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The Time Traveler's Almanac
The Time Traveler's Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century's worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.
This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu's "Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers").
In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth's history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end. The Time Traveler's Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.
This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu's "Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers").
In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth's history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end. The Time Traveler's Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.
948 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2013
About the author
Ann VanderMeer
72 books229 followersAnn VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.
In 2009 "Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal" won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Though some of its individual contributors have been honored with Hugos, Nebula Awards, and even one Pulitzer Prize, the magazine itself had never before even been nominated for a Hugo. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2009.
Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.
In 2009 "Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal" won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Though some of its individual contributors have been honored with Hugos, Nebula Awards, and even one Pulitzer Prize, the magazine itself had never before even been nominated for a Hugo. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2009.
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January 5, 2014
As we approach the end of the year, we get another behemoth collection from the Vandermeers and Head of Zeus. After 2011′s The Weird, which deservedly won awards, and last year’s Zombies! in 2013 we get The Time Traveller’s Almanac. (Or at least we do here in the UK: US readers will have to travel a little further in time until March 2014 for their copies.)
There are many collections of time travel stories out there. This one is claimed to be the biggest, and, as I’m sure many reviews will say, this is a huge book. 800+ pages of fairly small print, with over sixty authors and over one hundred stories. There’s certainly a range here.
This size is both a blessing and a curse. As a result of its size I found that it’s a book that has to be dipped into in stages, rather than try and read in one go. To help – and as the subtitle above will tell you- there is an overall connecting theme, which I liked – that this is a book brought to us from time-travellers in the future, from 2150. To further help the reader gain a grasp of this nebulous ‘timey-wimey’ concept (to paraphrase Doctor Who), the book is divided into broad sections – Experiments, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries, Mazes and Traps, and Communiques.
The first section, Experiments, features stories in which people are experimenting with time travel or are subjects of experimentation, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries is stories where people try to protect the past, Mazes and Traps are tales where time paradoxes are prevalent, and Communiques are stories about people trying to get a message to someone/somewhen out of their own time, either in the past or the future.
There are also non-fictional interludes along the way summarising key points of travel: Top Ten Tips for Time Travellers, Time Travel in Theory and Practice, Fashion for Time Travellers, Music for Time Travellers. (Some may be pleased to note that David Bowie is not mentioned in any of those.)
It is difficult to summarise such a tome, and it would perhaps be wrong of me to try. However, like the previous Vandermeer collection, I found old personal favourites (Ray Bradbury, HG Wells, Asimov, Kuttner and Moore, Connie Willis) as well as ones totally new to me (Vandana Singh, Dean Francis Alfar, Rosaleen Love, Karen Haber, Rjurik Davidson). I found stories from authors I liked, but hadn’t read (George RR Martin, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Kim Newman, Eric Frank Russell) and stories I know others will like but left me cold (Ursula K leGuin, Adam Roberts). There are some old ones (Edward Page Mitchell’s The Clock that went Backward, 1881, regarded here as one of the earliest time-travel tales, Max Beerbohn’s Enoch Soames, 1916, EF Benson’s In the Tube 1923), and some relatively new ones (John Chu’s Thirty Seconds from Now, 2011, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Mouse Ran Down, 2012). There were some that I forgot nearly as soon as I had finished reading them, even some I disliked. But that is the nature of such an eclectic assemblage: if you don’t like one, there’ll be another along in a minute that you probably will.
With such an enormous collection, there are bound to be gaps and lapses – or, as the book’s Preface put it, ‘wormholes and rifts’, although any book claiming to be ‘The Ultimate’ something is just asking for trouble. I was surprised not to find some of the ‘old timer’ tales here, even if just to show how far such tales have developed.
Such matters usually lead to that great debate over what has been included and what’s not: why has Mike Moorcock’s Pale Rose been included rather than the much more famous short story Behold the Man? (The Vandermeers do actually explain that one themselves in their introduction to Mike’s story.) Why is there an extract from HG Wells’ short novel, The Time Machine, rather than his earlier short story, The Chronic Argonauts (which inspired him to write The Time Machine)? Why no Poul Anderson (Time Patrol), no H Beam Piper (Paratime stories), no Jack Finney (Time and Time Again) or L. Sprague de Camp (Lest Darkness Fall)?*
This highlights an issue with this and other such collections, as to whether as an editor you try and cover the range and show the evolution of such tales by giving stories that are (ironically) endemic of their time, or go for what you see as ‘the best’, bearing in mind that such statements are qualitative anyway. Here the Vandermeers seem to have gone for the latter, even when some may be disappointed by the choices made, and other authors have the privilege of being included more than once – Kage Baker twice, Gene Wolfe twice (though this one has good reason, being connected tales), for example, although the quality of the stories is more good than bad. Such discussions are the basis of many an Internet forum/social media site.
One minor quibble, but the sort of thing I pick up on quickly, and others may be put off by it – I was a little dismayed to find that the first thing read in the Vandermeer’s Preface was a quote, with the person’s name spelt wrong – Stephen Hawking, not Hawkings! – which made me worry that the rest of the book would be as sloppy – it’s easy to mess up in a book of this size. Thankfully, after that things calmed down a little.
Such points may make you feel that this collection is a disappointment. It’s really not, but its choices may not be to everyone’s taste. There’s enough here to generate debate, a big enough range to give the reader an idea of just how big the topic is, and enough relative quality to offset the dingbats. This is how any collection should be.
For me, if I’m brutally honest, I liked this book, more than Zombies! (which was itself very good), although it must be said not as much as The Weird. It is, for all my quibbles, a very good collection and I would go so far as to say that it is an essential read. As an accumulation of time travel tales, it is hard to beat. Recommended.
*(These are the first I thought of. I’m sure that there will be others that can be mentioned.)
There are many collections of time travel stories out there. This one is claimed to be the biggest, and, as I’m sure many reviews will say, this is a huge book. 800+ pages of fairly small print, with over sixty authors and over one hundred stories. There’s certainly a range here.
This size is both a blessing and a curse. As a result of its size I found that it’s a book that has to be dipped into in stages, rather than try and read in one go. To help – and as the subtitle above will tell you- there is an overall connecting theme, which I liked – that this is a book brought to us from time-travellers in the future, from 2150. To further help the reader gain a grasp of this nebulous ‘timey-wimey’ concept (to paraphrase Doctor Who), the book is divided into broad sections – Experiments, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries, Mazes and Traps, and Communiques.
The first section, Experiments, features stories in which people are experimenting with time travel or are subjects of experimentation, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries is stories where people try to protect the past, Mazes and Traps are tales where time paradoxes are prevalent, and Communiques are stories about people trying to get a message to someone/somewhen out of their own time, either in the past or the future.
There are also non-fictional interludes along the way summarising key points of travel: Top Ten Tips for Time Travellers, Time Travel in Theory and Practice, Fashion for Time Travellers, Music for Time Travellers. (Some may be pleased to note that David Bowie is not mentioned in any of those.)
