision how the world (and the lovely Faith Preston) will admire him if only he can get enough money to build a bigger version (perhaps via a murder with the time machine providing an alibi).

 Time can pass quickly when you are absorbed in your work, but not so quickly as all that. Mr. Partridge looked at his pocket watch. It said nine thirty-one. Suddely, in the space of seconds, the best chronometer available had gained forty-two minutes. 




   “The Search”
by A.E. van Vogt
First publication: Astounding, Jan 1943

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

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

 “Just grab his right shoulder with that glove, from behind,” SpockPrice was saying. “Press below the collarbone with the points of your fingers, press hard.” 


The story also appeared in this 1952 collection.   “Time Locker”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lewis Padgett)
First publication: Astounding, Jan 1943

Once again, drunken genius Gallegher invents something without knowing that he has done so’this time, a box that swallows things up until they reappear at now + x.

 He was, Vanning reflected, an odd duck. Galloway was essentially amoral, thoroughly out of place in this too-complicated world. He seemed to watch, with a certain wry amusement, from a vantage point of his own, rather disinterested for the most part. And he made things— 


   “The Angelic Angleworm”
by Fredric Brown
First publication: Unknown, Feb 1943

If Charlie Wills and you have patience, then Charlie will figure out what’s causing those strange occurrences (such as an angleworm turning into an angel) and you will figure out that angels can time travel.

 We can drop you anywhere in the continuum. 




   “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lewis Padgett)
First publication: Astounding, Feb 1943

A scientist in the far future sends back two boxes of educational toys to test his time machine. One is discovered by Charles Dodgson’s niece in the 19th century, and the other by two children in 1942.

This story was in the first book that I got from the SF Book Club in the summer of 1970, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 1 (edited by Robert Silverberg). I read and reread those stories until the book fell apart.

 Neither Paradine nor Jane guessed how much of an effect the contents of the time machine were having on the kids. 




   “Blind Alley”
aka “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”
by Malcolm Jameson
First publication: Unknown, Jun 1943

Business tycoon Jack Feathersmith longs for the simple, good old days of his youth in Cliffordsville.

 Nothing was further from Mr. Feathersmith’s mind than dealings with streamlined, mid-twentieth-century witches or dickerings with the Devil. But something had to be done. The world was fast going to the bowwows, and he suffered from an overwhelming nostalgia for the days of his youth. His thoughts contantly turned to Cliffordsville and the good old days when men were men and God was in His heaven and all was right with the world. 


   “Sanctuary”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: Astounding, Jun 1943

Mr. Holding, an American poet in Vichy France before the U.S. came into the war, visits an American scientist who is trying to stay neutral as he builds his time machine.

 I am, sir, a citizen of the world of science. 


   “Caverns of Time”
by Carlos M. McCune
First publication: Fantastic Adventures, Jul 1943

The Four Musketeers are transported from 1628 to a current-day Utah desert where they meet medical student and sometimes truck driver Clive, who kindly equips them with motorcycles and weapons more powerful than muskets for an impending battle with the cardinal’s men.

 Following d’Artagnon, they rode their motorcycles right into the main dining hall of the inn. 




   “Endowment Policy”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lewis Padgett)
First publication: Astounding, Aug 1943

A futuristic old man asks the taxi dispatcher for Denny Holt’s cab by name. When the man gets in the cab, he offers Denny $1000 to protect him from pursuit for the night and to steal a brown notebook with a secret formula for the War Department.

 Now, shielding the bills with his body, he took them out for a closer examination. They looked all right. They weren’t counterfeit; the serial numbers were O.K.; and they had the same odd musty smell Holt had noticed before.
“You must have been hoarding these,” he hazarded.
Smith said absently, “They’ve been on exhibit for sixty years—” He caught himself and drank rye. 




   “Doorway into Time”
by C.L. Moore
First publication: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Sep 1943

Treasures and beings from across time and space populate the halls of an age-old collector whose tiredness of life can be renewed only by the danger of the next hunt, which in this case means going naked and weaponless against Paul, defender of the lovely Alanna.

 On the wall before him, in the dimness of the room, a great circular screen looked out opaquely, waiting his touch. A doorway into time and space. A doorway to beauty and deadly peril and everything that made livable for him a life which had perhaps gone on too long already. 


   “Paradox Lost”
by Fredric Brown
First publication: Astounding, Oct 1943

During a philosophy lecture, the left hand of bored college student Shorty McCabe disappears, at which point Shorty figures he may as well follow whereever the hand went, which turns out to be into a time machine invented by the only kind of person who could invent such a thing—a crazy man.

