The Big List of Time Travel Adventures

 1983

1983 Baronet/Playmore edition

four later editions

   Illustrated Classics Edition:
The Time Machine
aka Great Illustrated Classics: The Time Machine
adapted by Shirley Bogart (story) and Brendan Lynch (art)
First publication: 1983

If you are a misguided completist, you may find yourself drawn to reading the new Chapter 13 in Bogart’s adaptation in which the traveller finds himself in an authoritarian 22nd century populated by 1950s cape-wearing, B-movie characters. Do so if you must, but try to resist the urge to read any of the rest of Bogart’s adaptation for pre-teens, and whatever else you do, don’t let the book fall into the hands of your eight-to-twelve-year-old.

The first edition was released in 1983, possibly in multiple formats, although I’ve never spotted what I believe was the first edition published by Waldman Publishing in 1983; multiple editions, including a Chinese translation, have appeared since.

 A figure in a silver cape and tights, with gloves to match, was saying, “That’s enough Apathy-Gas, Kolar. There’s only one passenger.’ 

—from the new Chapter 13: The Golden Age of Science


   A Rebel in Time
by Harry Harrison
First publication: Feb 1983

Lt. Troy Harmon, a black army sergeant, follows Colonel McCulloch back to 1859 to prevent the colonel from giving modern-day technology to the South.

 “Then you are also telling me that down there among all that stuff—that you have built a time machine?”
“Well, I think . . .” She smiled brightly. “Why, yes, I suppose that we have.” 


   “Sweet Song of Death”
by Stephen Kimmel
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Feb 1983

Dave, an old man on the verge of dying, partakes in a time travel experiment, hoping to save his long-ago wife and young daughter from a car accident even though nobody has ever managed to change past events before.

 If our hypothesis is correct and the Corvini-Langstrum effect is a form of time travel . . . then you may be able to change the circumstances and prevent her death. 


   “As Time Goes By”
by Tanith Lee
First publication: Chrysalis 10, Apr 1983

The narrator tells of a time travel paradox where a girl of fifteen meets Day Curtis who has come from a disaster that’s still another sixteen years in the future—and she returns to the scene years later to warn him.

 Let me prompt you. You’re dead, Curtis. Or you will be. 


   “Short Timer”
by John Morressy
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apr 1983

After the Traveller’s miniature time machine makes its way back to Lilliput and the Emperor scares himself witless by a short trip forward in time, Pilibosh (a court carpenter) accidentally takes it out for a longer spin, finding H.G. Wells and Irish leprechauns along the way.

 The story does not begin with Pilibosh. In a bewildering cosmological sense it does not begin at all, nor does it end. But that is a matter best left to the philosophers. 




   Millennium
by John Varley
First publication: Jun 1983

When the snatchers leave two stun guns in the 20th century, we see the story from the viewpoints of Louise Baltimore (Mandy’s boss) and Bill Smith (head of an NTSB investigation, no relation to Woodrow “Bill” Smith so far as I know).

 The crew had to stun just about everybody. The only bright spot was the number we’d managed to shuffle through during the thinning phase. The rest would have to go through on our backs. 


   “Needle in a Timestack”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Playboy, Jun 1983

Nick Mikklesen and his wife Janine know that Janine’s ex-husband is out to break up their marriage by altering the past.

 In the old days, when time was just a linear flow from then to now, did anyone get bored with all that stability? For better or for worse it was different now. You go to bed a Dartmouth man and wake up Columbia, never the wiser. You board a plane that blows up over Cyprus, but then your insurance agent goes back and gets you to miss the flight. 


   “Sunlight”
by Paul E. Holt
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jun 1983

A reporter with the Time Warp Review is doing a story on a former mobster who doesn’t want to leave his condemned building. But what does he want? Fortunately, the reporter and his warpfotographer have a way to see what’s in the mobster’s future—or maybe it’s more than that.

 I did a lotta things in my life that I ought notta. 




   Twilight Zone: The Movie
by John Landis, et. al. (Landis, et. al, directors)
First release: 28 Jun 1983

The first of the Twilight Zone revivals collected rewrites of three of the original show’s stories with one new story, “Time Out” by John Landis, in which disgruntled bigot Bill Connor finds himself as a Jew in World War II German occupied Europe, a black man facing the clan in early 20th century America, and a man in a Vietnamese jungle during the Second Indochina War.

 Ray, help! Larry! It’s me! 




   “Homefaring”
by Robert Silverberg
First publication: Phantasia Press, Jul 1983; and in Amazing, Nov 1983

A grand experiment takes McCulloch into the mind and body of an intelligent creature—an intelligent giant lobster—of the far future.

