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

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

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

—Thomas Sheridan in Fantasy Review, Apr/May 1949

 Miracle Meal. Press here. 

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

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

—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

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

—Hugh Martinson in “Adventure into the Future”

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

—oops, wrong Crosby movie!

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

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

 Tomorrow, my tomorrow, is the day of the President’s death. 

 He lifted his foot to step over a Raggedy Ann doll smiling through its neglect as it lay there in the middle of the walk, a foundling not yet missed. He had not quite put his foot down again . . . 

 His interne stared at him with awed respect. A man—able to read! 

 For example, I well remember the night when he woke up the entire Asylym by yelling “Fire!”, just before the boiler explosion which nearly caused a holocaust. 

 As to the advice which I promised you. Watch your cousin warren, so far as Katherine is concerned!—Now you have a real reason to dislike your cousin. 

 Then the man saw that he had made a tactical mistake; so he turned back the clock a few minutes and tried the conversation over again. 

 Every man can have Temp and if you save your money you can have Permanent, which they say, is as close to heaven as man can get. 

 I am going to set up an interference in the time rhythm at this particular spot. Then the chimpanzies will enter it with my time capsules—since I know you won’t—and they will deposit the capules here a million years ago! 

 I’ve called you because I feel Tom Wolfe’s the man, the necessary man, to write of space, of time, huge things like nebulae and galactic war, meteors and planets, all the dark things he loved and put on paper were like this. He was born out of his time. He needed really big things to play with and never found them on Earth. He should have been born this afternoon instead of one hundred thousand mornings ago. 

1. The Man Who Conquered Time (12 Apr 1950) to 10,000 AD
2. The Temple of the Pharaohs (12 Jul 1951) to ancient Egypt

 The sky, the sky is wrong, Sebastian! The constellations are all twisted up. Halley’s comet is back where it must have been a few thousand years ago! Sebastion, I’ve got it! That sky! That sky is the sky of about 5000 years ago! 

—from “The Temple of the Pharaohs”

 I just stepped off the path, that’s all. Got a little mud on my shoes! What do you want me to do, get down and pray? 

 How can you prove who is from the Past, who from the Future? 

 The inhabitants of the future resent you two hiding on a tropical isle, as it were, while they drop off the cliff into hell. Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them. It is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave. I am the guardian of their collective resentment against you two. 

1. To the Future (27 May 1950) from war in 2155 to peaceful 1950s
2. Time and Time Again (12 Jul 1951) dying soldier to his childhood)

 We have Time Machines for sale—simple little machines of paper and ink, tubes and wires that, coupled with your own mind can soar down the years of
Eternity. 

—from a Dimension X advertisement

 And those older people seated with the children. Mothers, fathers, they called them. Oh, that was strange. 

 Switch is right. It was about time travel. What we call travel through time. So I took the tube numbers he gave me and I put them into the circuit-builder; I set it for ‘series’ and there it is-my time-traveling machine. It travels things through time real good. 

 In ten years, traveling forward in space and backward in time, the fleet would have traversed just that distance—186,334^186,334 miles. 

 “I don’t want to go either. It’s been so wonderful,” she said, “this little time alone together. I love this funny little bar; I’ve loved every moment here. I wish today would never end.” 

 Wherever in history a decision involving alternatives has to be made, separate and distinct futures branch off, rooted in that choice. There is a world in which the American colonies became a nation, and a world in which they remained under British rule. There is a world in which Franklin Roosevelt was four times elected President, and a world in which the assassination attempt against him in Miami was successful. There is no “might have been,” for the events that “might have been” have actually taken place, somewhere in time—not before, not after, but beside their alternatives. . . . 

 The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world. 

 “The ‘time-machine’” Zarvas Pol replied. “If he’s managed to get it finished, the Great Mind only knows where he may be, now. Or when.” 

 Why, what an odd-looking blueprint! Tempus Machina—why, Tom! That’s Latin for Time Machine! 

 It would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that thre was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thutmosis III, to the sailing of Columbus. 

 I turned toward the ticket windows knowing that here—on the third level at Grand Central—I could buy tickets that would take Louisa and me anywhere in the United States we wanted to go. In the year 1894. 

 Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs. 