 But a time machine is impossible. It is a paradox. Your professors will explain that a time machine cannot be, because it would mean that two things could occupy the same space at the same time. And a man could go back and kill himself when he was younger, and—oh, all sorts of stuff like that. It’s completely impossible. Only a crazy man could— 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “El milagro secreto” by Jorge Luís Borges, Sur, Feb 1943 [stopping time ]
  English title: “The Secret Miracle”



   Dick Devins, King of Futuria
First appearance: Mystery Comics 1, 1944

Dick Devins was a 20th century time traveler who protected the 30th century from all that was evil. He appeared in the four 1944 issues of Mystery Comics (#-4) and in at least four 1947 issues of Wonder Comics (11-14).

 Twenty-four hours in the 30th century, eh? Sounds interesting—if your time machine works! I’ll take your offer, professor! 

—from the splash page in Mystery Comics 1




   “As Never Was”
by P. Schuyler Miller
First publication: Astounding, Jan 1944

One of the first inexplicable finds by archealogists traveling to the future is the blue knife made of no known material brought back by Walter Toynbee who promptly dies, leaving it to his grandson to explain the origin of the knife.

 I knew grandfather. He would go as far as his machine could take him. I had duplicated that. He would look around him for a promising site, get out his tools, and pitch in. Well, I could do that, too. 


The story also appeared in August Derleth’s 1948 anthology, Strange Ports of Call.

   “Far Centaurus”
by A.E. van Vogt
First publication: Astounding, Jan 1944

Four men set out for Alpha Centauri on a 500-year journey where each will awaken only a handful of times. That’s not time travel, of course, but be patient and you will run into real time travel.

Van Vogt combined this with two other stories and some fix-up material (especially for “Far Centaurus”) for his 1970 publication of Quest for the Future.

 We’re here! It’s over, the long night, the incredible journey. We’ll all be waking, seeing each other, as well as the civilization out there. Seeing, too, the great Centauri suns. 




   Archie Comics
created by John L. Goldwater, Vic Bloom and Bob Montana
First time travel: Archie 7, Mar 1944

I’d like to know more about time travel by Riverdale’s upstanding citizens. The earliest I found was in “Time Trouble” from Archie 7 (Mar 1944), which did get the jump on Batman by five months. Later episodes were in Pep 131 (Feb 1959) and at least a handful of 1960s stories.



   “Time on Your Hands”
by David Wright O’Brien (as by John York Cabot)
First publication: Fantasic Adventures, Apr 1944

Although I enjoyed the first Reggie Vliet story (“The Man Who Changed History’), this second story didn’t grab me, even though Reggie does inherit the time-travel watch and travels to see Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar, the sacking of Rome, and Columbus.

It does make me reflective to know that this story was written shortly before O’Brien’s death in a World War II bomber over Europe.

 He, Reggie Vliet, was again actually living in the past. He could enjoy it, relish it, admire it, and—change it. That was why he was here. To scramble the past, knock it off its customary track, blast it out of its timeworn groove. 




   “And Adam Begot”
by Arch Oboler
First publication: Out of This World, May 1944

I haven’t yet read this story, which came from Oboler’s 1939 radio play of the same name. It was later turned into a tv episode of Lights Out and was the basis of a Steve Ditko story in the Black Magic comic book (1953).



   Time Flies
by Ted Kavanagh, J.O.C. Orton and Howard Irving Young (Walter Forde, director)
First release: 8 May 1944

Actress Susie Barton’s husband invested their nestegg in Time Ferry Services, Ltd., but the only way she’ll ever get anything out of it is by taking a trip to Elizabethan times.

 The Professor: Time? What is time? Having successfully controverted the classical views of Euclid and Newton, we arrive at the Theory of Relativity, which states that space-time in the neighborhood of a gravitational field is curved—pop!, pardon—whereas at an infinite distance from such a field field, it is not.
Tommy: How true, how true! Proceed, Prof.
The Professor: Now, the curvature of space-time at any point in the continuum is proportional to the intensity of the gravitational field at that point, and consequently, as I have shown, there is no reason whatever why time should be of infinite duration.
Bill: Very interesting, isn’t it?
Susie: Yeah, what’s he talking about?
Bill: He didn’t say. 








   It Happened Tomorrow
by Dudley Nichols, René Clair(Clair, director)
First release: 28 May 1944

One day at the end of the 19th century, newspaperman Larry Stevens is given the gift of tomorrow’s newspaper by the ghost of the archive man, Pops Benson. That leads him to improve his position at the newspaper by scooping a story; but it also leads to trouble, more of tomorrow’s papers, and a romance with the alluring clairvoyant Sylvia.

So why do I count this as time travel when, for example, The Gap in the Curtain is not? The future newspapers in Gap never actually appear, and it felt as if they were mere visions of a possible future, whereas there’s no doubt that Larry holds the actual artifact in his hands. And besides, the movie had a great take on events may be fated and yet, when accompanied by charming misunderstandings, lead to the unexpected. (And as a bonus, movie star Dick Powell is the spitting image of Robert A. Heinlein of the time.)

