If you’d stop a moment and think, you’d figure all that out for yourself. I’m later than you, so I must remember what I thought—that is, what you thought since I am you only from the future. 

—the Twentieth Voyage

 Cowardice again—that man did not want to argue about the boundaries with his neighbor’s muscular cousin. Another lucky accident, and there you are. Geometry. 

 “Don’t go saying I did it!” said the turtle. “Don’t come complaining to me! People who go around making wishes without looking to see what magic beings are listening can just take the consequences!”
“Oh, we’re not complaining,” said Katharine quickly. “We think it’s awfully nice of you. We’re grateful. You’ve been very obliging. Thank you very much.”
“Humph!” said the turtle.
“Magic’s just about all we needed to make things just about perfect,” said Jane.
“Ha!” said the turtle. “That’s what you think. And a lot you know about it! But of course you couldn’t be sensible, could you, and order magic by the pound, for instance, or by the day? Or by threes, the good old-fashioned way? Or even by halves, the way you did before?” 

 An elevator doesn’t involve paradoxes. You can’t move from the fifth floor to the fourth and kill your grandfather as a child. 

 The day passed. President Lincoln was to attend the Ford Theatre that night, to see a production of a play called “Our American Cousin.” 

 It introduced law to the fourth dimension. 

 Bart: Do you think it’s possible for a person to go back in time?
George: Well, you know there is a theory that nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed.
Bart: Then you do believe it’s possible?
George: Anything is possible, Bart, to a degree. Science has proved that. It’s conceivable, with concentration and imagination, that a person might, for a moment, escape from the present into the past. 

—from “Time Found Again”

 I’m not kidding you at all,” Barney insisted. “I have produced a workable Time Machine, and I am going to use it to go back and kill my grandfather. 

 Everett Barhold didn’t take out a life insurance policy casually. First he read up on the subject, with special attention to Breach of Contract, Willful Deceit, Temporal Fraud, and Payment. 

 No matter how violent, how involved, how pushbutton-ridden Wars became, it always simmered down to the man on foot. It had to, for men fought men still. 

 “The point being,” said the Secretary of State, “that most social values are conditioned by the time, place and prevailing political climate. Is that what you mean by perspective? 

 Even as he spoke, there was a shimmering in the air next to him and a whining hum. The shimmering became the outline of a man—a tall man wearing silvery shorts and some sort of metalic hardness over his bronzed skin, with a heavy cloak thrown back from the shoulders. 

 Full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth and right, the good set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarled, edged and heated, backed with wrath. 

 Town gardens are small, as a rule, and the Longs’ garden was no exception to the rule; there was a vegetable plot and a grass plot and one flower-bed and a rough patch by the back fence. 

 Milly: They’re like seven-league boots!
Billy: Even better! We’re covering a hundred miles at a step and we’re going back through history, too! These Ward shoes must have magical powers! 

1. Flashback (1/29/58) new father flashes forward to war
2. Time Traveler, aka Meddler’s Moon (5/21/58)    50 years back to grandparents
3. The Adventure of the Beauty Queen (6/25/58) love from the future

 You’ve got a son to take care of you in your old age, Mr. Thompson. 

—from “Flashback”

 Like his colleagues, Aristotle never appreciated the need for constant verification. Thus, though he was married twice, he said that men have more teeth than women. He never thought to ask either of his wives to open her mouth for a count. 

 Oh . . . The Cruxifiction. You want to witness it, of course— 

1. Try and Change the Past (Mar 1958) Astounding
2. The Big Time (Mar and Apr 1958) Galaxy
3. Damnation Morning (Aug 1959) Fantastic
4. The Oldest Soldier (May 1960) F&SF
5. No Great Magic (Dec 1963) Galaxy
6. When the Change-Winds Blow (Aug 1964) F&SF
7. Knight’s Move, aka Knight to Move (Dec 1965) Broadside
   
   These might be Changewar, but with no time travel:
8. A Deskful of Girls (Apr 1958) F&SF
9. The Number of the Beast (Dec 1958) Galaxy
10. The Haunted Future, aka Tranquility, or Else! (Nov 1959)    Fantastic
11. The Mind Spider (Nov 1959) Fantastic
12. When the Change-Winds Blow (Aug 1964) F&SF
13. Black Corridor (Dec 1967) Galaxy

 Change one event in the past and you get a brand new future? Erase the conquests of Alexander by nudging a Neolithic pebble? Extirpate America by pulling up a shoot of Sumerian grain? Brother, that isn’t the way it works at all! The space-time continuum’s built of stubborn stuff and change is anything but a chain-reaction. 

