The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1946



   “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 ]

 

9 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)