According to the Authority on American Film, the original screenplay was bought by Frank Capra from Hugh Wedlock and Howard Snyder; Capra also bought the rights to a similar Lord Dunsany play, The Jest of Haha Laba, after which the rights were sold to producer Arnold Pressburger.

Early Edition, one of my favorite tv shows, uses the same idea of tomorrow’s paper, but its creators said that the show was not based on this movie.

 But I’m afraid I’m going to end up at the St. George Hotel at 6:25 no matter where I go. 




   Looney Tunes/
Merrie Melodies Cartoons
voices by Mel Blanc
First time travel: 28 Oct 1944

I hope I’ll find more time travel in the Warner Brothers cartoons, but for starters, there’s “The Old Grey Hare” where Elmer Fudd is taken far into the future—past 1990!—where he chases bugs with the Buck Rogers Lightning Quick Rabbit Killer, and Daffy Duck with Speedy Gonzalez in “See Ya Later, Gladiator” (1968).

 When you hear the sound of the gong, it will be exactly twoooooo thowwwwwsand Ayyyyy Deee! 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Yehudi Principle” by Fredric Brown, Astounding, May 1944 [predictions ]

production photo from
The Encyclopedia of
American Radio

   The Mysterious Traveler
by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan
First time travel: 13 Jan 1945

I believe all episodes of The Mysterious Traveler were written by the prolific pair of Arthur and Kogan. The episodes stretched the sf field from thrillers to hard science fiction, but always with a creepy atmosphere. There were at least three time travel episodes and several more that I’ll mark as probably time travel based on their titles.
  1. Escape Through Time (13 Jan 1945) possible time travel
  2. Murder at the Dawn of Time (4 Nov 1947) possible time travel
  3. Escape into the Future (10 May 1949) possible time travel
  4. The Man Who Tried to Save Lincoln (7 Feb 1950) traveler meets Lincoln historian
  5. Operation Tomorrow (11 Apr 1950) traveler sees future war
  6. Journey Through Time (27 Jun 1950) possible time travel
  7. Escape to 2480 (21 Nov 1950) possible time travel
  8. The Most Famous Man in the World (20 Nov 1951) travelers vs dictator

 This is the Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little, and chill you a little. So, settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable if you can, and hear the strange story that I call “The Man Who Tried to Save Lincoln.” 




   “The Pink Caterpillar”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: Adventure, Feb 1945

After Norm Harker tells of a magic man who can bring you back a single item from the future (for the right price), Anthony Boucher’s detective Fergus O’Breen tops the story with the tale of how he figured out why a dead American living in Mexico liked to call himself a doctor.

 At least that’s the firm belief everywhere on the island: a tualala can go forward in time and bring you back any single item you specify, for a price. We used to spend the night watches speculating on what would be the one best thing to order. 




   Classic Comics’
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
adapted by Jack Hearne
First publication: Classic Comics 24, Sep 1945

Jack Hearne’s illustrations provided an abbreviated but accurate adaptation of Hank Morgan’s medieval travails.

 Ah! I’ve got it! On June 21st, 528, there was a total eclipse of the sun, but in 1879 there was none . . . now to wait . . . that will prove everything! 




   “Mr. Lupescu”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: Weird Tales, Sep 1945

Time travel makes a cameo appearance in this story in which young Bobby tells his Uncle Alan about his godfather, Mr. Lupescu, who has a great big red nose, red gloves, red eyes, and little red wings that twitch.

 But one of Mr. Lupescu’s friends, now, was captain of a ship, only it went in time, and Mr. Lupescu took trips with him and came back and told you all about what was happening this very minute five hundred years ago. 


   “What You Need”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lewis Padgett)
First publication: Astounding, Oct 1945

Reporter Tim Carmichael visits Peter Talley, a shopkeeper on Park Avenue who provides for a select clientele things that they will need in the future.

I never include prescience stories in my list, but like Heinlein’s “Life-Line,” this one is an exception, both because of its tone and because it was made into episodes of both Tales of Tomorrow (the tv show) and The Twilight Zone.

   




   “The Chronokinesis
of Jonathan Hull”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: Astounding, Jun 1946

Private Eye Fergus O’Breen is back for his third and final encounter with time travel, this time with a time traveler who shows up dead in his room one day and is alive and walking in a stilted manner the next. In the process of explaining himself, the traveler also displays knowledge of Boucher’s traveler in “Barrier” and also of Breen’s other time travel encounters.

 And now, I realize, Mr. O’Breen, why I was inclined to trust you the moment I saw yoiur card. It was through a fortunately preserved letter of your sister’s, which found its way into our archives, that we knew of the early fiasco of Harrison Partridge and your part therein. We knew, too, of the researches of Dr. Derringer, and how he gave up in despair after his time traveler failed to return, having encountered who knows what unimaginable future barrier. 