 Good old endless-cycle gimmick. Lot of fun to kick around but Bob Heinlein did it once and for all in ‘By His Bootstraps.’ Damnedest tour de force I ever read; there just aren’t any switcheroos left after that. 

 We’re obviously stranded in the fourth dimension . . . We’ve both escaped that monster by plunging into the color-stream . . . which must be the stream of time! 

 Here within this brain of mine has been conceived a thing which will probably destroy a billion human lives in the coming years. D. triconus toxin in a suitable aerosol requires only a countable number of molecules in the lungs of a man to kill him. My brain and mine alone is responsible for that vicious, murderous discovery. 

 Peter gazed at it in silence. His head was feeling oddly numb, and the mist seemed to swirl around him with redoubled speed and thickness. Hardly realizing what he was doing, he slipped his right hand inside the heavy gauntlet, and this fingers groped inside the wide spaces, for it was far too large for his small hand.
From behind there came the thud of hooves, a shout, shrill and defiant, the clang of metal on metal, and then a confused roar of sounds, shouts, more hoof-beats, clang after clang, dying away into the distance as suddenly as they had come. The gauntlet slipped from Peter’s hand, and he shook himself as if he had just awakened. 

 But Ann walked straight into that door and fell. I couldn’t figure out how she came to do it; it was as though she expected the door to open by itself or something. That’s what Ted said, too, going over to help her up. “Be careful, honey,” he said, and laughed a little, making a joke of it. “You’ll have to learn, you know, that doors won’t open themselves.” 

 But it’s a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always have—or do—or will. I don’t know, verbs get all mixed up. We don’t have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this. 

 Father Vincent was sorry that the villagers had called him. They should have set the fire. But it was too late.
“You will come in peace?” he asked, his voice beginning to tremble. “You will do no harm?” 

 Of course! that’s it! I forgot to connect the plug to the electric outlet! 

—Harry in Mystery Tales 10, Apr 1953, explaining why his time machine did’s work the first time

 If yours works, there’ll be more time machines built. With more built, they’ll be improved. They’ll get to be commonplace. People’d use them—and someone would turn up here with one. Or in the past. Why haven’t we met time travelers, Pete? 

1. And Adam Begot (2 Jul 1951) time warp to prehistoric past
2. Of Time and Third Avenue (30 Dec 1951) from Bester’s story

 You don’t understand. Look at the short, hairy, twisted body—the neck bent, the head thrust forward, those enormous brows, the short flat nose . . . 

—from “And Adam Begot ”

 Yes. Let’s see. Infinity over pi minus the two quadrants cubed . . . 

—Captain Science 5

 Air power in the Civil War? Well, it’s been a pretty well-kept secret all these years, but we had it. The Major and me invented it ourselves. 

 There were 1,000 teams of biographers, military analysts, historians, etc., to begin recording history as it actually happened—with special attention, according to Maxwell’s grant, to past leaders of industry, politics, science, and the arts, in the order named. 

 Then, undressing in my bedroom, I remembered that Major Bowes was dead. Years had passed, half a decade, since that dry chuckle and familiar, “All right, all right,” had been heard in the nation’s living rooms. 

 When Swarts started saying a list of words—doubtlessly some sort of semantic reaction test—Maitland began the job of integrating “csc³x dx” in his head. It was a calculation which required great concentration and frequent tracing back of steps. After several minutes, he noticed that Swarts had stopped calling words. He opened his eyes to find the other man standing over him, looking somewhat exasperated and a little baffled. 

 If there was such a thing as a 1990 almanac, and if it was in that package, wild horses couldn’t get it away from me. 

 I am concerned solely with potential reader reaction. The average reader simply won’t believe in your year 1950. 

 A fantastic time machine enables Mickey and Goofy to live in different periods of history. Right now they are aboard Mickey’s unarmed merchant vessel off the Carolinas in the early 1700’s—and off to starboard is a treacherous pirate ship . . . 

—Mickey Mouse 114

 If Nostradamus would accept the manuscript as being his, the controversy would be ended, and the paraphysicists could extend their mathematics with sureness that led on toward glorious, breathtaking possibilities. Somewhere, perhaps within a few feet, was the man who could settle the question conclusively, and somehow Sidney must find him—and soon! 