—“Try and Change the Past”

 Because what if it did happen like that, and the young Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha came back with them to modern times? He could think of two ways it might work out. They might take the place of their grown-up selves, and there wouldn’t be any grown-up Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha any more, and that would be awful. Because nice as the small Martha was, as a parent she just wouldn’t do.
Or else there Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha would be, and there their grown-up selves would be, too, and they might bump right into each other. And that would be like those horror stories where people go walking down long hallways and meet themselves coming in the other direction. And everybody goes mad in the end, and no wonder! 

 Time for listening to the oracle is past; you’re beyond the stage for omens, you’re now headed in for the kill, yours or his; superstition has had its little day for today; from now on, only this windy nerve of yours, thius shakey conglomeration of muscle entangled untraceably beneath the sweat-shiny carapice of skin, this bloody little urge to slay the dragon, is going to answer all your orisons. 

 Instead of a decent differential analyzer machine they had a human sea of office girls with Burroughs’ desk calculators; the girls screamed “Banzai!” and charged on differential equations and swamped them by sheer volume; they clicked them to death with their little adding machines. Royland thought hungrily of Conant’s huge, beautiful analog differentiator up at M.I.T.; it was probably tied up by whatever the mysterious “Radiation Laboratory” there was doing. Royland suspected that the “Radiation Laboratory” had as much to do with radiation as his own “Manhattan Engineer District” had to do with Manhattan engineering. And the world was supposed to be trembling on the edge these days of a New Dispensation of Computing that would obsolete even the M.I.T. machine—tubes, relays, and binary arithmetic at blinding speed instead of the suavely turning cams and the smoothly extruding rods and the elegant scribed curves of Conant’s masterpiece. He decided that he would like it even less than he liked the little office girls clacking away, pushing lank hair from their dewed brows with undistracted hands. 

 There was a muffled rushing noise and the faintly acrid smell of ion electrodes as the Time Translator deposited Mrs. Mimms back into the year 1958. Being used to such journeys, she looked calmly about with quick gray eyes, making little flicking gestures with her hands as if brushing the stray minutes and seconds from her plain brown coat. 

 There was a time slip in Southern California at about one in the afternoon. Mr. Gordon Fish thought it was an earthquake. 

Master
   Traveller

 So they have not briefed you? Well, a run is a little jaunt back into history—not nice comfortable history such as you learned out of a book when you were a little kid. No, you are dropped back into some savage time before history— 

Andre Norton, Master Traveller

Among her many other creative contributions to the field, Andre Norton conceived of the first series of novels that lay primarily in the subgenre of time traveling.

 He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him dearly. 

 “While I was backing up, I inadvertently trampled and killed a small Pleistocene insect.”
   “Aha!” said Hassel.
   “I was terrified by the indicent. I had visions of returning to my world to find it completely changed as a result of this single death. Imagine my surprise when I returned to my world to find that nothing had changed!” 

 But we are mortal men. And we have free will. The fixed-time concept need not, logically, produce fatalism; after all, Herries, man’s will is itself one of the links in teh causal chain. I suspect that this irrational fatalism is an important reason why twentieth-century civilization is approaching suicide. If we think we know our future is unchangeable, if our every action is foreordained, if we are doomed already, what’s the use of trying? Why go through all the pain of thought, of seeking an answer and struggling to make others accept it? But if we really believed in ourselves, we woiuld look for a solution, and find one. 

 I have information that the Japanese are gonna bomb Pearl Harbor tomorrow morning at approximately 8am Honolulu time. 

 You know, you have touched upon a train of thought that has always interested me—our sense of time. Time, as we know it, is only an objective concept, like a sense of color. We here upon this earth are moving upon a plane and recognize as really existing only the small circle lighted by our consciousness, one meridian. That which is behind has disappeared and that which is ahead has not yet appeared, so we say that they do not exist. 