   Favorite Story
adapted by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
First time travel: 26 Jun 1946

Each week, a different personality would choose a favorite story to be dramatized on radio station KFI’s, Los Angeles, Favorite Story program hosted and narrated by actor True Boardman. They broadcast at least three time-travel tales, all adapted by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. In fact, the first time travel was also KFI’s first episode, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, selected by actor Ed Gardner. Another episode was bandleader Kay Kyser’s favorite, The Time Machine, which was the second radio script for the Wells classic, significantly abridged but more faithful than the 1948 Escape radio production.

More or less concurrently, the broadcasts were repackaged nationally for NBC radio by Ziv Syndication with Ronald Colman as host; there were also some new NBC episodes (not adapted by Lawrence and Lee) including A Christmas Carol, which as everyone knows has no real time travel. The KFI dates below are taken from ocrsite.com; the NBC dates (which ocrsite says were aired differently across the country) are from audio-classics.com. The selector for each story is also given in the list below.
  1. Connecticut Yankee (26 Jun 46 KFI / 23 Jul 46 NBC) Ed Gardner
  2. The Time Machine (30 Nov 48 KFI / 21 Sep 48 NBC) Kay Kyser
  3. Enoch Soames (1 Mar 49 KFI / 7 Dec 48 NBC) Donald Ogden Steward
  4. A Christmas Carol (24 Dec 1949 NBC) Everyone!

 I ask you to imagine, gentlemen, a cube—a square box, let us say—which has only those three dimensions: length, breadth, and thickness. . . . Would not such a cube also require another dimension? 

—The Time Machine




   “Film Library”
by A.E. van Vogt
First publication: Astounding, Jul 1946

Each time a film goes through Peter Caxton’s projector at Tichenor Collegiate, it gets replaced with a different film from the future.

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

 Not that he would necessarily have suspected anyway that he had come into possession of films that had been made more than fifty years in the future. 




   Prize Comics’ Frankenstein
by Dirk Briefer
First time travel: Jul 1946

I’m always on the lookout for early depictions outside of sf with a climb-in-able time machine where you set the dials and go. Briefer’s humorous Frankenstein had just a such a machine in a 9-page story in issue 3 (Jul 1946). Frankenstein runs into Professor Goniph, and they travel in his machine to 2046 and 1646, although there is a twist at the end.

 It works!! It works!!! I am a genius!! We are in 2046!!! 


The story also appeared in this 1982 collection.   “Blind Time”
by George O. Smith
First publication: Astounding, Sep 1946

Oak Tool Works has developed a handy time treatment whereby a portion of any tool can be sent into the future for a limited time, but its movements during that time must exactly mirror the movements of the rest of the tool during the current time. Peter Wright is the insurance adjuster who must examine an accident that the treatment is going to cause at 8pm.

 There is that element of wonder, too, you know. Every man in the place knows that someone is going to get clipped with that crane. 




   “Vintage Season”
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (as by Lawrence O’Donnell)
First publication: Astounding, Sep 1946

More and more strange people are appearing each day in and around Oliver Wilson’s home; the explanation from the euphoric redhead leads him to believe they are time travelers gathering for an important event.

 Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed. 




   “Technical Error”
aka “The Reversed Man”
by Arthur C. Clarke
First publication: Fantasy, Dec 1946

When Dick Nelson is accidentally exposed to a tremendous electromagnetic field, he comes out with his body reversed left-to-right, essentially a death sentence since certain necessary stereoisomers will be unavailable in the reverse form in his diet. The solution is to flip Dick over once again, requiring a trip through the fourth dimension (spacial) and a bit of time travel to boot. The head physicist assures Nelson that this is purely a spacial fourth dimension that he’ll be flipped over in.

 “You say that Nelson has been rotated in the Fourth Dimension; but I thought Einstein had shown that the Fourth Dimension was time.”
Hughes groaned inwardly.
“I was referring to an additional dimension of space,” he explained patiently. 




   Timely Comics
published by Martin Goodman
First time travel: All Winners Comics 21, Winter 1946/47

Timely was the predecessor to Atlas which became Marvel Comics in the ’60s. Some of their superheroes survived that transition (Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, and an android Human Torch, among others). I’ve only begun to dig up their time travel, finding one issue of All Winners Comics where Captain America and the All Winners Squad do battle with a man from 1,000,000 A.D. Also, in 1948, the Timely superhuman, comical boxer, Powerhouse Pepper, visited the pilgrims via time machine (Powerhouse Pepper 4, Sep 1948).

 Project yourselves far into the fture . . . to the year one million A.D. The Earth is almost unfit for human life! 

—Captain America in All Winners Comics 21



No Time Travel. Move along.
  It’s a Wonderful Life by Goodrich, et. al., 20 Dec 1946 [viewing alternate pasts ]



   “The Man Who Never Grew Young”
by Fritz Leiber, Jr.
First publication: Night’s Black Agents, 1947

Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disintered, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.

 It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother. 