It is difficult to summarise such a tome, and it would perhaps be wrong of me to try. However, like the previous Vandermeer collection, I found old personal favourites (Ray Bradbury, HG Wells, Asimov, Kuttner and Moore, Connie Willis) as well as ones totally new to me (Vandana Singh, Dean Francis Alfar, Rosaleen Love, Karen Haber, Rjurik Davidson). I found stories from authors I liked, but hadn’t read (George RR Martin, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Kim Newman, Eric Frank Russell) and stories I know others will like but left me cold (Ursula K leGuin, Adam Roberts). There are some old ones (Edward Page Mitchell’s The Clock that went Backward, 1881, regarded here as one of the earliest time-travel tales, Max Beerbohn’s Enoch Soames, 1916, EF Benson’s In the Tube 1923), and some relatively new ones (John Chu’s Thirty Seconds from Now, 2011, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Mouse Ran Down, 2012). There were some that I forgot nearly as soon as I had finished reading them, even some I disliked. But that is the nature of such an eclectic assemblage: if you don’t like one, there’ll be another along in a minute that you probably will.
With such an enormous collection, there are bound to be gaps and lapses – or, as the book’s Preface put it, ‘wormholes and rifts’, although any book claiming to be ‘The Ultimate’ something is just asking for trouble. I was surprised not to find some of the ‘old timer’ tales here, even if just to show how far such tales have developed.
Such matters usually lead to that great debate over what has been included and what’s not: why has Mike Moorcock’s Pale Rose been included rather than the much more famous short story Behold the Man? (The Vandermeers do actually explain that one themselves in their introduction to Mike’s story.) Why is there an extract from HG Wells’ short novel, The Time Machine, rather than his earlier short story, The Chronic Argonauts (which inspired him to write The Time Machine)? Why no Poul Anderson (Time Patrol), no H Beam Piper (Paratime stories), no Jack Finney (Time and Time Again) or L. Sprague de Camp (Lest Darkness Fall)?*
This highlights an issue with this and other such collections, as to whether as an editor you try and cover the range and show the evolution of such tales by giving stories that are (ironically) endemic of their time, or go for what you see as ‘the best’, bearing in mind that such statements are qualitative anyway. Here the Vandermeers seem to have gone for the latter, even when some may be disappointed by the choices made, and other authors have the privilege of being included more than once – Kage Baker twice, Gene Wolfe twice (though this one has good reason, being connected tales), for example, although the quality of the stories is more good than bad. Such discussions are the basis of many an Internet forum/social media site.
One minor quibble, but the sort of thing I pick up on quickly, and others may be put off by it – I was a little dismayed to find that the first thing read in the Vandermeer’s Preface was a quote, with the person’s name spelt wrong – Stephen Hawking, not Hawkings! – which made me worry that the rest of the book would be as sloppy – it’s easy to mess up in a book of this size. Thankfully, after that things calmed down a little.
Such points may make you feel that this collection is a disappointment. It’s really not, but its choices may not be to everyone’s taste. There’s enough here to generate debate, a big enough range to give the reader an idea of just how big the topic is, and enough relative quality to offset the dingbats. This is how any collection should be.
For me, if I’m brutally honest, I liked this book, more than Zombies! (which was itself very good), although it must be said not as much as The Weird. It is, for all my quibbles, a very good collection and I would go so far as to say that it is an essential read. As an accumulation of time travel tales, it is hard to beat. Recommended.
*(These are the first I thought of. I’m sure that there will be others that can be mentioned.)
Want to read
November 15, 2015I'm doing a group read with a few time travel fans. One story each Thursday, starting September 3. Hop in any time: http://www.timothycward.com/the-time-... or follow using #TimeTravelThursday
Sept. 3 – Richard Matheson/ Death Ship (review)
4/5 stars for a terrifying hook that only gets better in the last lines.
Sept. 10 - Geoffrey A. Landis/ Ripples in the Dirac Sea (review)
4/5 stars for a great use of time travel to illustrate the energy and importance of every breath we get.
Sept. 24 – Ursula K. Le Guin/ Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
3/5 for info dump start that took way too long before a part that was really touching. Review
Oct. 1 – Alice Sola Kim/ Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters – 71
4/5 for creative heartbreaking effects of sleep time travel as it goes out of control. Review
Oct. 15 – Michael Moorcock/ Pale Roses – 81
Oct. 22 – William Gibson/ The Gernsback Continuum – 107
Oct. 29 – C.J. Cherryh/ The Threads of Time – 115
Nov. 5 – Michael Swanwick/ Triceratops – 120
Nov. 12 Steve Bein/ The Most Important Thing in the World"
5/5 - ...This was a quick, fun read which used time travel in a way I haven’t seen before. It also examined two different marriages and how deception can catch up with you, leaving the reader with sympathy for their lives and a desire to right our own before we make the same mistake. (Full Review
Sept. 3 – Richard Matheson/ Death Ship (review)
4/5 stars for a terrifying hook that only gets better in the last lines.
Sept. 10 - Geoffrey A. Landis/ Ripples in the Dirac Sea (review)
4/5 stars for a great use of time travel to illustrate the energy and importance of every breath we get.
