The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1970 to 1976



   Quest for the Future
by A.E. van Vogt
First publication: 1970

Hey, I got an idea! Let’s take three unrelated time-travel stories, change the name of the protagonist to be the same in all three, paste in some transition material, and call it a novel!

To be fair, I did enjoy this paperback when I bought it in the summer of 1970, but when I went to read van Vogt’s collected stories 42 years later, bits kept seeming familiar, which is when I discovered the truth. If I were a new reader, I’d just as soon read the individual stories and skip the conglomeration. The three stories are “Film Library,” “The Search” and “Far Centaurus” (all in van Vogt’s Transfinite collection).

 A new novel by “the undisputed idea man of the futuristic field” (to quote Forrest J. Ackerman) is bound to be an event of major interest to every science fiction reader. 

—from the back cover of the 1970 paperback


   “A Shape in Time”
by Anthony Boucher
First publication: The Future Is Now, 1970

Time-traveling, Marriage-prevention specialist Agent L-3H has her first failure while trying to intervene in the 1880 marriage of Edwin Sullivan to Angelina Gilbert.

 Temporal Agent L-3H is always delectable in any shape; that’s why the Bureau employs her on marriage-prevention assignments. 




   Time and Again
by Jack Finney
First publication: 1970

Si goes back to 19th century New York to solve a crime and (of course) fall in love.

This is Janet’s favorite time-travel novel, in which Finney elaborates on themes that were set in earlier stories such as “Double Take.”

 There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess. 




   The Year of the Quiet Sun
by Wilson Tucker
First publication: 1970

Brian Chaney—researcher, translator, statistician, a little of this and that—is unwillingly drafted as the third member of a team (which includes Major Moresby and Lt. Commander Saltus) to study and map the central United States at the turn of the century, at about the year 2000.

For me, I see the tone of several later items, such as the tv show Seven Days, as descendants of Tucker’s novel—and we finally understand why the Terminator arrives at his destination naked.

 She said: “It’s a matter of weight, Mr. Chaney. The machine must propel itself and you into the future, which is an operation requiring a tremendous amount of electrical energy. The engineers have advised us that total weight is a critical matter, that nothing but the passenger must be put forward or returned. They insist upon minimum weight.”
    “Naked? All the way naked?” 




  
 Time Trap #1
Time Trap
by Keith Laumer
First publication: Aug 1970

Roger Tyson is caught in a madcap changewar between aliens and time travelers from the future

  . . . it would be our great privilege to bring to the hypergalactic masses, for the first time in temporal stasis, a glimpse of life on a simpler, more meaningless, and therefore highly illuminating scale. I pictured the proud intellects of Ikanion Nine, the lofty abstract cerebra of Yoop Two, the swarm-awareness of Vr One-ninety-nine, passing through these displays at so many megaergs per ego-complex, gathering insights into their own early evolutionary history. I hoped to see the little ones, their innocent organ clusters aglow, watching with shining radiation sensors as primitive organisms split atoms with stone axes, invented the wheel and the betatron, set forth on their crude Cunarders to explore the second dimension . . . 




   Timeslip
created by Ruth Boswell and James Boswell
First episode: 28 Sep 1970

Serious Simon and Emotional Elizabeth use the Time Barrier to travel to different doctorwhoish pasts and presents, never meeting the Time Lord himself, of course, but sometimes meeting versions of themselves and their families.

 Oold Beth: Sometimes in life you have to make decisions and hope they come out for the best. You’ll know about that soon enough.
Young Liz: But I’ll never make your decisions, will I?
Oold Beth: Then how did I come to make them? We’re the same, Liz. But I’m like a person You’ll never be, and you’re like a person I never was, never. 

—from “The Time of the Ice Box”


   “One Life,
Furnished in Early Poverty”
by Harlan Ellison
First publication: Orbit 8, Oct 1970

At 42, Gus Rosenthal is in a place of security, importance, recogntion—in short, the perfect time to dig up that toy soldier that he buried in his back yard 30 years ago with the knowledge that doing so will take him back to that time to be an influence on an angry, bullied 12-year-old Gus.

 My thoughts were of myself: I’m coming to save you. I’m coming, Gus. You won’t hurt any more . . . you’ll never hurt. 


   “The Weed of Time”
by Norman Spinrad
First publication: Alchemy and Academe, Nov 1970

Spinrad’s tells of a man for whom every event in his life happens simultaneously, which is perhaps the ultimate in time travel.

 They will not accept the fact that choice is an illusion caused by the fact that future time-loci are hidden from those who advance sequentially along the time-stream one moment after the other in blissful ignorance. 


   “The Ever-Branching Tree”
by Harry Harrison
First publication: Science Against Man, Dec 1970

A Teacher takes a group of disinterested children on a field trip through time to see the evolution of life.