   “Child’s Play”
by William Tenn
First publication: Astounding, Mar 1947

Sam Weber, an underemployed lawyer, receives a Bild-a-Man kit as a Christmas gift from 400 years in the future—and it’s a timely gift, too, seeing as how he could use a replacement girlfriend.

 Bild-a-Man Set #3. This set is intended solely for the use of children, between the ages of eleven and thirteen. The equipment, much more advanced that Bild-a-Man Sets 1 and 2, will enable the child of this age-group to build and assemble complete adult humans in perfect working order. 




   “Time and Time Again”
by H. Beam Piper
First publication: Astounding, Apr 1947

At 43 years old, Allan Hartley is caught in a flash-bomb at the Battle of Buffalo, only to wake up in his own 13-year-old body on the day before Hiroshima.

Piper’s first short story impacted me because I fantasize about the same thing (perhaps we all do). What would you do? Who would you tell? What would you try to change? What would you fear changing?

 Here; if you can remember the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the War’s going to end. This one, I mean. 


   “Ancestral Thread”
by Emil Petaja
First publication: Amazing, May 1947

Lem Mason’s eleven-year-old nephew, Sydney, doesn’t want to go to a ballgame on Sunday afternoon. He’d rather show his Uncle Lem the contraption that Professor Leyton left in the attic, which has allowed the boy to experience the lives of his ancestors and his descendants!

 But you seem to have forgotten one little detail—the second big dial, the one marked ‘Ahead’! 


   “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
by Ray Bradbury
First publication: Fantastic Adventures, May 1947

When a typewriter appears on the floor of his boarding room and begins typing messages from the future, down-on-his-luck Steve Temple thinks that it must be his old jokester friend Harry—but he’s wrong about that, and the fate of the world 500 years down the line now depends on what Steve does about the upcoming election.

“Tomorrow and Tomorrow” doesn’t have the notority of that other Bradbury story about time travel and an elected official, but even though this one’s riddled with ridiculous ideas on time, it does accurately predict text messaging!

 Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimentional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry. 




   Repeat Performance
by Walter Bullock and William O’Farrell
First release: 22 May 1947

After Sheila Page kills her husband in a fit of passion on New Year’s Eve, she wishes nothing other than to have the entire year back—if destiny will only let her.

 How many times have you said, “I wish I could live this year over again?” This is the story of a woman who did relive one year of her life. 


   “Errand Boy”
by William Tenn
First publication: Astounding, Jun 1947

When invention mogul Malcolm Blyn spots an unusual can of paint that a young boy brings to his factory, he begins to wonder whether it came from the future and what else the future may hold.

 I hand him an empty can and say I want it filled with green paint—it should have orange polka dots. 


   “The Figure”
by Edward Grendon
First publication: Astounding, Jul 1947

The narrator, along with his pals Dettner and Lasker, are frantically working on a machine that can bring something back from the future before they’re all called away by the army to work on some cockroach problem.

I enjoy stories with some personal connection to myself (and generally award an extra half star). In this case, the connection is Alfred Tarski, the Polish logician who was the advisor of the advisor of my own academic advisor, David B. Benson.

 Lasker is a mathematician. He specializes in symbolic logic and is the only man I know who can really understand Tarski. 




   “The Children’s Room”
by Raymond F. Jones
First publication: Fantastic Adventures, Sep 1947

Bill Starbrook, an engineer and a devoted family man, discovers a hidden Children’s Room in the university library where his genius son Walt has been checking out books which nobody except himself and Walt can read. In some way that’s hard to explain, that leads to mutants on Earth, an alien invasion, a worry that the mutants are going to take away Walt to save mankind, and (in passing) a requirement that the Children’s Room be moved to a different time.

It’s fair to say that this story’s not about the time travel.

 Some emergency has come up. I don’t know what, exactly. They’ve got to move the Children’s Room to some other age right away—something about picking up an important mutant who is about to be destroyed in some future time. 


   “Meddler’s Moon”
by George O. Smith
First publication: Astounding, Sep 1947

Joseph Hedgerly travels back in time some 60 years to ensure that his grandfather marries the right woman.

 Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. If our lives are written in the Book of Acts, then no effort is worth the candle. For there will be those who will eternally strive to be good and yet shall fail. There will be others who care not nor strive not and yet will thrive. Why? Only because it is so written. And by whom? By the omnipotent God. Who, my friends, has then written into our lives both the good and the evil that we do ourselves! He moves us as pawns, directs us to strive against odds, yet knows that we must fail, because he planned it that way. 






   DC Comics (Funnybooks)
First time travel: All Funny Comics 20, Nov 1947

It seems that everyone in the DC stable wanted to get in on the road to time travel including the humor line-up. The earliest that I’ve found so far in the Nov 1947 issue of All Funny Comics. Later, there were Bob Hope (in Bob Hope 43) and Jerry Lewis (in Jerry Lewis 43 and 54). In Bob’s story, he gets sent into the future by Carolyn Spooner. It also had a cover with Bob as a caveman. As I find others, I’ll list them in my time-travel comic books page.