Sept. 24 – Ursula K. Le Guin/ Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
3/5 for info dump start that took way too long before a part that was really touching. Review
Oct. 1 – Alice Sola Kim/ Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters – 71
4/5 for creative heartbreaking effects of sleep time travel as it goes out of control. Review
Oct. 15 – Michael Moorcock/ Pale Roses – 81
Oct. 22 – William Gibson/ The Gernsback Continuum – 107
Oct. 29 – C.J. Cherryh/ The Threads of Time – 115
Nov. 5 – Michael Swanwick/ Triceratops – 120
Nov. 12 Steve Bein/ The Most Important Thing in the World"
5/5 - ...This was a quick, fun read which used time travel in a way I haven’t seen before. It also examined two different marriages and how deception can catch up with you, leaving the reader with sympathy for their lives and a desire to right our own before we make the same mistake. (Full Review
Currently reading
March 23, 2016Reviews coming every Thursday as part of The Time Traveler's Almanac group read and will be posted first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Follow along with #TimeTravelThursday
Death Ship by Richard Matheson - 3.5/5 Rating
Great start to the anthology! (My Review)
Ripples in A Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis - 4/5 Rating
This is how you science a time-travel story! (My Review)
Needle in A Timestack by Robert Silverberg - 3/5 Rating
The butterfly effect! (My Review)
Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin - 1.5/5 Rating
Ugh... (My Review)
Hwangs' Billion Brilliant Daughter by Alice Sola Kim - 3/5 Rating
Intriguing idea for time-travel (MyReview)
How the Future Got Better by Eric Schaller - 4/5 Rating
The Seinfeld of short stories (My Review)
Pale Roses by Michael Moorcock - 4/5 Rating
Extremely strange, yet, fascinating; stretched my imagination (My Review)
The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson - 2.5/5 Rating
Don’t judge a story by its opening paragraph (My Review)
The Threads of Time by C.J. Cherryh - 3.5/5 Rating
Here’s a paradox: straight-forward and confusing (My Review
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick - 3.5/5 Rating
Why did the triceratops cross the road? (My Review)
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein - 4/5 Rating
The cause and effect of time (My Review)
Himself in Anachron by Cordwainer Smith - 3/5
Slightly confusing (My Review
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - 4/5
I would absolutely go check out the novel (My Review)
Young Zaphod Plays it Safe by Douglas Adams - 3.5/5
Review coming 12/03 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Time Travel in Theory and Practice by Stan Love
Review coming 12/10 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
The Final Days by David Langford - 3/5
Review coming 1/28 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Fire Watch by Connie Willis - 3.5/5
Review coming 02/04 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Noble Mold by Kage Baker - 4/5
Review coming 02/11 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Under Seige by George R.R. Martin - 3.5/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Where of When by Steven Utley - 3/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages - 4/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
On the Watchtower at Plataea by Garry Kilworth - 4/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Alexi and Graham Bell by Rosalyn Love - 3.5/5
Review coming 03/27and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
A Night of the Barbary Coast by Kage Baker - 3/5
Review coming 03/24 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
This Tragic Glass by Elizabeth Bear
Review coming 03/31 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Follow along with #TimeTravelThursday
Death Ship by Richard Matheson - 3.5/5 Rating
Great start to the anthology! (My Review)
Ripples in A Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis - 4/5 Rating
This is how you science a time-travel story! (My Review)
Needle in A Timestack by Robert Silverberg - 3/5 Rating
The butterfly effect! (My Review)
Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin - 1.5/5 Rating
Ugh... (My Review)
Hwangs' Billion Brilliant Daughter by Alice Sola Kim - 3/5 Rating
Intriguing idea for time-travel (MyReview)
How the Future Got Better by Eric Schaller - 4/5 Rating
The Seinfeld of short stories (My Review)
Pale Roses by Michael Moorcock - 4/5 Rating
Extremely strange, yet, fascinating; stretched my imagination (My Review)
The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson - 2.5/5 Rating
Don’t judge a story by its opening paragraph (My Review)
The Threads of Time by C.J. Cherryh - 3.5/5 Rating
Here’s a paradox: straight-forward and confusing (My Review
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick - 3.5/5 Rating
Why did the triceratops cross the road? (My Review)
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein - 4/5 Rating
The cause and effect of time (My Review)
Himself in Anachron by Cordwainer Smith - 3/5
Slightly confusing (My Review
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - 4/5
I would absolutely go check out the novel (My Review)
Young Zaphod Plays it Safe by Douglas Adams - 3.5/5
Review coming 12/03 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Time Travel in Theory and Practice by Stan Love
Review coming 12/10 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
The Final Days by David Langford - 3/5
Review coming 1/28 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Fire Watch by Connie Willis - 3.5/5
Review coming 02/04 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Noble Mold by Kage Baker - 4/5
Review coming 02/11 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Under Seige by George R.R. Martin - 3.5/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Where of When by Steven Utley - 3/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages - 4/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
On the Watchtower at Plataea by Garry Kilworth - 4/5
Review coming and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
Alexi and Graham Bell by Rosalyn Love - 3.5/5
Review coming 03/27and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
A Night of the Barbary Coast by Kage Baker - 3/5
Review coming 03/24 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
This Tragic Glass by Elizabeth Bear
Review coming 03/31 and will post first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape
October 29, 2018
Death Ship (Richard Matheson) **
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (Geoffrey A. Landis) **
Needle in a Timestack (Robert Silverberg) ****
Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea [Hainish] (Ursula K. Le Guin) ****
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters (Alice Sola Kim) *
How the Future Got Better (Eric Schaller) ***
Pale Roses [Tales from the End of Time] (Michael Moorcock) ****
The Gernsback Continuum (William Gibson) ***
The Threads of Time (C. J. Cherryh) **
Triceratops Summer (Michael Swanwick) ***
The Most Important Thing in the World (Steve Bein) ****
Himself in Anachron [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (Cordwainer Smith) ***
The Time Machine (excerpt) [H. G. Wells' Time Machine Universe] (H. G. Wells) **
Young Zaphod Plays It Safe [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] (Douglas Adams) **
A Sound of Thunder (Ray Bradbury) ***
Vintage Season (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) ****
Thirty Seconds from Now (John Chu) ****
Forty, Counting Down [Justin Kloster] (Harry Turtledove) ****
The Final Days (David Langford) ****
Fire Watch [Time Travel] (Connie Willis) **
Noble Mold [The Company Short Fiction] (Kage Baker) ****
Under Siege (George R. R. Martin) ***
Where or When (Steven Utley) ***
Time Gypsy (Ellen Klages) **
On the Watchtower at Plataea (Garry Kilworth) **
Alexia and Graham Bell (Rosaleen Love) ***
A Night on the Barbary Coast [The Company Short Fiction] (Kage Baker) **
This Tragic Glass (Elizabeth Bear) **
The Gulf of the Years (Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud) **
Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties (Max Beerbohm) ****
The Clock That Went Backward (Edward Page Mitchell) *
Yesterday Was Monday (Theodore Sturgeon) **
Is There Anybody There? (Kim Newman) ****
Fish Night (Joe R. Lansdale) *
The Lost Pilgrim (Gene Wolfe) *
Palindromic (Peter Crowther) **
