The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1968

   Hawksbill Station
aka The Anvil of Time
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: 1968

The novelization pads out the original nine chapters of the novella and adds five new chapters with Barrett’s backstory as a revolutionary, right to the point where he’s sent back to the station.

I didn’t get much from the new chapters, and between the novel and the original story, I would recommend reading the 5-star original only.

 So Hawksbill’s machine did work, and the rumors were true, and this was where they sent the troublesome ones. Was Janet here too? He asked. No, Pleyel said. There were only men here. Twenty or thirty prisoners, managing somehow to survive. 




   Sam, of de Pluterdag
English title: Where Were You Last Pluterday? (translated from Dutch)
by Paul Van Herck
First publication: 1968

I’m often confused as to whether an author is being humorous or being artsy, but if I’m not laughing a lot and it sounds a little like Kurt Vonnegut, then I assume it’ art. That’s the case here when science fiction writer Sam is put out of a job because science fiction has been banned, all of which happens just as he falls in love with the beautiful and carefree heiress Julie Vandermasten, who asks him to meet her next Pluterday—and yes, there’s a time machine involved, too, because he needs to go back after missing the Pluterday rendezvous.

 Sam got out of his bed. “Pluterday!” he rejoiced. And today he had an appointment with Julie. He did some push-ups, meditated a short while on the word om, which he didn’t find fulfilling today, washed himself abundantly, and cursed the normal being that called Sunday a beautiful day. 




   Star Trek, the Blish Adaptations
adapted by James Blish
First time travel: Star Trek 2, Feb 1968

I bought the first four of these collections in July of 1971 in Huntsville, and the rest I snapped up as they were issued in the ’70s (plus Blish’s original novel Spock Must Die!). At that point in my life, I could recite them by heart. Here’s the list of time-travel adaptations, which does not include “The Naked Time” (in Star Trek 1) since the 71 hours of time travel was omitted in the Blish version:
  1. Tomorrow Is Yesterday (Feb 1968) in Star Trek 2
  2. The City on the Edge of Forever    (Feb 1968) in Star Trek 2
  3. Assignment: Earth (Apr 1969) in Star Trek 3
  4. All Our Yesterdays (Jul 1971) in Star Trek 4

 “Jim,” McCoy said raggedly. “You deliberately stopped me . . . Did you hear me? Do you know what you just did?”
Kirk could not reply. Spock took his arm gently. “He knows,” he said. “Soon you will know, too. And what was . . . now is again.” 

—The City on the Edge of Forever


   “The Chronicle of the 656th”
by George Byram
First publication: Playboy, Mar 1968

In a flash of light, a U.S. Army 656th Regimental Combat Team is transported from a training exercise in 1944 Tennessee to 1864 where the Northerners and Southerners debate whether they can or should try to affect the War Between the States.

 We could see the cavalry, the caissons and the old-time cannon. The men said we must of lost our way—and we’d run into a movie outfit makin’ a Civil War picture. 




   The Goblin Reservation
by Clifford D. Simak
First publication: Galaxy, Apr-Jun 1968

Professor Peter Maxwell sets out for one of the Coonskin planets, but his beam is intercepted and later returned to Earth only to find that his beam was actually duplicated, his duplicate has been killed, and his friends (some goblins, a ghost, and a time-traveling neanderthal among others) have already buried him.

I wonder whether this was the first transporter accident story (which, as we all know, eventually leads to two Will Rikers).

 You mean there were two Pete Maxwells? 


   The Masks of Time
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: May 1968

To me, this seemed like Robert Silverberg’s answer to Stranger in a Strange Land, although this time the stranger is Vornan-19, who claims to be from the future.

 There’s no economic need for us to cluster together, you know. 


   “Backtracked”
by Burt K. Filer
First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jun 1968

At forty-something, Fletcher sends his current well-honed body back ten years where his out-of-shape thirty-something mind and his thirty-something wife must now accept it without really knowing why the transfer was done.

 Maybe he should call Time Central? No, they were duty bound to give him no help at all. They’d just say that at some point ten years in the future he had gone to them with a request to be backtracked to the present—and that before making the hop his mind had been run through that clear/reset wringer of theirs. 




   “The Beast That Shouted Love”
aka “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World”
by Harlan Ellison
First publication: Galaxy, Jun 1968

For me, this nontraditional story didn’t bring any clarity to the notion of evil—but perhaps that’s what was intended, to artistically portray the incomprehensible nature of evil. Still, even without clarity, it was worth reading the award-winning story of evil being distilled and somehow sent throughout time by two future aliens: it stretched my understanding of story and helped me comprehend The Incredible Hulk 140.

 Seven dog-heads slept. 




   Yellow Submarine
by Lee Minoff, et. al.
First release: 17 Jul 1968

The psychedelic animation and pretense of a plot to save Pepperland from the Blue Meanies served as a pun-filled vehicle for a more than a dozen Beatles’ songs, but sadly the Beatles themselves had little participation in the film. On the upside, though, their journey did involve meeting themselves passing backwards through time.

 Old Fred: Now I don’t want to alarm you, mates, but the years are going backwards.
George: What’s that mean, Old Fred?
Old Fred: It means tht if we slip back through time at this rate, pretty soon we’ll all disappear up our own existence! 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “The Time of His Life” by Larry Eisenberg, F&SF, Apr 1968 [bizarre physiological aging ]

  “For a Foggy Night” by Larry Niven, Decal, Jul 1968 [paralell universes ]

  Assignment in Nowhere by Keith Laumer, Aug 1968 [parallel universes ]

  “All the Myriad Ways” by Larry Niven, Galaxy, Oct 1968 [many-worlds quantum mechanics ]

 

13 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)