 This can’t be the stone age!—I’m just putty in the hands of a girl like you! 

—from the cover of Bob Hope 43




   “The Timeless Tomorrow”
by Manley Wade Wellman
First publication: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dec 1947

Demoisell Anne Poins Genelle visits Nostradamus and witnesses one of his visions—children climbing into a series of long, wheeled structures with glass windows—and she promptly steps into the vision.

I enjoyed how he wrote out his visions in quatrains.

 Within the Isles the children are transported,
The most of them despairing and forlorn,
Upon the soil their lives will be supported
While hope shall flee. . . . 




   Brick Bradford Movie Serial
by George Plympton, Arthur Hoerl and Lewis Clay
First release: 18 Dec 1947

In fifteen episodes, Brick travels to the moon to protect a rocket interceptor while his pals take the time top to the 18th century to find a critical hidden formula.

 Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother. 




   “Me, Myself and I”
by William Tenn
First publication: Planet Stories, Winter 1947

As an experiment, a scientist sends unemployed strongman Cartney back 110 million years to make a small change. He makes this first change, which changes things in the present, and then he must go back again and again, whereupon he meets himself and him.

I keep finding earlier and earlier stories with the idea of destroying mankind by squishing a bug, and I am wondering whether this is the earliest linchpin bug (although that doesn’t actually happen here).

 Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “No-Sided Professor” by Martin Gardner, Esquire, Jan 1947 [4D spacial topology ]



   “Double Cross in Double Time”
by William P. McGivern
First publication: Fantastic Adventures, Feb 1948

I like stories that begin with a want ad, including Heinlein’s Glory Road and the recent movie Safety Not Guaranteed. This is the earliest such story that I’ve seen, in which Paddy Donovan answers the ad (just off Fourth Avenue) to find Professor O’Neill, the professor’s angelic daughter, and a machine that stimulates a man’s dormant ability to travel through time. So, after a quick jaunt to ancient Egypt, Paddy offers to bankroll the development of the time machine’s business potential.

 Opening for young man of adventurous nature. Opportunity for travel, excitement, glory. 


   “The Monster”
aka “The Brighton Monster”
by Gerald Kersh
First publication: Saturday Evening Post, 21 Feb 1948

In April of 1947, a man makes a connection between a tattooed Japanese man and a monster that washed up in Brighton two centuries earlier.

 I should never have taken the trouble to pocket his Account of a Strange Monster Captured Near Brighthelmstone in the County of Sussex on August 6th in the Year of Our Lord 1745. 






   The Thiotimoline Stories
by Isaac Asimov
First story: Astounding, Mar 1948

I don’t know if this is time travel or not, but it certainly violates causality when the time for thiotimoline to dissolve in water is minus 1.12 seconds.
  1. The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline (Mar 1948) Astounding
  2. The Micropsychiatric Properties of Thiotimoline (Dec 1953) Astounding
  3. Thiotimoline and the Space Age (Oct 1960) Analog
  4. Thiotimoline to the Stars (Nov 1973) Analog
  5. Antithiotimoline (Dec 1977) Analog

 Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline. 

—Professor Ralph S. Halford to Asimov at the conclusion of his Ph.D. oral exam on May 20, 1948.


Escape graphic from
Old Radio World

   Escape’s The Time Machine
aka Radio Theatre Group’s The Time Machine
adapted by Irving Ravetch
First airing: Escape radio program on CBS, 9 May 1948

In the first of many audio adaptations of Wells’s classic story, with Dudley (the inventor) takes his friend Fowler along for the ride so that he’ll have someone to talk with about the Eloi and the Morlocks. The script has been restaged multiple times.
  1. 9 May 1948 CBS’s Escape Radio
  2. 22 Oct 1950 CBS’s Escape Radio
  3. 27 Oct 1950 CBS’s Escape Radio
  4. 2005 with Filby instead of Fowler Radio Theatre Group
  5. 23 Dec 2007 Radio Theatre Group

 On this machine, a man can go whereever he likes in time. By working these levers, a man can choose his century, his year, his very day. 


   “The Tides of Time”
by A. Bertram Chandler
First publication: Fantastic Adventures, Jun 1948

Upon his 21st birthday, the twentieth in the line of descendents of Aubrey St. John Sheraton is to be taken into confidence about the secret of his family’s centuries-long financial success.

 I’d wait five hundred years for you, my darling. 


   “Time Trap”
by Charles L. Harness
First publication: Astounding, Aug 1948

The story presents a fixed series of events, which includes a man disappearing at one point in the future and (from his point of view) reappearing at the start of the story to then interact with himself, his own wife, and the evil alien.

