The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1961



   “Extempore”
aka “The Beach Where Time Began”
by Damon Knight
First publication: Far Out, 1961

Mr. Rossi yearns so much to travel through time that he manages to do so with only the power of his mind, but now he’s traveling is out of control: a series of moments past to present to future, which keep repeating but never the same.

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




   “The End”
aka “Nightmare in Time”
by Fredric Brown
First publication: The Dude Magazine, May 1961

I like Fredric Brown and his creative mind, but this was just a gimmick short short time-travel story in which the gimmick didn’t gimme anything. Now, if he had used this gimmick and the story had actually parsed, that would have caught my attention.

  . . . run backward run . . . 




   “My Object All Sublime”
by Poul Anderson
First publication: Galaxy, Jun 1961

A man becomes fast friends with a real estate entrepreneur who, one night, tells him a fantastic story of time-travelers in the far future who use the past as a criminal dumping ground.

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




   “Of Time and Eustace Weaver”
aka “The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver”
by Fredric Brown
First publication: Ellery Queen’ Mystery Magazine, Jun 1961

When the eponymous hero invents a time machine, he’s quite happy to embark on a career of larceny, gambling, and playing the market to make his riches, knowing that if things go awry, he can always return to the start.

When the story was reprinted in Nightmares and Geezenstacks it was presented as three separate vignettes (’The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver, Parts I, II and III), but the original EQMM publication had just one entry (Of Time and Eustace Weaver) in its table of contents.

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




   Walt Disney’s Classic Cartoons
First time travel: 21 Jun 1961

Even before the modern Duck Tales that my kids watched, I’ll bet Mickey and his friends went romping through time numerous times. The only one that I remember seeing as a kid myself was a trek by a singing father and son to see the invention of the wheel by a prehistoric Donald Duck (“Donald and the Wheel”).
  1. Donald and the Wheel (21 Jun 1961) Donald Duck
  2. Sir Gyro de Gearloose (6 Oct 1987) Duck Tales
  3. Time Is Money (25 Nov 1988) Duck Tales
  4. Goofy Baby (27 Jan 2008) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
  5. Pluto’s Dinosaur Romp (3 Jul 2010) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

 This cat is really nowhere; in some circles, wed call him square. 


   “The Zookeeper”
by Otis Kidwell Burger
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul 1961

Some 18,000 centuries in the future, one remaining being from the past looks after the animals and artifacts in the zoo where They keep Their collectables including Ruth, a reflective and naive woman of the long-lost past.

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


   “The Kappa Nu Nexus”
by Avram Davidson and Morton Klass
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug 1961

Spending a night at the Kappa Nu fraternity, potential freshman pledge Hank Gordon is the recipient of visits from Thaïs, Cleopatra, Nell Gwynn, and other ladies on their way from the past to their future patrons.

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


   “Green Sunrise”
by Doris Pitkin Buck, circa 1920
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1961

Alfred loves his time machine more than his wife, but when she pushes him into it and he meets Zopheeta and others from an unspecified future time, he gets almost as confused as I was while reading this story.

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


The story also appeared in this 1961 collection.   “The Other End of the Line”
by Walter Tevis
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1961

After accidentally telephoning himself two months in the future, George Bledsoe wonders what would happen if he doesn’t answer that call.

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




   “Rainbird”
by R.A. Lafferty
First publication: Galaxy, Dec 1961

At the end of this life, Higgston Rainbird, a prolific inventor of the late 18th century, invents a time machine to go back in time to tell himself how to be even more prolific.

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




   “Remember the Alamo!”
by R.R. Fehrenbach
First publication: Analog, Dec 1961

John Ord goes back to observe the Alamo and perhaps to persuade some reluctant defenders that even if the Alamo falls, it’ll nevertheless be the turning point in winning the west.

 “The Alamo, sir.” A slow, steady excitement seemed to burn in the Britainers bright eyes. “Santa Anna wont forget that name, you can be sure. Youll want to talk to the other officers now, sir? About the message we drew up for Sam Houston?” 



No Time Travel.
Move along.
“Random Quest” by John Wyndham, Consider Her Ways and Others, 1961 [parallel universes ]

 


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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)