 According to the Theory of Improbability, all moral qualities can be suitably quantified under the so-called Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev Transformation Equations. By these fruitful formulations, it was discovered early in the twentieth century that everything can be taken to mean anything else provided that the number field be restricted to the transcendentals. 

 They’ve put up statues to him, too. The oldest is on the hillside right here where the discovery was made. You can just see it out the window. Yes. Can you make out the inscription? Well, we’re standing at a bad angle. No matter. 

 When the four O  ::  children, Lucy, Robert, Charles, and May, were orphaned by a freak of circumstances, they were sent to live in the Past with two spinster relatives, ostensibly because of crowded conditions elsewhere. 

 When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man. 

 They want to live as much as I do. I am the first me, and therefore the real me; but they are also me—different moments of consciousness in me—but they are me. 

 Yet somehow he knew that all would be well with him. Somehow, as never before, he knew. 

 Let me at least tell you what the experiment is. You can faint after I’m finished. 

 It was a big decision, the first time. If you were at all successful in life at forty, fifty, sixth, the glorious thought of being young again, strong, healthy and probably in love, was considerably tempered by the consideration that you’d be pushed around again, that you’d have to get up at seven and work hard all day for less than a tenth of what you made now, that you’d have to go through this or that operation again, that you’d have to see your father and mother die again  . . . 

 Attention, comrades, attention! Here is a complementary production bulletin issued by the Ministry of Plenty giving further glorious news of the success of the seventh three-year plan! In clear demonstration of the rising standards of our new, happy life, the latest calculated increases are as follows . . . 

—Nineteen-Eighty-Four

 Our field men have explored the Pre-Technological Age, the First Technological Age, and the early years of our own age; but even though they witnessed some of the ancient technicians at work, they never caught a glimpse of the machine. 

 “Time travel is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why?”
Betty looked to her boss for assistance. None was forthcoming. There ought to be some very quick, positive, definite answer. She said, “Well, for one thing, paradox. Suppose you had a time machine and traveled back a hundred years or so and killed your own great-grandfather. Then how could you ever be born?”
“Confound it if I know,” the little fellow growled. “How?” 

 You’re wanted on the telephone—a young lady. 

—Wilbur the dog in “The First Telephone”

 So, you’re a part of this now, whether or no. We can’t afford to let you go, the situation is too critical. So—you’ll be offered a chance to enlist. 

 At any rate, he turned full on me. His lean body shook and his dark eyebrows pulled down over his deep-set eyes as he shrieked at me in a falsetto, “But I’ll never read my obituary. I’ll be deprived even of that.” 

 The folded paper opened stiffly, the crease permanent with age, and even before I saw the date I knew this letter was old. The handwriting was obviously feminine, and beautifully clear—it’s called Spencerian, isn’t it?—the letters perfectly formed and very ornate, the capitals especially being a whirl of dainty curlicues. The ink was rust-black, the date at the top of the page was May 14, 1882, and reading it, I saw that it was a love letter. 

1. Walking Distance (30 Oct 1959) Hero to time of youth
2. Judgment Night (4 Dec 1959) Time Loop in World War II
3. What You Need (25 Dec 1959) Prescience (no time travel)
4. The Last Flight (5 Feb 1960) ¤ 42 years beyond WW II
5. Execution (1 Apr 1960) From 1880 West to 1960 NY
6. A Stop at Willoughby (6 May 1960) To idyllic past
7. The Trouble with Templeton (9 Dec 1960) To 1927
8. Back There (13 Jan 1961) Lincoln in 1865
9. The Odyssey of Flight 33 (24 Feb 1961) To age of dinosaurs and more
10. A Hundred Yards over the Rim (7 Apr 1961) From 1847 to 1961
11. Once Upon a Time (15 Dec 1961) ¤ From 1890s to present
12. A Quality of Mercy (29 Dec 1961) From 1945 to ’42 in WWII
13. Death Ship (7 Feb 1963) ¤ Time Loop?
14. No Time Like the Past (7 Mar 1963) To 1881 Indiana
15. Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (11 Apr 1963) From age 75 to 30
16. The Incredible World of Horace Ford (18 Apr 1963)    Hero to Time of Youth
17. The Bard (23 May 1963) Shakespeare to the present
18. The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms (6 Dec 1963) To Custer’s Last Stand
19. Spur of the Moment (21 Feb 1964) ¤ Heroine warns earlier self

 There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. 