It’s nice that there’s no talk of the universe exploding when he meets himself, but even so, the story suffers from a murkiness that is often part of time-travel stories that are otherwise enjoyable. The murkiness stems from two points: (1) That somehow the events are repeating over and over again—but from whose viewpoint? (2) The events are deterministic and must be acted out exactly the same each time. I enjoy clever stories that espouse the viewpoint of the second item (“By His Bootstraps”). But this does not play well with the first item, and (as with many stories), Harness did not address that conflict nor the consequent issue of free will. Still, I enjoyed the story and wish I’d met Harness when I traveled to Penn State University in the spring of 1982.

 But searching down time, Troy-Poole now found only the old combination of Troy and Poole he knew so well. Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, each preceding the other. As far back as he could sense, there was always a Poole hovering over a Troy. Now he would become the next Poole, enmesh the next Troy in the web of time, and go his own way to bloody death. 




   “Brooklyn Project”
by William Tenn
First publication: Planet Stories, Fall 1948

So far, this is the earliest story I’ve read with the thought that a minuscule change in the past can cause major changes to our time. The setting is a press conference where the Secretary of Security presents the time-travel device to twelve reporters.

 The traitorous Shayson and his illegal federation extended this hypothesis to include much more detailed and minor acts such as shifting a molecule of hydrogen that in our past really was never shifted. 




   “The Cube Root of Conquest”
by Rog Phillips
First publication: Amazing, Oct 1948

Hute Hitle, a dictator on the war-torn planet of Amba, plans to bring down an apocalypse and then travel to the future where he can fulfil his insatiable ambitions to be accepted as the one Leader.

The story is a crudely written Hitler fantasy, but it does have the interesting idea that travel through time can best be accomplished by stepping sideways into a parallel universe, traveling through time in that other universe, and then stepping back. Fortuntely for Amba, the scientist who discovered this version of time travel knows more than Hitle ever will.

 A time machine in one of these other universes could carry me to any point in the future without danger it might have encountered in this one, such as an atom bomb dropped on the space it would have been in here? 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Shape of Things” by Ray Bradbury, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb 1948 [4D spacial topology ]
  aka “Tomorrow’s Child”

  “He Walked Around the Horses” by H. Beam Piper (paratime), Astounding, Apr 1948 [alternate timelines ]

  “Police Operation” by H. Beam Piper (paratime), Astounding, Jul 1948 [alternate timelines ]



   “La otre muerte”
English title: “The Other Death” (translated from Spanish)
by Jorge Luís Borges
First publication: El Aleph, 1949

I’ve read many translated stories of Jorge Luís Borges, and many of those have surreal time elements, but this is the only one that I’ll deem to have time travel with a sophisticated branching universe, no less!

In the story, Borges himself tells of a man, Dom Pedro Damián, who first has a history as a soldier who lost his nerve at the 1904 Battle of Masoller and then lived out a long, quiet life. But after Damián dies some decades later, a second history appears in which the soldier was actually a dead hero at that very same battle, and no one remembers anything of the earlier life.

Motivated by the final part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Borges argues that the only complete explanation involves God granting a death-bed wish to the 1946 Damián, allowing him to return to the 1904 battle, causing time to branch into two universal histories, the first of which is largely—but not wholly—suppressed.

 In the fifth chapter of that treatise, Pier Damiani asserts—against Aristotle and against Fredegarius de Tours—that it is within God’s power to make what once was into something that has never been. Reading those old theological discussions, I began to understand Pedro Damiá;’s tragic story. 




   “The Red Queen’s Race”
by Isaac Asimov
First publication: Astounding Science Fiction, Jan 1949

By my count, this was Asimov’s third foray into time travel, but his first as Dr. Asimov. In the story, the dead Elmer Tywood also had a Ph.D. and a plan to translate a modern chemistry textbook into Greek before sending it back in time to inaugurate a Golden Age of science long before it actually occurred.

 There was a short silence, then he said: “I’ll tell you. Why don’t you check with his students?”
I lifted my eyebrows: “You mean in his classes?”
He seemed annoyed: “No, for Heaven’s sake. His research students! His doctoral candidates!” 


the traveller, played by Russell Napier, meets the Eloi

   BBC’s The Time Machine
adapted by Robert Barr
First episode: 25 Jan 1949

The first tv broadcast of The Time Machine, a litle less than an hour, came live from the BBC’s Studio A at Alexandra Palace on 25 Jan 1949 with a second revised broadcast on 21 Feb 1949.

Seeing as how there are no recordings of the broadcast, I wish I had my own time machine so I could send my Betamax® back to 1949.

 In the first showing, after a brief interval in which the hands of the wall-clock recorded the passing of many hours, the lights began to dip and rise to indicate the passage of the days, and as this effect speeded up the walls of the room gradually dissolved. In the second performance this was cut out, killing the impression of fast-moving time. But, outside, the sun moves ever more swiftly across the sky until it is a continuous band of light, rising and falling to indicate the equinoxes, and throwing into vivid relief the changing shapes of successions of buildings which become more startlingly futuristic as the Traveller flashes through the ages. 