 Yesterday we watched the lightning strike the primordial chemical soup of the seas and saw the more complex chemicals being made that developed into the first life foms. We saw this single-celled life triumph over time and eternity by first developing the ability to divide into two cells, then to develope into composite, many-celled life forms. What do you remember about yesterday? 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  Tau Zero by Poul Anderson [time dilation ]

  Scrooge adapted by Leslie Bricusse (Ronald Neame, director), 19 Dec 1970 [a christmas carol ]

The cover art was by Marvel Comics artist Jim Steranko.

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

John Skein, a communicator who telepathically facilitates meetings between minds, suffers a mental overload that causes him to experience stressful flashbacks and flashforwards, some of which lead him to seek a healing creature in the purple sands and blue-leaved trees by an orange sea under a lemon sun.

 Time is an ocean, and events come drifting to us as randomly as dead animals on the waves. We filter them. We screen out what doesn’t make sense and admit them to our consciousness in what seems to be the right sequence. 






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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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


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

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

 When he was in Lilliput there was a war between the Lilliputians and another nation of little people—I forget what they called themselves—and Gulliver intervened and ended the war. Anyway, he researched the two countries and found they had once been one. And he tried to find out what caused so many years of bitter enmity between them after they split. He found that there had been two factions in that original kingdom—the Big Endians and the Little Endians. And do you know where that started? Far back in their history, at breakfast one morning, one of the king’s courtiers opened his boiled egg at the big end and another told him that was wrong, it should be opened at the small end! The point Dean Swift was making is that from such insignificant causes grow conflicts that can last centuries and kill thousands. Well, he was near the thing that’s plagued me all my life, but he was content to say it happened that way. What blow-torches me is—why. Why are human beings capable of hating each other over such trifles? Why, when an ancient triviality is proved to be the cause of trouble, don’t people just stop fighting? 




   Dinosaur Beach
by Keith Laumer
First publication: Sep 1971

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

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




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

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

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

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



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



   There Will Be Time
by Poul Anderson
First publication: 1972

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

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


   “When We Went to See
the End of the World”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Universe 2, Feb 1972

Nick and Jane are disappointed when they discover that they are not the only ones from their social group to have time-tripped to see some aspect or other of the end of the world.

 “It looked like Detroit after the union nuked Ford,” Phil said. “Only much, much worse.” 




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

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

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




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

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

 I have come unstuck in time. 




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

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

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

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


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

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

 “Do you like me? I’m attractive, am’t I?” She opened the blanket to look at herself. “I mean, am I attractive to you? Oh, Dovy, s-say something! I’ve come so far, I chartered three jets, I, I,—Oh, Dovy d-darling!” 


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

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

 The Time Chamber. with its loose-hanging power cables and confused-looking control panel, didn’t look much like Mr. Wells’ crystal bicycle. 




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

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

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

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






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

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

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


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

Investor Aram Kevorkian has the unique advantage that he can communicate with himselves 48 hours yore and 48 hours hence, until he falls in love with Selene who dampens his psychic powers and his trading profits.

 “Go ahead, (now + n),” he tells me. ((To him I am (now + n). To myself I am (now). Everything is relative; n is exactly forty-eight hours these days.)) 


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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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



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



   Frankenstein Unbound
by Brian Aldiss
First publication: 1973

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

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




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

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

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








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

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

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


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

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

 I made you say that. 








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

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

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

—from Peggy Got Stewed and Married


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

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

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

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




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

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

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

 I wouldn’t get bogged down in the details right now. The thing to focus on is that ’ve come here to save you from a horrible fate. 

—“All the Way from the Future World”




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

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

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


Pendulum Classics (1973)

Marvel Classics 2 (1976)

Academic Industries (1984)

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

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

 As a trial, I’ll just pull the future lever a short ways. 




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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

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


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

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

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




   Love, American Style
First time travel: 23 Oct 1973

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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




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

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

 Every man has more to live for than every other man. I don’t have a cute chick to sleep with, but I’d like to see the semi’s rolling along the Riverside Freeway at sunset a few more times. It’s not what you have to live for; it’s that you want to live to see it, to be there—that’s what is so damn sad. 


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

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

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


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

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

 “D-dark?” he stammered. “I’ll switch on the light.” 




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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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


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

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

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




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

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

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


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

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

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


   “If This Is Winnetka,
You Must Be Judy”
by F.M. Busby
First publication: Universe 5, Nov 1974

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

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


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

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

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

 If you’re talking about time-tours, why don’t you come with us? We’re going to see the Cruxifiction. 






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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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

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








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

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

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

—“Getting Away”




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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


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

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

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

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

 I didn’t say that we could or should go back to pre-industrial technology. The changes since then were inevitable and irreversible. I only said . . . 


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

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

 He didn’t seem to fit in at all well with the modern decor of the place, but I got the key from him and went towards the lift. 



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

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

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

 

82 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)