 You’re much better off than if we had held the hunt in Sixteenth Century Spain during the inquisition or perhaps ancient Rome during the reign of Caligula. You may even like it here during the brief period of the hunt. It’s a fairly civilized culture, at least in a material sense. 

Columbus Circle then:

...and now:

 I sat up suddenly, feeling my legs, both of them. There wasn’t any pain. But there were two legs and two feet!
Then I did something I hadn’t let myself do in years—I burst into tears. 

 Roger, I believe the 18th century still exists. It’s all around us, if only we could find it. Put it this way: Polaris, the North Star, is very bright, yet its light takes nearly fifty years to reach us. For all we know, Polaris may have ceased to exist somewhere around 1900. Yet we still see it, its past is our present. As far as Polaris is concerned, Teddy Roosevelt is just going down San Juan hill. 

 Was Great Grandma as Good as She Made Out? See the Things Your Family History Never Told You 

 And now, my little papoose, I shall take you off in my time machine. 

1. What You Need (8 Feb 1952) Henry Kuttner and C.M. Moore
2. The Little Black Bag (30 May 1952) C.M. Kornbluth
3. Ahead of His Time (18 Jul 1952) Paul Tripp
4. The Chase (19 Sep 1952) Mann Rubin
5. Another Chance (13 Feb 1953) Frank De Felitta
6. Past Tense, with Boris Karloff (3 Apr 1953) Robert F. Lewine

 After my treatment, you’l awake. You’ll find yourself in a room a thousand miles from here and back seven years in time. You’ll have absolutely no remembrance of these past seven years. The slate will be clean. 

—“Another Chance”

 How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all? 

 “Look, don’t you get it? I’m a time traveler. They picked me to send to the future. I’m important.”
   “Ummm. But you must realize that we have time travelers turning up continuously these days.” 

 Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly! 

 What a book title! Time—The Fourth Dimension! Going time travelling, Lester? 

—from “The Last Laugh”

 And those were the children who were too little to cross the street! 

 Either he imagined himself moved backward in time with a double armful of Encyclopedia Britannica, best-sellers, hit plays and gambling records; or else he imagined himself transported forward in time a thousand years to the Golden Age of perfection. 

 We saw you reading the future with it over at the carnival! 

 I saw the ghost in my own living room, alone, between three and four in the morning, and I was there, wide awake, for a perfectly sound reason: I was worrying. 

 Mrat-See turned quickly, wincing at the protest of his aching muscles. The creature standing before him might have issued from a nightmare. Its heavy, barrellike body was slung like a hammock on four bowed legs. The enormous head, with undershot jaw, protruding fangs, and pendulous lips, was turned toward him unswervingly, and the continuing growl was a deep rumble of menace from the massive chest. Mrat-See’s heart leaped with fear. He had seen such creatures before in the Yorkgrad zoo. Dogs they were called. 

 I could say that time is an illusion and that all events occur simultaneously. 

 The government was convinced enough to finance Project Swipe, so it can’t be too crazy. We’re actually reaching into the future. Look, we’re losing the war—we know that. Pan-Asia is matching our technology and beating our manpower. But somewhere ahead, they’ve got things that Pan-Asia can’t have—and we're going to get some of that. 

 I could say that time is a convention and that all events occur simultaneously. 

 We must never forget our rights are based on our FAITH IN GOD. We claim them in Jefferson’s words, Not under the charters of kinds or legislatures, but under the King of Kings. 

—from the first issue

 Do you remember the time a few weeks back when all of upper Manhattan and the Bronx were without electricity for twelve hours because of the damndest overload cut-off in the main power board? I won’t say we did that, because I am in no mood to be sued for damages. But I will say this: The electricity went off when my uncle Otton turned the third knob. 

 Esperanto isn’t anywhere. It’s an artificial language. I played around with it a little once. It was supposed to end war and all sorts of things. Some people called it the language of the future. 

 Dear Mr. Lewis,
   We think you should consult a psychiatrist.
Sincerely,
Doyle P. Gates
Science Fiction Editor
Deep Space Magazine 

 It is concerning Tavia, Sir Gerald—er, Mr. Lattery. I think perhaps you don’t understand the degree to which the whole situation is fraught with unpredictable consequences. It is not just my own responsibility, you understand, though that troubles me greatly—it is the results that cannot be forseen. She really must come back before very great harm is done. She must, Mr. Lattery. 