Augusta Prima (Karin Tidbeck) ***
Life Trap (Barrington J. Bayley) ***
Lost Continent (Greg Egan) **
The Mouse Ran Down (Adrian Tchaikovsky) ***
The Great Clock (Langdon Jones) **
Traveller's Rest (David I. Masson) ***
Delhi (Vandana Singh) *
Come-From-Aways (Tony Pi) **
Terminós (Dean Francis Alfar) **
The Weed of Time (Norman Spinrad) ***
The Waitabits (Eric Frank Russell) ***
What If (Isaac Asimov) ***
As Time Goes By (Tanith Lee) ***
At Dorado (Geoffrey A. Landis) **
3 RMS, Good View (Karen Haber) **
Twenty-One, Counting Up [Justin Kloster] (Harry Turtledove) **
Loob [Goster County] (Bob Leman) *
The House That Made the Sixteen Loops of Time (Tamsyn Muir) *
Against the Lafayette Escadrille (Gene Wolfe) **
Swing Time (Carrie Vaughn) **
The Mask of the Rex [Files of the Time Rangers] (Richard Bowes) *
Message in a Bottle (Nalo Hopkinson) **
The Time Telephone (Adam Roberts) **
Red Letter Day (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) ***
Domine (Rjurik Davidson) **
In the Tube (E. F. Benson) **
Bad Timing (Molly Brown) ***
If Ever I Should Leave You (Pamela Sargent) ***
Palimpsest (Charles Stross) **
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (Geoffrey A. Landis) **
Needle in a Timestack (Robert Silverberg) ****
Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea [Hainish] (Ursula K. Le Guin) ****
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters (Alice Sola Kim) *
How the Future Got Better (Eric Schaller) ***
Pale Roses [Tales from the End of Time] (Michael Moorcock) ****
The Gernsback Continuum (William Gibson) ***
The Threads of Time (C. J. Cherryh) **
Triceratops Summer (Michael Swanwick) ***
The Most Important Thing in the World (Steve Bein) ****
Himself in Anachron [The Instrumentality of Mankind] (Cordwainer Smith) ***
The Time Machine (excerpt) [H. G. Wells' Time Machine Universe] (H. G. Wells) **
Young Zaphod Plays It Safe [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] (Douglas Adams) **
A Sound of Thunder (Ray Bradbury) ***
Vintage Season (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) ****
Thirty Seconds from Now (John Chu) ****
Forty, Counting Down [Justin Kloster] (Harry Turtledove) ****
The Final Days (David Langford) ****
Fire Watch [Time Travel] (Connie Willis) **
Noble Mold [The Company Short Fiction] (Kage Baker) ****
Under Siege (George R. R. Martin) ***
Where or When (Steven Utley) ***
Time Gypsy (Ellen Klages) **
On the Watchtower at Plataea (Garry Kilworth) **
Alexia and Graham Bell (Rosaleen Love) ***
A Night on the Barbary Coast [The Company Short Fiction] (Kage Baker) **
This Tragic Glass (Elizabeth Bear) **
The Gulf of the Years (Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud) **
Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties (Max Beerbohm) ****
The Clock That Went Backward (Edward Page Mitchell) *
Yesterday Was Monday (Theodore Sturgeon) **
Is There Anybody There? (Kim Newman) ****
Fish Night (Joe R. Lansdale) *
The Lost Pilgrim (Gene Wolfe) *
Palindromic (Peter Crowther) **
Augusta Prima (Karin Tidbeck) ***
Life Trap (Barrington J. Bayley) ***
Lost Continent (Greg Egan) **
The Mouse Ran Down (Adrian Tchaikovsky) ***
The Great Clock (Langdon Jones) **
Traveller's Rest (David I. Masson) ***
Delhi (Vandana Singh) *
Come-From-Aways (Tony Pi) **
Terminós (Dean Francis Alfar) **
The Weed of Time (Norman Spinrad) ***
The Waitabits (Eric Frank Russell) ***
What If (Isaac Asimov) ***
As Time Goes By (Tanith Lee) ***
At Dorado (Geoffrey A. Landis) **
3 RMS, Good View (Karen Haber) **
Twenty-One, Counting Up [Justin Kloster] (Harry Turtledove) **
Loob [Goster County] (Bob Leman) *
The House That Made the Sixteen Loops of Time (Tamsyn Muir) *
Against the Lafayette Escadrille (Gene Wolfe) **
Swing Time (Carrie Vaughn) **
The Mask of the Rex [Files of the Time Rangers] (Richard Bowes) *
Message in a Bottle (Nalo Hopkinson) **
The Time Telephone (Adam Roberts) **
Red Letter Day (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) ***
Domine (Rjurik Davidson) **
In the Tube (E. F. Benson) **
Bad Timing (Molly Brown) ***
If Ever I Should Leave You (Pamela Sargent) ***
Palimpsest (Charles Stross) **
August 21, 2021
The main idea could have worked, maybe... If everything wasn't so over-explained.
The romantic sub-plot was very cringe, which is to be expected considering there isn't enough time to develop characters in a short story. And overall, the story didn't deserve the amount of dramatization that was given to it.
The romantic sub-plot was very cringe, which is to be expected considering there isn't enough time to develop characters in a short story. And overall, the story didn't deserve the amount of dramatization that was given to it.
November 7, 2014
OK..you’re not going to believe this.
It was only my second outing but I skipped down to the basement and flipped the relevant gears into action, sending the Time Machine, with myself on board, back in time just a couple of years.
The Vandermeers were discussing the possible topics for their next anthology, when I landed right smack bang in the middle of their dining table, cutlery and food flying everywhere.
Of course it had the desired effect that I was seeking: it totally disrupted their current thoughts and ideas, and THE TIME TRAVELLER’S ALMANAC never saw the light of day.
I returned to 2014 and breathed a great sigh of relief.
That abomination of 65 time travel tales, 943 pages of DESPERATELY SEEKING A SOLITARY DECENT STORY, would never be put together.
OK I’m going over the top...there were perhaps two or three average stories. But out of 65 that’s a pretty poor return!
As an ardent Time Travel story follower I was so looking forward to this lovely large hardbacked edition of my favourite genre.
What a disappointment!
Not one of these stories even remotely touches the quality and class of Stephen King’s 11.22.63 or Jack Finney’s Time And Again. Compared to these two (admittedly full blown novels) this poor collection of unsatisfactory sad sacks leaves you frustrated and a feeling of being somewhat cheated. Pardon the pun, but this lot should have been TIMED OUT many moons ago.
OK you ask....if I truly went back in time and prevented this publication, how comes that beautiful great hardback is still available to buy right now?
My answer is a little weak I’m afraid.
I’m still working on building my Time Machine
It was only my second outing but I skipped down to the basement and flipped the relevant gears into action, sending the Time Machine, with myself on board, back in time just a couple of years.
The Vandermeers were discussing the possible topics for their next anthology, when I landed right smack bang in the middle of their dining table, cutlery and food flying everywhere.
Of course it had the desired effect that I was seeking: it totally disrupted their current thoughts and ideas, and THE TIME TRAVELLER’S ALMANAC never saw the light of day.
I returned to 2014 and breathed a great sigh of relief.
That abomination of 65 time travel tales, 943 pages of DESPERATELY SEEKING A SOLITARY DECENT STORY, would never be put together.
OK I’m going over the top...there were perhaps two or three average stories. But out of 65 that’s a pretty poor return!
As an ardent Time Travel story follower I was so looking forward to this lovely large hardbacked edition of my favourite genre.
What a disappointment!
Not one of these stories even remotely touches the quality and class of Stephen King’s 11.22.63 or Jack Finney’s Time And Again. Compared to these two (admittedly full blown novels) this poor collection of unsatisfactory sad sacks leaves you frustrated and a feeling of being somewhat cheated. Pardon the pun, but this lot should have been TIMED OUT many moons ago.
OK you ask....if I truly went back in time and prevented this publication, how comes that beautiful great hardback is still available to buy right now?
My answer is a little weak I’m afraid.
I’m still working on building my Time Machine
August 21, 2021
WTF, man!
September 13, 2019
Wow... what a mammoth achievement! The Time Traveler's Almanac: nine hundred pages of time-travel stories, give or take, in a single volume, all wrapped in what I must say is the perfect title and cover scheme. Its back cover calls this book "the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled," a claim which may well be true. Even so, this timeline's edition of Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer's anthology does have some significant holes.