 I say, Wright, now Guy’s here, we can get on with it. 

 Peabody here. 

1. The Day We Explored the Future (Dec 1959) finding the machine
2. The Time Machine Flies Backwards (Feb 1960) back to Teddy Roosevelt
3. How We Got the Mind-Reading Pills (Jun 1960) to future to rescue Kai Bezzy
4. Our Time Machine at the Jamboree (Jul 1960) to ancient Sparta to get Dion
5. Marco Polo and Our Time Machine (Oct 1961) to Marco Polo’s China
6. The Time Machine Slips a Cog (Feb 1962) accidental trip to 1972
7. Mutiny in the Time Machine (Dec'62-Mar'63) Pre-Columbian America
8. The Time Machine Cracks a Safe (Jun 1964) to rescue Kai’s parents
9. Time Machine to the Rescue (Oct 1964) rescue the parents again!
10. The Time Machine Gets Stuck (Feb-Apr 1965)) to Maximilian I
11. Time Machine Hunts a Treasure (Apr-Jun 1967) diary investigation in 1900
12. The Dog from the Time Machine (Dec 1968) briefly to 1473 with wolf-dog
13. Time Machine and the Generation Gap (Sep 1970) underwater in 2020
14. The King and the Time Machine (Aug 1971) Edward III to far future
15. The Time Machine Cleans Up (Feb 1973) recycler from the future
16. The Time Machine Twins the Jamboree (Aug 1973) visit two places at once
17. Santa Claus and the Time Machine (Dec 1973) put together a Santa Claus
18. The Time Machine Fights Earthquakes (Nov 1974) visit to past/future quakes
19. The Time Machine Saves a Patriot (Apr 1975) to Paul Revere
20. The Time Machine Kidnaps a Parade (Jul 1976) Colonial soldiers to today
21. Target Timbuktu (Sep 1988) to ancient Africa
22. Why We Kidnapped Our Scoutmaster (Feb 1989) an 1850s mountain man
23. Pirates Took Our Time Machine (Sep 1989) pirates in 1731

 One little egghead reached out, kind of scared, and gave my hair a nasty tug. “Mullo,” the Scoutmaster said sharply. “Jog law six. A Scout is kind. He is warmheart to animals. He nul kills or pangs any living creature for trivia.”
Their words for the sixth Scout Law were weird, but I was glad to know they still had the law, especially if they thought I was an animal. 

—“The Day We Explored the Future”

 The year is 1900. The place is London, England, at an imposing mansion overlooking the river Thames. Impatient dinner guests sit in the library, awaiting an overdue host . . . 

 Tomake sure, I walked over to a newsboy and glanced at the stack of papers at his feet. It was The World; and The World had’t been published for years. The lead story said something about President Cleveland. I’ve found that front page since, in the Public Library files, and it was printed June 11, 1894. 

 This is a funny lookin’ bottle—yeah, neat. But I bet if I took it home, Pop would say, “It’s just another piece of junk.” Nobody let’s me do anything I want to. I wish I was far away from here; I wish I was on a pirate ship. 

 Exactly. The Temporal Embassy. How can science live and breathe with such a modifier? It’s a thousand times worse than any of these ancient repressions like the Inquisition, military control, or university trusteeship. You can’t do this—it will be done first a century later; you can’t do that—the sociological impact of such an invention upon your period will be too great for its present capacity; you should do this—nothing may come of it now, but somebody in an allied field a flock of years from now will be able to integrate your errors into a useful theory. 

 Other nations? Mutants? What kind of talk is this? 

 Your world is a slope and you roll down it all the time. Down and down until you wear out and die. 

 I’m a little tensed up, I guess, but I can do it. I wasn’t really scared; it was the way it happened, so sudden. They never gave me a chance to get ready. 