 “It is not painful to have a McCulloch within one,” his host was explaining. “It came upon me at molting time, and that gave me a moment of difficulty, molting being what it is. But it was only a moment. After that my only concern was for the McCulloch’s comfort.” 


   “Stolen Moments”
by Brad Strickland
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sep 1983

A peculiar man repeatedly delays a small-town lawyer from taking what seems to be a most important phone call.

 It falls our task to correct untoward trends in history, eliminating unhappy catastrophe. 




   He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
created by Roger Sweet
First time travel: 12 Sep 1983

He-Man and his mighty battle cat possess fabulous super-powers in order to defend Castle Greyskull against the sometimes time-traveling Skeletor (and also to sell Mattel action figures).

 Time is delicate, He-Man; do your job swiftly. 


   “From Time to Time”
by Bruce Stanley Burdick
First publication: Analog, Oct 1983

With the universe nearing its end, Jinma Lor travels to an outpost to converse with antimatter beings whose sense of time is reversed from his own.

 It is possible that the direction in which the associated souls are traveling is always the orientation for which matter becomes more disorganized. 


   “Full Chicken Richness”
by Avram Davidson
First publication: Last Wave, Oct 1983

Every now and then, I’ll be reading a story, not really sure whether it’s meant to be sf or not, but realizing that it has a pleasant sfnal tone—and then, voila!, there’s time travel. Davidson’s story is a piece that lives on the edge between real and surreal, ostensibly telling the story of Fred Hopkins, an artist who puts old buildings on canvas and takes a late morning breakfast at La Bunne Burger.

 He read on: Ingredients: Water, Other Poultry and Poultry Parts, Dehydrated Vegetables, Chickens and Chicken Parts, seasoning . . . the list dribbled off into the usual list of chemicals. 




  Dragonriders of Pern #7
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
by Anne McCaffrey
First publication: Oct 1983

Moreta, the new weyrleader at Fort Weyr, leads the effort to save Pern from a deadly infection.

As you know, dragons can travel between times as well as places. In this story, K’lon stumble upon the chronoability of his dragon, using it to spend more time with his love A’murry; later, Moreta hatches a plan to bring more of the needed needlethorn from the future.

 But my dear boy, you’ve been taking a dreadful risking timing it. You could meet yourself coming and going— 


General Robert E. Lee from the Oct 1983 Analog   “Quarks at Appomattox”
by Charles L. Harness
First publication: Analog, Oct 1983

Colonel von Mainz travels back from the 21st century to 1865 Appomattox with weapons that can make the South win the war and thereby keep America divided, allowing Germany to win the wars of the 20th century.

This is one of the stories that I read in my dad’s Analogs at the end of my tricycle trip to Seattle.

 I left the American sector of Berlin this morning, April 8, in the year two thousand five and sixty, almost exactly two hundred years in your future. I am indeed a colonel, but not in the Prussian army. I am a colonel in the Neues Schutz-Staffeln—the NSS—an underground paramilitary organization devoted to reuniting West and East Germany. 




   The Anubis Gates
by Tim Powers
First publication: Dec 1983

A modern-day millionaire finds time-gates left by ancient Egyptian gods, which results in a lifetime of adventure for Professor Brendan Doyle as he attempts to stop various Egyptian god worshipers from changing the past. Oh yes: he’d also like to avoid his own fated death if possible.

 You know our gods are gone. They reside now in the Tuaut, the underworld, the gates of which have been held shut for eighteen centuries by some pressure I do not understand but which I am sure is linked with Christianity. Anubis is the god of that world and the gates, but has no longer any form in which to appear here. 


   “Time Bride”
by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec 1983

Shortly after turning eight, Marcy Meisner loses her childhood to an everpresent voice from the future who (so he assures Marcy’s parents) wants to marry Marcy when she grows up and has only Marcy’s best interests at heart.

 Please let me explain, Mr. Meisner. I don’t want to marry Marcy now. I want to marry her in the future, ten years from now, when she’s eighteen. That is, I believe, an acceptable age. 



No Time Travel. Move along.
  “Beyond the Dead Reef” by James Tiptree, Jr., F&SF, Jan 1983 [no definite time travel ]

  “Concerto in B Demolished” by Al Sirois, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Jan 1983 [clones ]

  “After-Images” by Malcolm Edwards, Interzone, Spring 1983 [differing time rates ]

  The Crucible of Time by John Brunner, Sep 1983 [despite title, no time travel ]
  aka The Fire Is Lit, aka “Fusing and Refusing” (excerpts)

 

22 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)