For example: where's Bob? Despite having written "All You Zombies," "By His Bootstraps" and (in 1939, his first published story!) "Life-Line," Robert A. Heinlein rates barely a mention here. Larry Niven's another writer whose influential time-travel stories are notably absent. But leaving aside its lacunae, which I suspect have more to do with "the permissions maze" (Acknowledgements, p.944) than anything else, the VanderMeers have assembled a most impressive collection of time-travel tales—and arranged them well, to boot. I found the flow from story to story to be, for the most part, smooth and satisfying, with occasional sharp resonances—say, two stories in a row featuring time-crossed lovers, or with houses unmoored in time, whose juxtaposition enhances both.
I took a very long time to read this anthology, since I don't have a time machine of my own, and then more time to write this review. After all, The Time Traveler's Almanac's Table of Contents alone is longer than most of my own ramblings. (The version I used here is adapted from the ISFDb, by the way, originally retrieved on the palindromic date 9/1/19.) And so, in strict chronological order, here are my reactions...
• Preface, by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
The VanderMeers introduce their anthology with a breezy article outlining the structure and some of the works included. They were also unable to resist hyperbole {"never before has there been an anthology that demonstrated the full depth and breadth of the time travel story" (p.vii)} and a few sly comments from the future {regarding "the Preservationist Guild" from 2150 ("and beyond"), for example}. Entertaining but not essential reading, although I did find this particularly telling:
• Introduction, by Rian Johnson
You're more likely these days to recognize Johnson's name from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), but he does have time-travel cred as well, having directed the intricate and violent film Looper in 2012. His take on this book agrees with my own:
• "Top Ten Tips for Time Travelers," by Charles Yu
Yu, of course, wrote the introspective slipstream time-travel novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. His essay here eases us into the "Experiments" section of The Time Traveler's Almanac, but I must warn you that it contains more questions than practical advice.
• "Death Ship" (1953), by Richard Matheson
Matheson is the author of the heartbreaking time-travel novel Bid Time Return, which in turn became the near-perfect film (well, if you ignore the last five minutes) Somewhere in Time (1980)—but, in another odd omission, you won't find that relevant fact in his brief biography here. "Death Ship" also seems like more of a horror story than an experiment, and a relatively weak start to the fiction in this Almanac: the manly crew of a space ship encounter their own grisly future and flail around desperately trying to avoid it.
• "Ripples in the Dirac Sea" (1988), by Geoffrey A. Landis
A poignant tale of borrowed time, couched in rigorously science-fictional terms—it fits much better into the category of "Experiments" than its predecessor, although the same feeling of inevitability looms over both stories.
• "Needle in a Timestack" (1983), by Robert Silverberg
A classic of the genre that did make it into the book—retrograde attitudes, plot holes and all. Mikkelsen and Hambleton contend through time for the affections of Janine, whose opinion on the matter is almost entirely irrelevant. The dates, settings and attitudes of this story are another kind of time-travel too, now.
• "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (1994), by Ursula K. Le Guin
Full of Le Guin's characteristic deep wisdom, although there's not much time travel in this one—Hideo moves mostly from past to future (though not always at one second-per-second). And then returns.
• "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" (2010), by Alice Sola Kim
Kim was the first author in The Time Traveler's Almanac who was entirely new to me. Short and inexorable: Hwang can't keep from skipping forward in time when he sleeps—more than usual, that is.
• "How the Future Got Better" (2010), by Eric Schaller
A short and punchy absurdity—and this is why sitcom families don't keep the TV on.
• "Pale Roses" (1974), by Michael Moorcock
• "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981), by William Gibson
I've read this one many times, in many different places—and also seen "Tomorrow Calling," the on-screen adaptation from 1993, which is very good—and this early story by Gibson always seems to pack the same smoothly streamlined wallop.
• "The Threads of Time" (2004), by C.J. Cherryh
Can be tangled. This one was new to me too—I haven't read a lot of Cherryh in general. Maybe that needs to change; though... this disquieting story was very effective.
• "Triceratops Summer" (2005), by Michael Swanwick
Seizing the moment sounds like a good idea... especially if that moment includes dinosaurs.
• "The Most Important Thing in the World" (2011), by Steve Bein
• "Himself in Anachron" (1993), by Cordwainer Smith
Beautiful and lost—typical Cordwainer Smith, in other words—with an answer to the coldest of equations built right in. Paul A. Linebarger died in 1966, but this story was published posthumously, as part of a career restrospective of his Instrumentality of Mankind stories—hence the anachronistic publication date.
• The Time Machine (excerpt), by H.G. Wells
The last experiment begins with just a taste—only three pages!—of the first time-travel story to capture the popular imagination. You'll want to read the rest sometime, if you haven't already.
• "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" (1986), by Douglas Adams
Time travel is, of course, perfectly safe—nothing to worry about. This light-hearted tale stands outside the primary continuity of Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series, and is only peripherally about time travel to boot, but it was still fun to encounter here.
• "Time Travel in Theory and Practice" (2013), by Stan Love
A serious essay that even mentions Robert A. Heinlein by name while discussing possible methods of time travel (possible in the sense of "not ruled out by the physics we know," that is).
• "A Sound of Thunder" (1952), by Ray Bradbury
Don't step off the path. Another classic, read many times—and a perfect illustration of the "butterfly effect," though written years before the phrase was coined.
• "Vintage Season" (1946), by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
It's only natural to want front-row seats when you know something big is going to happen. This devastating tale of time-traveling tourists is my all-time favorite in the subgenre. It's even received a screen adaptation, although not a very good one, I'm afraid.
• "Thirty Seconds from Now" (2011), by John Chu
A poignant tale about being able to see into the futures—plural intended.
• "Forty, Counting Down" (1999), by Harry Turtledove
The first of two interlocking Turtledove tales that appear in this anthology, this is the long working-out of a plot by one Justin Kloster to get back his lost girlfriend, in a totally not-creepy way, by means of time travel. Not that it's implausible—of course a tech bro who could go back to bag the one who got away would do so—but even the first time through I felt as if I'd read this one before.
• "The Final Days" (1981), by David Langford
Under the bright lights... what drives someone to act for posterity instead of short-term gain?
• "Fire Watch" (1982), by Connie Willis
This novelette introduced Willis' time-traveling future historians from Oxford, a milieu she later revisited in several other works, culminating (at least so far) with the Hugo-award-winning diptych Blackout/All Clear. Bartholomew goes back to the Blitz, to help save St. Paul's—a task made more bittersweet by his memories of the cathedral's eventual destruction in the 21st Century.
• "Noble Mold" (1997), by Kage Baker
I really need to read more Baker—this one's the light-hearted beginning to her "Company" series, written in a classic science-fictional vein, about two bickering time agents contending with the "mortals."