 When I speak of time, I’m speaking of the fourth dimension. 

 He remembered then that he had been awakened that morning by just such a call. 

 My colleagues, clever as they are, would never dream of the angle I’ll use to get rid of the Fly! I’ll destroy him with beauty! 

—the evil Dovi in Adventures of the Fly 22 while bringing

 Disgust would be the simplest word. 

 Be just vhat you is, not vhat you is not. Folks vhat do zis are ze happiest lot. 

 Ya think I’m stupid? I can see that. 

 He found a secondhand copy of J.W. Dunne’s An Experiment with Time and lost sleep for a week. He copied off the charts from it, Scotch-taped them to his wall; he wrote down his startling dreams every morning as soon as he awoke. There was a time outside time, Dunne said, in which to measure time; and a time outside that, in which to measure the time that measured time, and a time outside that. . . . Why not? 

  . . . run backward run . . . 

 The homesickeness, though, that’s what eats you. Little things you never noticed. Some particular food, the way people walk, the games played, the small-talk topics. Even the constellations. They're different in the future. The sun has traveled that far in its galactic orbit. 

 He could become the richest man in the world, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. All he had to do was to take short trips into the future to learn what stocks had gone up and which horses had won races, then come back to the present and buy those stocks or bet on those horses. 

1. Donald and the Wheel (21 Jun 1961) Donald Duck
2. Sir Gyro de Gearloose (6 Oct 1987) Duck Tales
3. Time Is Money (25 Nov 1988) Duck Tales
4. Goofy Baby (27 Jan 2008) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
5. Pluto’s Dinosaur Romp (3 Jul 2010) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

 This cat is really nowhere; in some circles, we’d call him square. 

 Having conquered Time and Space, They have now returned to them, as children do to long-forgotten toys. The collectors of string, match-boxes, old bottle-caps, have finally inherited the earth, and the City, built in the first star-reaching flush of power, has now become a dusty antique shop stuffed with every period Man ever knew. People in queer costumes parade the streets; the Old Vehicles Club has outings along SP@ Ave. (and only They, who can control time and motion, could keep Anglo-Saxon carts and Hexabiles from the 4th archy going at the same pace.) 

 Upon the bit of flimsy fabric which emphasized, rather than concealed, her bosom, was a large name-pin reading Cleopatra. This she removed, the action revealing to astonished Hank two small but distinct areas on which he had never till this moment realized that rouge might be applied. 

 Too late. Emmeline’s little pale wreath slithered down the curve of a hoop and knocked a switch and two spirals as it did so. Again the Machine quivered. But this time something delecate near the circlet—another spiraled wire—was flicked to a new position. The Machine jarred. Al reached toward the three switches but only had time to pull one. 

 Don’t argue, dammit. I ’m talking to you from October ninth. I’m sitting in a boat, twenty-eight miles and two months from where you are and I’ve got a pile of newspapers, Georgie, that haven’t even been printed yet, back there in August where you’re talking from. 

 Yes, I’ve missed so much. I wasted a lot of time. If only I could have avoided the blind alleys, I could have done many times as much. 

 “The Alamo, sir.” A slow, steady excitement seemed to burn in the Britainer’s bright eyes. “Santa Anna won’t forget that name, you can be sure. You’ll want to talk to the other officers now, sir? About the message we drew up for Sam Houston?” 

 I should like to remind you that all of you who witnessed this demonstration are five minutes younger than you were when we started. 

 I’ll smash the first guy who says it’s all Greek to him. 

1. Spoil of Yesterday (Mar 1962) Science Fiction Adventure
2. The Word Not Written (May 1962) Science Fiction Adventure
3. The Fullness of Time (Jul 1962) Science Fiction Adventure
4. Times Without Numbers (1962) fix-up novel
5. Times Without Numbers (1969) expanded

 It wasn’t only the embarrassing experience of being shown off around the hall by her—as it were, a real live time-traveller, exclamation point, in the same tone of voice as one would say, “A real live tiger!” That happened too often for members of the Society of Time not to have grown used to it; there were, after all, fewer than a thousand of them in the whole of the Empire. 