 A two-year forecast on the market was worth a billion! 

 Consider an attic. Its very atmosphere is Time. It deals in other years, the cocoons and chrysalises of another age. All the bureau drawers are little coffins where a thousand yesterdays lie in state. Oh, the attic’s a dark, friendly place, full of Time, and if you stand in the very center of it, straight and tall, squinting your eyes, and thinking and thinking, and smelling the Past, and putting out your hands to feel of Long ago, why, it . . . 

 She had the gun in her hand. I went into the mesh cage, not knowing what to expect and yet too afraid of her to refuse. I didn’t want to wind up dead of starvation, no matter how much money she gave me—but I didn”t want to get shot, either. 

 To any man even remotely interested in politics, let alone one as involved as I am, every 1st Tue of every 4th Nov must seem like one of the crucial if-points of history. 

 That thing has been buried for untold centuries perhaps. Millions of days. What would one more day matter? All right, go ahead, you two eager-beavers. But you’re getting the dirty work, scraping off that mold. 

 It looked like a top. The first thing I thought of was Brick Bradford, and before I could catch myself, I’d asked, “Is that pure Brick Bradford?”
He didn’t turn a hair. “Not by a long shot,” he answered. “H. G. Wells was there first. I owe it to Wells.” 

 This is your host, Omentor, saying, “Hello.” I’d like to take a little trip to another century, just name your choice: You can go back through the years as far as you’d like or forward to the future and visit civilizations as yet unknown. Fantastic? Not if you use the proper vehicle, which in this case is a time machine. What’s that? Where do you find a time machine? Well, I found one in a remarkable story from Galaxy magazine. 

 After much careful calculation, Peter decided to set the machine to project him to that important Friday at around eleven o’clock in the morning. 

 The theory said that a man returning through time could alter the social and technological trends of the people and times to which he returned, in order to change history that was already past. 

 The ferra of the cup has to be skilled in all branches of demonology. I had just graduated from college—with only passing grades. But of course, I thought I could handle anything. 

 “Are explaining many times before,” said Quang Dal patiently. “Is no such thing as faster-than-light drive. As your good man Einstein show you long time ago, is theoretical impossibility.” 

 You see, you yourself are the object in this particular instance, and by going back into time you—the same object—would be occupying two separate units of space at the same time, which is axiomatically impossible. Therefore, nature made its adjustment; the same as it would if an irresible force hit a so-called immovable object. It eliminates one of them. 

 I am Chronos, the spirit of time! Do not destroy the sacred sun dial! Come closer and I shall initiate you into the mysteries of time which you pursue so hotly. 

 Somehow we have stepped out of our own time into another. 

—from “A Hole in His Head”

 And during that period, time for me went backwards. I returned to my childhood. 

 They didn’t use that style of furniture in Los Angeles—or anywhere else that you know of—in 1954. That thing over there in the corner—you can’t even guess what it is. So might your grandfather, at your age, have looked at a television. 

 “By God and all the saints,” he said. “Time travel.”
    Harold snorted impatiently. “My dear Peter, ‘time’ is a meaningless word taken by itself, just as ‘space’ is.”
    “But barring that, time travel.”
    “If you like, yes.” 

 What if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved? 

1. Pantropy and Seedling Stars stories (1942-1956) Various publications
2. Cities in Flight stories (1952-1962) Various publications
3. Common Time (Jul 1953) in Shadow of Tomorrow
4. Beep (Feb 1954) Galaxy
5. Nor Iron Bars (Nov 1957) Infinity
6. A Case of Conscience (Sep 1953) & novel (1958) If
7. A Dusk of Idols (Mar 1961) Amazing
8. Midsummer Century (Apr 1972) & novel (May 1972) F&SF
9. The Quincunx of Time (Oct 1973) expands “Beep”

 It is instead one of the seven or eight great philosophical questions that remain unanswered, the problem of whether man has or has not free will. 