• "Under Siege" (1985), by George R.R. Martin
A sharp reminder that Martin did not begin his career by writing cinderblock-sized fantasy novels... Like John Varley's "Air Raid" (hey, where's Varley in all this, anyway?), "Under Siege" features future mutants desperately trying to head off their apocalypse, even if it means self-erasure. This one also trots out (heh) my favorite "story about a horse," which I first encountered in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, and which apparently originates with Herodotus, but I think I like the drunken precision of Martin's version even more now:
• "Where or When" (1991), by Steven Utley
• "Time Gypsy" (1998), by Ellen Klages
A really touching story about time travel and true love, and what still happens to women who go into physics, goddammit. Read twice now, both times avec beaucoup plaisir.
• "On the Watchtower at Plataea" (1988), by Garry Kilworth
Stalemate in 429 BCE.
• "Alexia and Graham Bell" (1987), by Rosaleen Love
Hee hee—what if the telephone really eliminated the distance between parties?
• "A Night on the Barbary Coast" (2003), by Kage Baker, again
• "This Tragic Glass" (2004), by Elizabeth Bear
In a world where time travel can and do rescue artists who died too young—shades of "Mozart in Mirrorshades"—and Professor John Keats holds the purse strings for the Temporal Studies department at the University of Nevada, a young researcher using textual-analysis software (which is, by the way, a real thing) makes an interesting accidental discovery about Christopher Marlowe. Also perhaps compare and contrast this story with Jeffrey Eugenides' novel Middlesex. Make sure to read Bear's Author's Note at the end too, though—her characters' obsession with gender essentialism was never meant to be prescriptive.
• "The Gulf of the Years" (2010), by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
Closing an open loop, in "penurious times" (p.422)—this one's all the more vivid for being so brief.
• "Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties" (1916), by Max Beerbohm
More than a century old now, the antiquated language of this piece conceals a thoroughly modern egotism: these days, Enoch would be a vlogger or some other kind of would-be "influencer."
(Here ends the part Goodreads has room for; if I'm able, I'll be posting the rest as a Comment.)
For example: where's Bob? Despite having written "All You Zombies," "By His Bootstraps" and (in 1939, his first published story!) "Life-Line," Robert A. Heinlein rates barely a mention here. Larry Niven's another writer whose influential time-travel stories are notably absent. But leaving aside its lacunae, which I suspect have more to do with "the permissions maze" (Acknowledgements, p.944) than anything else, the VanderMeers have assembled a most impressive collection of time-travel tales—and arranged them well, to boot. I found the flow from story to story to be, for the most part, smooth and satisfying, with occasional sharp resonances—say, two stories in a row featuring time-crossed lovers, or with houses unmoored in time, whose juxtaposition enhances both.
I took a very long time to read this anthology, since I don't have a time machine of my own, and then more time to write this review. After all, The Time Traveler's Almanac's Table of Contents alone is longer than most of my own ramblings. (The version I used here is adapted from the ISFDb, by the way, originally retrieved on the palindromic date 9/1/19.) And so, in strict chronological order, here are my reactions...
• Preface, by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
The VanderMeers introduce their anthology with a breezy article outlining the structure and some of the works included. They were also unable to resist hyperbole {"never before has there been an anthology that demonstrated the full depth and breadth of the time travel story" (p.vii)} and a few sly comments from the future {regarding "the Preservationist Guild" from 2150 ("and beyond"), for example}. Entertaining but not essential reading, although I did find this particularly telling:
Because the truth is, fiction is one of the most effective time travel machines in the universe and always has been.
—p.ix
• Introduction, by Rian Johnson
You're more likely these days to recognize Johnson's name from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), but he does have time-travel cred as well, having directed the intricate and violent film Looper in 2012. His take on this book agrees with my own:
Ultimately, though, there is only one base ingredient that everything in this book absolutely has in common: they are all damn good stories by damn good storytellers.
—p.xii
• "Top Ten Tips for Time Travelers," by Charles Yu
Yu, of course, wrote the introspective slipstream time-travel novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. His essay here eases us into the "Experiments" section of The Time Traveler's Almanac, but I must warn you that it contains more questions than practical advice.
• "Death Ship" (1953), by Richard Matheson
Matheson is the author of the heartbreaking time-travel novel Bid Time Return, which in turn became the near-perfect film (well, if you ignore the last five minutes) Somewhere in Time (1980)—but, in another odd omission, you won't find that relevant fact in his brief biography here. "Death Ship" also seems like more of a horror story than an experiment, and a relatively weak start to the fiction in this Almanac: the manly crew of a space ship encounter their own grisly future and flail around desperately trying to avoid it.
• "Ripples in the Dirac Sea" (1988), by Geoffrey A. Landis
A poignant tale of borrowed time, couched in rigorously science-fictional terms—it fits much better into the category of "Experiments" than its predecessor, although the same feeling of inevitability looms over both stories.
• "Needle in a Timestack" (1983), by Robert Silverberg
A classic of the genre that did make it into the book—retrograde attitudes, plot holes and all. Mikkelsen and Hambleton contend through time for the affections of Janine, whose opinion on the matter is almost entirely irrelevant. The dates, settings and attitudes of this story are another kind of time-travel too, now.
• "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (1994), by Ursula K. Le Guin
Full of Le Guin's characteristic deep wisdom, although there's not much time travel in this one—Hideo moves mostly from past to future (though not always at one second-per-second). And then returns.
"But men and women, women and men, together—love—It is always very strange. Nothing you know ever prepares you. Ever."
—p.49
• "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" (2010), by Alice Sola Kim
Kim was the first author in The Time Traveler's Almanac who was entirely new to me. Short and inexorable: Hwang can't keep from skipping forward in time when he sleeps—more than usual, that is.
• "How the Future Got Better" (2010), by Eric Schaller
A short and punchy absurdity—and this is why sitcom families don't keep the TV on.
• "Pale Roses" (1974), by Michael Moorcock
"Oh, how I pine for the pain of the past!"In just one sentence, Werther's lament perfectly sums up this ornate and dissolute novelette. The universe does not allow certainty about the future to pollute the past.
—p.85
• "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981), by William Gibson
I've read this one many times, in many different places—and also seen "Tomorrow Calling," the on-screen adaptation from 1993, which is very good—and this early story by Gibson always seems to pack the same smoothly streamlined wallop.
• "The Threads of Time" (2004), by C.J. Cherryh
Can be tangled. This one was new to me too—I haven't read a lot of Cherryh in general. Maybe that needs to change; though... this disquieting story was very effective.
• "Triceratops Summer" (2005), by Michael Swanwick
Seizing the moment sounds like a good idea... especially if that moment includes dinosaurs.
• "The Most Important Thing in the World" (2011), by Steve Bein
He still can't say it felt good, but it felt right.
—p.146
• "Himself in Anachron" (1993), by Cordwainer Smith
Beautiful and lost—typical Cordwainer Smith, in other words—with an answer to the coldest of equations built right in. Paul A. Linebarger died in 1966, but this story was published posthumously, as part of a career restrospective of his Instrumentality of Mankind stories—hence the anachronistic publication date.
• The Time Machine (excerpt), by H.G. Wells
The last experiment begins with just a taste—only three pages!—of the first time-travel story to capture the popular imagination. You'll want to read the rest sometime, if you haven't already.