 The machine, the time machine, was ready for operation. It was clean and had been checked over for a week; all the parts which were doubtful had been replaced, and on a trial run yesterday it had performed perfectly. Robert’s sweater—obert’s, of course, not Arthur’s—had been sent two days into the future and had come back. It had been sent six months and then five years into the future, and it had still come back. But of course Arthur had never doubted that it would. 

1. Fantastic Four 5 (Jul 1962) FF to time of Blackbeard
2. Journey into Mystery 86 (Nov 1962) Thor vs Zarkko, the Tomorrow Man
3. Strange Tales 111 (Aug 1963) Doc Strange & Mordo thru time (1 panel)
4. Tales of Suspense 44 (Aug 1963) Iron Man to time of Cleopatra
5. Fantastic Four 19 (Oct 1963) FF to ancient Egypt
6. Fantastic Four 23 (Feb 1964) Dinosaur to Baxter Building
7. Journey into Mystery 101 (Feb 1964) Thor travels to future to be Zarkko slave
8. Journey into Mystery 102 (Mar 1964) Thor returns to the present, a free god!
9. Strange Tales 123 (Aug 1964) Doc Strange sends Thor’s hammer back
10. Avengers 8 (Sep 1964) Kang the Conqueror from the future
11. Fantastic Four Annual 2 (Sep 1964) FF vs Rama-Tut [reprint and new]
12. Strange Tales 124 (Sep 1964) Doc Strange to time of Cleopatra
13. Avengers 10 (Nov 1964) Immortus (aka Kang) from the future
14. Avengers 11 (Dec 1964) Kang (again) and Spider-Man (sort of)
15. Fantastic Four 34 (Jan 1965) Gideon uses Doom’s machine
16. Strange Tales 129 (Feb 1965) Doc Strange travels back an hour or so
17. Strange Tales 134 (Jul 1965) FF vs Kang
18. Fantastic Four Annual 3 (Sep 1965) Cadre of villains sent to the past
19. Avengers 23 (Dec 1965) Avengers defeated by Kang in the future
20. Journey into Mystery 122 (Nov 1965) Thor moves Hobbs through time
21. Avengers 24 (Jan 1966) Avengers defeat Kang in the future!
22. Tales to Astonish 75 (Jan 1966) Hulk to post-apocalyptic future
23. Tales to Astonish 76 (Feb 1966) Hulk vs King Arrkam in the future
24. Tales to Astonish 77 (Mar 1966) Hulk vs the Executioner in the future
25. Tales to Astonish 78 (Apr 1966) Hulk returns from post-apocalyptic future
26. Avengers 28 (May 1966) Collector/Beetle in time machine
27. Strange Tales 148 (Sep 1966) Book of Vishanti to ancient times
28. Strange Tales 150 (Nov 1966) Doc Strange to ancient Babylon
29. Thor 140 (May 1967) Thor vs Growing Man (Kang’s minion)
30. Not Brand Echh 2 (Sep 1967) Ironed Man vs Magnut, Robot Biter
31. Avengers 56 (Sep 1968) To World War II
32. Avengers Annual 2 (Sep 1968) The Scarlett Centurion (aka Kang)
33. Iron Man 5 (Sep 1968) Warriors from 24th century
34. Marvel Super-Heroes 18 (Jan 1969) Guardians of the Galaxy from the Future
35. Marvel Super-Heroes 20 (May 1969) Diablo uses Doom’s time platform
36. Silver Surfer 6 (Jun 1969) To the future and back by traveling fast
37. Avengers 69 (Oct 1969) Avengers vs Kang in 41st century
38. Avengers 70 (Nov 1969) Avengers vs Squadron Sinister
39. Avengers 71 (Dec 1969) Avengers to 1941 vs Invaders

 And now I shall send you back . . . hundreds of years into the past! You will have forty-eight hours to bring me Blackbeard’s treasure chest! Do not fail! 

—Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four 5

 Two scientists are hurled helpless into the lost world of time! 

—from the cover of The Time Tunnel 1.