—Thomas Sheridan in Fantasy Review, Apr/May 1949




   “Manna”
by Peter Phillips
First publication: Astounding, Feb 1949

After the Miracle Meal food company builds a canning plant on the site of a 12th century haunted priory, cans of the Manna start discappearing.

 Miracle Meal. Press here. 




   Hallmark Playhouse
hosted by James Hilton
First time travel: 3 Mar 1949 in Berkeley Square

Before tv’s Hallmark Hall of Fame, CBS aired the half-hour Hallmark Playhouse on its radio networks. I spotted only one time-travel episode, the well-worn Berkeley Square, which aired on 3 Mar 1949.

 An ancestor of mine built this house in 1730. See that picture there, above the fireplace? His father. Look at it. 




Young William Shatner

   Studio One
created by Fletcher Markle
First time travel: 20 Mar 1949 (“Berkeley Square”)

Almost every week for a period of nearly eleven years (7 Nov 1948 to 29 Sep 1958), Studio One presented a black-and-white drama to CBS’s television audience. We can claim some of the tv plays as our own in the sf genre, and at least two included time travel (a “Berkeley Square” remake on 20 March 1949, and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” on 19 May 1952). One other sf connection comes from Studio One clips of William Shatner (in “The Defender”, 1957) which were used to portray a young Denny Crane in an episode of Boston Legal (“Son of the Defender”, 2007).

 You’ve heard of the transmigration of soul; have you ever heard of the transposition of a man’s body in time and place? 

—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court




   ACG Comics (Anthologies)
published by Benjamin W. Sangory
First time travel: Adventures into the Unknown 4, Apr 1949

ACG had a handful of weird story comic books including Adventures into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds and Forbidden Worlds. I picked up a few of these at garage sales as a kid, but never really got into them. The earliest time travel that I’ve found so far was a story called “Back to Yesterday” in Adventures into the Unknown 4. Some of the issues are now available on google books.

 It’s supposed to work by producing a displacement in the hyper-temporal field by means of a powerful mesotronic stasis of the continuum—and anyone near the machine’s field will immediately be projected into the future! 

—Hugh Martinson in “Adventure into the Future”




   A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur’s Court
adapted by Edmund Beloin (Tay Garnett, director)
First release: 22 Apr 1949

You know the story of Hank Morgan well enough by now, but do you know Edmund Beloin’s (one of Bob Hope’s writers) musical version with bumpkin Bing Crosby? This is my favorite of all the filmed versions.

 ♫Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my sister,
and Lord help the mister, who comes between me and my maaaan!♫ 

—oops, wrong Crosby movie!




   Flight into Yesterday
aka Paradox Men, and also an exerpt, “Paradox Men” in the 1974 collection Space Opera
by Charles L. Harness
First publication: Startling Stories, May 1949

With a scope to rival A.E. Van Vogt, Harness tells the tale of Alar (aka The Thief): a swashbuckling amnesiac with amazing mental powers who’s bent on overthrowing the evil solar system empire while being pursued from the Earth to the Moon to the Sun and beyond by the Imperial Police. Oh yes, there’s also this mutant mind who claims he’s the only survivor of an accidental time-traveling space ship.

 Do I understand that you want me to believe that someone will leave in the T-Twenty-Two tonight, jet backward in time, crash into the Ohio River five years ago and swim ashore as Alar? 




   Mighty Mouse Comics
First time travel: Mighty Mouse 11, Jun 1949

Surely Mighty Mouse time traveled in his comics many times, but the one that I ran across in the Michgan State University library records is a 2-page text piece called “The Time Machine” in issue 11. I haven’t read it, so I can’t say whether it’s fiction or perhaps something on H.G. Wells’s story.

The mouse did save the day himself via time travel in 1961 (Mighty Mouse 152). As I find other instances, I’ll add them to my time-travel comics page.

   “Let the Ants Try”
by Frederik Pohl (as by James MacCreigh)
First publication: Planet Stories, Winter 1949

After a nuclear war, Dr. Salva Gordy and John de Terry decide to use their time machine to see whether a recently mutated form of ant might do a better job than mankind if the ants were given a 40-million-year head start.

 And I doubt that you speak mathematics. The closest I can come is to say that it displaces temporal coordinates. Is that gibberish? 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “I, Mars” by Ray Bradbury, Super Wonder Stories, Apr 1949 [despite appearances, no time travel ]
  aka ‘Night Call, Collect’

  “The Wall of Darkness” by Arthur C. Clarke, Super Science Stories, Jul 1949 [despite appearances, no time travel ]

  “Time Heals” by Poul Anderson, Astounding, Oct 1949 [long sleep ]

 

76 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)