• "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" (1986), by Douglas Adams
Time travel is, of course, perfectly safe—nothing to worry about. This light-hearted tale stands outside the primary continuity of Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series, and is only peripherally about time travel to boot, but it was still fun to encounter here.
• "Time Travel in Theory and Practice" (2013), by Stan Love
A serious essay that even mentions Robert A. Heinlein by name while discussing possible methods of time travel (possible in the sense of "not ruled out by the physics we know," that is).
• "A Sound of Thunder" (1952), by Ray Bradbury
Don't step off the path. Another classic, read many times—and a perfect illustration of the "butterfly effect," though written years before the phrase was coined.
• "Vintage Season" (1946), by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
It's only natural to want front-row seats when you know something big is going to happen. This devastating tale of time-traveling tourists is my all-time favorite in the subgenre. It's even received a screen adaptation, although not a very good one, I'm afraid.
• "Thirty Seconds from Now" (2011), by John Chu
A poignant tale about being able to see into the futures—plural intended.
• "Forty, Counting Down" (1999), by Harry Turtledove
The first of two interlocking Turtledove tales that appear in this anthology, this is the long working-out of a plot by one Justin Kloster to get back his lost girlfriend, in a totally not-creepy way, by means of time travel. Not that it's implausible—of course a tech bro who could go back to bag the one who got away would do so—but even the first time through I felt as if I'd read this one before.
• "The Final Days" (1981), by David Langford
Under the bright lights... what drives someone to act for posterity instead of short-term gain?
• "Fire Watch" (1982), by Connie Willis
This novelette introduced Willis' time-traveling future historians from Oxford, a milieu she later revisited in several other works, culminating (at least so far) with the Hugo-award-winning diptych Blackout/All Clear. Bartholomew goes back to the Blitz, to help save St. Paul's—a task made more bittersweet by his memories of the cathedral's eventual destruction in the 21st Century.
• "Noble Mold" (1997), by Kage Baker
I really need to read more Baker—this one's the light-hearted beginning to her "Company" series, written in a classic science-fictional vein, about two bickering time agents contending with the "mortals."
• "Under Siege" (1985), by George R.R. Martin
A sharp reminder that Martin did not begin his career by writing cinderblock-sized fantasy novels... Like John Varley's "Air Raid" (hey, where's Varley in all this, anyway?), "Under Siege" features future mutants desperately trying to head off their apocalypse, even if it means self-erasure. This one also trots out (heh) my favorite "story about a horse," which I first encountered in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, and which apparently originates with Herodotus, but I think I like the drunken precision of Martin's version even more now:
This guy was going to get his head cut off by some old-timey king, y'see, so he pipes up and tells the king that if he's given a year, he'll teach the king's horse to talk. The king likes this idea, for some reason, maybe he's a Mister Ed fan, I dunno, but he gives the guy a year. And afterwards, this guy's friends say, hey, what is this, you can't get no horse to talk. So the guy says, well, I got a year now, that's a long time, all kinds of things could happen. Maybe the king will die. Maybe I'll die. Maybe the horse will die. Or maybe the horse will talk.
—p.321
• "Where or When" (1991), by Steven Utley
"Like there aren't already enough goddamn asshole creeps who can't travel through time."A sly vignette—in a way, this one's the flipside of "Vintage Season."
—p.328
• "Time Gypsy" (1998), by Ellen Klages
A really touching story about time travel and true love, and what still happens to women who go into physics, goddammit. Read twice now, both times avec beaucoup plaisir.
• "On the Watchtower at Plataea" (1988), by Garry Kilworth
Stalemate in 429 BCE.
• "Alexia and Graham Bell" (1987), by Rosaleen Love
Hee hee—what if the telephone really eliminated the distance between parties?
• "A Night on the Barbary Coast" (2003), by Kage Baker, again
"Of course I'm not serious, but we don't want the mortals to know that."Science fiction, Gold Rush style—stink and all...
—p.382
• "This Tragic Glass" (2004), by Elizabeth Bear
In a world where time travel can and do rescue artists who died too young—shades of "Mozart in Mirrorshades"—and Professor John Keats holds the purse strings for the Temporal Studies department at the University of Nevada, a young researcher using textual-analysis software (which is, by the way, a real thing) makes an interesting accidental discovery about Christopher Marlowe. Also perhaps compare and contrast this story with Jeffrey Eugenides' novel Middlesex. Make sure to read Bear's Author's Note at the end too, though—her characters' obsession with gender essentialism was never meant to be prescriptive.
• "The Gulf of the Years" (2010), by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
Closing an open loop, in "penurious times" (p.422)—this one's all the more vivid for being so brief.
• "Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties" (1916), by Max Beerbohm
More than a century old now, the antiquated language of this piece conceals a thoroughly modern egotism: these days, Enoch would be a vlogger or some other kind of would-be "influencer."
(Here ends the part Goodreads has room for; if I'm able, I'll be posting the rest as a Comment.)
February 24, 2024
This anthology is a full platter, a gourmet and gourmand delight for lovers of time and space displacement stories. It took me months to finish it, small bites at a time. The VanderMeers really know what they are doing.
October 9, 2017
It was really hit and miss on the stories that grabbed my attention. However that is true of all anthologies as they are the results of a single persons' interpretation of what is good. Still a reasonable value for the price
August 21, 2021
Fuck you Tony Pi
June 17, 2018
This is a fantastic collection of mostly time travel stories. There were a few I couldn't figure out why they were included. But on the whole, some excellent stuff.
My favourite stories were: The Time Machine (an extract of) by HG Wells; A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury; Fire Watch by Connie Willis; Under Siege by G.R.R. Martin; The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell; and the final story in the Almanac, Palimpsest by Charles Stross, was an absolute corker. I loved it.
Death Ship by Richard Matheson 3/5
A very interesting short story. I loved the reference to The Flying Dutchman. I do query the notion that this is actually time travel, however.
Ripples in the Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis 4/5
An entertaining and thought-provoking short.
Needle in a Timestack by Robert Silverberg 3/5
An entertaining story about some of the complications that can arise from time travel.
Another Story or Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin 2/5
I knew going in that Le Guin's writing would probably not be my cup of tea, and I was correct. The science aspect of the story was excellent, but the cultural stuff could have been left out. It felt gratuitous and, quite frankly, dragged.
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters by Alice Sola Kim 2/5
While I got the fact that Hwang time travelled every time he slept, the rest of this story confused me. How was it he had so many daughters, for starters? Some serious explaining was left out.
How the Future got Better by Eric Schaller. 3/5
Initially this story annoyed me, and felt pointless, but as I think about it more, I wonder if the effect of the story is to make one ask a lot of questions, and for that reason I give it a 3/5 rating.
Pale Roses by Michael Moorcock 3/5
An interesting character study in a futuristic setting.
The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson 3/5
An interesting enough read, but I didn't get any sense of time travel - alternate realities, perhaps - and very art deco.
The Threads of Time by C.J. Cherryh 3/5
What happens if your means of time travel no longer exists?