 I’ve got it! I’ll go to an era back in time where my superior intellect will soon make me master of the universe—and Marvelman can’t touch me! 

—the evil Gargunza in the 1959 Marvelman annual (probably a reprint)

 How incredible that it had taken centuries of patient technological research to master in a practical way the tremendous implications of Einstein’s original postulate. Warp space with a rapidly moving object, move away from the observer with the speed of light—and the whole of human history assumed the firm contours of a landscape in space. Time and space merged and became one. 

 And then the terminators claws began to manufacture their own varieties and attack Soviets and Westerners alike. The only humans that survived were those at the UN base on Luna. 

 I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I’ve got his signature. As a memento, you know. 

 So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence. 

 Don’t you see? She wished she were home and ended up halfway home! I wished there’d be a fire and got a little fire! A child’s-size fire! Martha wished Carrie could talk and she can half talk! 

 In rapid succession, he asked for five million dollars, three functioning oil wells, a motion-picture studio, perfect health, twenty-five more dancing girls, immortality, a sports car and a herd of pedigreed cattle. 

 We fought in Korea. We fought in China. In Germany and Yugoslavia and Iran. It spread, farther and farther. Finally the bombs were falling here. It came like the plague. The war grew. It didn’t begin. 

 There isn’t going to be anything. It’s all black after tomorrow. 

 Space-time—is cute? 

 We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads, buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead. 

 Men in strange garb appear. It seems that they unfasten the machine and take it away. Actually they are setting up the machine, but since time is running backwards—so do they! 

 He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned to him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century. 

 Then he began writing titles. I’m afraid I gasped. “Really,” I said. “You can’t actually expect to buy the ‘Mona Lisa’!” 

 I, a member of the dominant race, was once what you called . . . 

 It was a fog inside of a mist inside of a darkness, and this place was no man’s place and there was no year or hour at all, but only these men in a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm, and white thunder which moved behind the great falling pane of green glass that was the lightning. 

 If you guys ever travel in time, you’ll run up against more than you bargain for. I don’t mean the climate or the terrain or the fauna, but the economics and the politics. 

 Quite simply, it is the murder of Albert Einstein. 

 Nothing to get excited about. Any housewife could use one. 

—the interesting neighbor talking about his sonic broom

 Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look—up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!
Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who—disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannored reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper—fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! 

 You’ve heard of time-traveling. Well, this is time-talking. You’re talking to yourself—that’s me—and I’m talking to myself—that’s you—and it looks like we’ve got a mighty good chance to get rich. 

1. Time Patrol (May 1955) F&SF
2. Delenda Est (Dec 1955) F&SF
3. Brave to Be a King (Aug 1959) F&SF
4. The Only Game in Town (Jan 1960) F&SF
5. Gibraltar Falls (Oct 1975) F&SF
6. Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks (Oct 1983) in Time Patrolman
7. The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (Oct 1983) in Time Patrolman
8. Star of the Sea (Oct 1991) in The Time Patrol
9. The Year of the Ransom (Apr 1988) about 25,000 words
10. The Stranger That Is Within Thy Gates (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
11. Women and Horses and Power and War (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
12. Before the Gods That Made the Gods (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
13. Beringia (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
14. Riddle Me This (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
15. Amazement of the World (Sep 1990) in The Shield of Time
16. Death and the Knight (Jun 1995) in Tales of the Knights Templar

 If you went back to, I would guess, 1946, and worked to prevent your parents’ marriage in 1947, you would still have existed in that year; you would not go out of existence just because you had influenced events. The same would apply even if you had only been in 1946 one microsecond before shooting the man who would otherwise have become your father. 

 —remember the swibble slogan: Why be half loyal? 

 A loose-knit but fanatical political party is driving for control of the nation. This November they may have it. Meanshile one or more equally fanatical parties are seeking a practical time machine. 

 What would have happened if you’d rushed to the door and kicked yourself in the seat of the pants? 

 So we indulged in the twentieth-century custon of shaking hands with him. First Morniel, then me—and both very gingerly. Mr. Glescu shook hands with a peculiar awkwardness that made me think of the way an Iowan farmer might eat with chopsticks for the first time. 

 Gee, maybe people in the past won’t be scared of me. 

 Eleven times and always the same.