 I GUARANTEE UNUSUAL DIVERSIONS—NO ENTRANCE FEE—ONE TRIAL WILL CONVINCE YOU—APPLY NOW—BECOME A MEMBER OF OUR SOCIETY—DISCRETION ASSURED—ADDRESS BOX 322628 

 Also, according to Maulbow, there was a race of the future, human in appearance, with machines to sail the current of time through the universe—to run and tack with the winds of time, dipping in and out of the normspace of distant periods and galaxies as they chose. 

 Away we go, Mawster Richie! 

—Alas, I no longer have that original Richie Rich comic, so I don’t know whether Cadbury said this or not, but he should have!

 “I knew it was a book!” whispered Susan excitedly. “It’s the girl in the Half Magic picture! It’s the little girl in the last chapter who finds the charm after Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha pass it on!” 

 On the way, he met the other Mr. Morky, who was still struggling to get back, and there was a collision. He fused with himself. Unfortunately, it was an abnormal fusion, quite cancerous; all that custard pie started dividing and re-dividing and re-re-dividing into an infinite multiple division. 

 I did, and saw what he meant; a face in the old picture almost identical with the one in the Wanted poster. It had the same astonishing length, the broad chin seeming nearly as wide as the cheekbones, and I looked up at Ihren. “ Who is it? His father? His grandfather?” 

 Dad’s taking animals and plants and even people back with him to display in the 23rd century. 

—“Time Machine” (1963)

 I can visit nine different lives. Anywhere, any time, any country, any century. 

 I’ve come back to this day and time to keep it from starting, if I can. Come with me, John, we’ll go to the rulers of this world. We’ll make them believe, too, make them see that the war mustn’t start. 

 Margie [examining WARNING! KEEP OUT sign]: Oh, Howie, look. I don’t think we oughta go on that property.
Howie: Look, you wanna get to the game, dontcha?
Margie: Of course I do!
Howie: Then come on . . .  

 “That's right,” she told me, nodding. “Khrushchev was the giant Skymir, I’m pretty sure. Jotunheim and Asgard are Russia and America, all set to shoot missles at each other across England and Europe, which must be Midgard, of course—though sometimes I think the English are the Vanir.” 

 He thought back over his sixty years. The betrayals, the disappointments, the sins, the hangovers. He had some money now, and by some standards he was a successful man. But life hadn't been any joyride. It had been rocky and fear-torn, filled with doubts and headaches, moments of complete despair, others of frustrated pain. 

 And you haven’t asked what the late Professor Krisher was working on. It was the practical application of a theory of time travel! Going back in time—say to civil war days, or the days of the Roman Empire! 

 Do you mean, have we changed the future? Who can answer that? 

 As Professor Schlesinger pointed out, some Soviet historians doubtless were already preparing the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Florida in 1933—so that the “historically necessary” contradictions of capitalism would emerge in the administration of President John Nance Garner. 

 Off-shore, the deeper swells of the open sea surged across the roofs of the submerged houses, the white-caps cleft by the spurs of isolated chimnies. 

 It had come to her that part of the seventh floor must have been converted in o a very realistic stage set, and that the woman and the girl had been rehearsing their parts in a play. But no, that couldn’t be it. No stage set that she had ever seen was so realistic thatyoucould hear cows and smell flowers and feel the warmth of the sunlight. 

 The world from which he had come, or any other world for that matter, could dissipate into its component elements at any instant, or could have come into being at any previous instant, complete with everybody’s memories! 

 Slowly and warily, the Astral Avenger approached a huge black wall. His substance seemed to waver and fade as he passed effortlessly through it into the blackened inside. 

—from Martin’s prose Dr. Weird story, “Only Kids Are

 ’Twas on a Monday morning, the gasman came to call . . . 

1. The Man Who Was Never Born (14 Oct 1963) back to stop a plague
2. Controlled Experiment (13 Jan 1964) comedy pilot with time travel
3. Soldier (19 Sep 1964) future soldier to 1964
4. Demon with a Glass Hand (17 Oct 1964) aliens invade from future

 There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about the experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to . . . The Outer Limits! 

