The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1947



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

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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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




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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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


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

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

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






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

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

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

—from the cover of Bob Hope 43




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

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

I enjoyed how he wrote out his visions in quatrains.

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




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

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

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




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

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

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

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



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

 

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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)