1. Dr. Who (23 Nov 1963 - 6 Dec 1989) original series
2. Dr. Who and the Daleks (23 Aug 1965) theatrical movie
3. Daleks’s Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (5 Aug 1966) theatrical movie
4. K-9 and Company (28 Dec 1981) spin-off series
5. P.R.O.B.E. The Zero Imperative (1994) direct-to-video
6. P.R.O.B.E. The Devil of Winterborne (1995) direct-to-video
7. P.R.O.B.E. Unnatural Selection (1996) direct-to-video
8. P.R.O.B.E. Ghosts of Winterborne (1996) direct-to-video
9. Dr. Who (12 May 1996) tv movie
10. Dr. Who (26 Mar 2005 - present) series revival
11. Torchwood (22 Oct 2006 - 15 Sep 2011) spin-off series
12. The Sarah Jane Adventures (1 Jan 2007 - 18 Oct 2011) spin-off series
13. K-9 and Company (31 Oct 2009 - 3 Apr 2010) spin-off series
14. Counter-Measures (Jul 2012 - Jan 2014) audio spin-off
15. Class (Dec 2016) spin-off aimed at teens

 Hard to remember. Some time soon now, I think. 

—The Doctor answering a police officer’s query as to his date of birth

 Let us say there was a need to be inconspicuous. This is a dead period, for hundreds of years on either side. No one knows about this abandoned liner except us, and no one would think of looking here. 

 “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve—no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” 

 Civil War . . . wonder how it’s going to turn out? 

 Because the communists are realists. They never risk a war that would hurt them, even if they could win. So they won’t risk one they can’t win. 

 —to the Dick the Disk Show, brought to you by W-D-U. 

 Q. How does it feel to go back a hundred— 

 The mightiest man battles reds from today, and monsters from yesterday! 

—from Blue Beetle 2, Sep 1964

 Now, this computer seems to be able to fake up just about any scene you want to take a look at. You name it, it sets it up. Chester, we’ve got the greatest side-show attraction in circus history! We book the public in at so much a head, and show ’em Daily Life in Ancient Rome, or Michelangelo sculpting the Pietà, or Napoleon leading the charge at Marengo. 

 This evening’s tale begins with a nightmare-like experience, but that is only a prelude to the terrifying events which follow. And now, speaking of terrifying events . . . 

 Keep an eye out for them. Get as many rocks as you can. 

 79,061,889 years from now, this territory would be part of the state of Montana. 79,062,156 years from now, a group of paleontologists digging somewhere in the vastly changed terrain would unearth the fossil of a modern man who had died 79,062,156 years before his disinterment—Would the fossil turn out to be his own? 

 Thor, will you please take care of . . . 

 Oh, it’s marvelous, absolutely marvelous. You just step inside and I throw a lever. And things spin and lights go on and off, and you wind up somewhere in the future. 

 On the way there, with not one sound, the dog passed away. Died on the front seat—as if he knew . . . and knowing, picked the better way. 

 This is all wrong! If I dare change their stone age way of life, it may affect the whole future of their race. 

 Out of the world’s three billion people there can’t be more than, say, a hundred women like Jessica Maxwell. 

 Dropping the letter, she held her head in her hands, closing her eyes as in the curved bone of her skull she heard all her possible courses of action jar together, future lifelines that annihilated each other. 

 Mike was a recent but ardent science-fiction fan. “I want to change it, Dr. Stuart,” he said earnestly. “I want to go back to four weeks ago and take away Tony’s Flexy.” He meant it, of course. 

 A series of parallel black lines, several inches apart, extended from it, some distance across the corridor floor. At the head of each was a brief inscription, in no alphabet he could recognize. But every ten feet or so a number was added. He saw 4950, 4951, 4952 . . . 

1. Time Out for Martin (20 Jun 1965) to 1215 England
2. Go West, Young Martian (12 Sep 1965) to 1849 St. Louis
3. The Time Machine Is Waking Up . . . (21 Nov 1965)    Jesse James from 1870
4. The O’Hara Caper (19 Dec 1965) back to lunchtime
5. Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (2 Jan 1966) to 1920/45 Cleveland
6. When You Get Back Home . . . (27 Feb 1966) back to the morning
7. Martin Meets His Match (27 Mar 1966) Da Vinci from 1400s
8. Pay the Man the $24 (1 May 1966) to 1626 Manhattan

 What a planet for me to get marooned on.