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick 3/5
A bit difficult to follow every now and then, but on the whole an enjoyable read about what happens when time travel goes wrong.
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick 3/5
An amusing account of what people may do if there's a wobble in the time continuum.
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein 4/5
A clever take on "time travel", with some issues attached. BIG issues!
Himself in Anachron by Cordwainer Smith 3/5
Great visual imagery, but some concepts were difficult to follow. Interesting.
The Time Machine by HG Wells 5/5
An extract from the novel, this detailed the Traveller's first trip through time. One of the most amazing descriptions of time travel and subjective experience of it (imagined, of course).
Young Zaphod Plays it Safe by Douglas Adams 4/5
Wacky and entertaining. Minimal time travel element.
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury 5/5
Classic time travel, beautifully written.
Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore 4/5
Time travel viewed from the outside; a lesson that time travellers do not know how cold and distant they can appear to the locals when they view the locals (inhabitants of the past) as entertainment.
Thirty Seconds from Now by John Chu 4/5
A precog views his future.
Forty, Counting Down by Harry Turtledove 4/5
A failed marriage drives Justin to travel back to the past and fix things. What happens isn't what he expected going in.
The Final Days by David Langford 4/5
A politician is imbued with confidence because he believes that the "eyes of the future" are all watching him.
Fire Watch by Connie Willis 5/5
The diary of a student historian who learns that lives are always important, even those of the past, while working on the Fire Watch above St Paul's during the London Blitz.
Noble Mold by Kage Baker 4/5
Two immortals with very different attitudes towards people from the past seek a grape vine.
Under Siege by G.R.R. Martin 5/5
A mutant from the future timerides into the past to attempt to change the course of history.
Where or When by Steven Utley 4/5
Three time travellers land up in the Virginia in the first week of May 1864 instead of in the Crystal Palace, London, 1851.
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages 4/5
A physicist researching another physicist who was researching time travel at the time of her death has an opportunity to travel back in time to meet her idol.
On the Watchtower at Plataea by Garry Kilworth 4/5
A very interesting story. Time vortices, opposing time travellers and an engaging view of the siege of Plataea by the Spartans.
Alexia and Graham Bell by Rosaleen Love 2/5
The invention of telephones makes life go faster. But not in the way you think.
A Night on the Barbary Coast by Kage Baker 3/5
A fun outing with two time travellers on the trail of lichen.
This Tragic Glass by Elizabeth Bear 3/5
A future researcher seeks to determine the gender of Christopher Marlowe.
The Gulf of the Years by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud 3/5
A beautiful story about a man called Manoir who travels back in time to save a boy.
Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties by Max Beerbohm 2/5
A study on desire for fame and recognition, and bargains with the Devil.
The Clock that went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell 4/5
When great-aunt Gertrude falls dead after winding up her backwards-timing clock, two cousins inherit it. An early time travel story that packs plenty. I enjoyed this one a lot.
Yesterday was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon 4/5
A delightful story about "little people" and what happens when we humans sleep.
Is There Anybody There? by Kim Newman 2/5
What happens when a seance is interrupted by an internet user who taps into the Ouija board? This was a good story, but not one I liked personally.
Fish Night by Joe Lansdale 4/5
There's a special night, Fish Night, when two worlds collide. A gorgeous story.
The Lost Pilgrim by Gene Wolfe 2/5
A Mayflower passenger gets sidetracked. A story influenced by Greek mythology, with lions, giants, warriors and kings.
Palindromic by Peter Crowther 3/5
A screwy time-travel story with elements going both ways.
Augusta Prima by Karin Tidbeck 3/5
A weird, casually violent story of a place where time doesn't exist. Until someone finds a clock that ticks.
Life Trap by Barrington J. Bayley 4/5
An investigation into what happens beyond death. Interesting read.
Lost Continent by Greg Egan 4/5
A time travel perspective on the plight of illegal immigrants fleeing conflicts back home.
The Mouse Ran Down by Adrian Tchaikovsky 4/5
Some time after the end of time, human refugees from the end of time hide out in time fragments, shifting from fragment to fragment in a bid to survive. But there’s a catch. They’re losing fragments, as an enemy is shutting them down one by one.
The Great Clock by Langdon Jones 4/5
A visceral, gritty story of the man who maintains the great clock.
Traveller's Rest by David I. Masson 4/5
A fascinating, very well-crafted story, reminiscent in some ways of The Forever War, with clever plot devices to signify places where time moves more quickly and places where it moves at a more leisurely pace.
Delhi by Vananda Singh 3/5 stars
A man in Delhi can see different times overlaid on his present. Can he influence those times?
Come-From-Aways by Tony Piln 4/5 stars
A Welsh man time-jumps off the Newfoundland coast. A peaceful, fun story.
Terminós by Dean Francis Alfar 4/5
Mr. Henares trades in time. What do his clients experience when they purchase moments in time?
The Weed of Time by Norman Spinrad 4/5
Whatever you do, do not consume Temp. The stuff is dangerous! Very well written, conveying a very difficult concept with alacrity.
The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell 5/5
A hilarious story of what happens when you meet with people/creatures/beings who simply run on a different time-speed to yours. I loved this story.
What If by Isaac Asimov 3/5
Illustrates the pitfalls of playing the "What if?" game, using the construct of alternate reality.
As Time Goes By by Tanith Lee 4/5
Messing around with temporal paradoxes on a time-neutral space station orbiting a white hole.
At Dorado by Geoffrey A Landis 4/5
A poignant look at life on a space station orbiting the wormhole Dorado.
3 RMS, Good View by Karen Haber 4/5
What do you do if you decide to live in the past and have to sign a non-interference contract… and then a child gets killed because you did nothing?
Twenty-One, Counting Up by Harry Turtledove 4/5
In this partner story to “Forty, Counting Down”, one sees the events as they happen in the first story (with a few added elements) from the younger Justin Kloster’s point of view.
Loob by Bob Lehman 3/5
A young man's life is severely impacted by the temporal paradoxes created by the town's so-called idiot.
The House that made the Sixteen Loops of Time by Tamsyn Muir 4/5
An entertaining story of a house that has issues. Severe issues.
Against the Lafayette Escadrille by Gene Wolfe 3/5
An interesting story of a replica builder and his Fokker triplane.
Swing Time by Carrie Vaughn 4/5
Time travel with dancing. And some danger.
The Mask of the Rex by Richard Bowes 3/5
An intriguing story about people taken out of their time to, so far as I could figure out, protect time portals to different places on Earth.
Message in a Bottle by Nalo Hopkinson 4/5
Can you imagine travelling back into the past to search for a specific sea shell that gets lost? A consideration of the observation that all creatures are artists.
The Time Telephone by Adam Roberts 3/5
A strange story with a very clever plot device.
Red Letter Day by Kristine Katheryn Rusch 4/5
A very interesting twist on the time travel concept, and an exploration into the consequences of foreknowledge of the future. Very well written, and very much a current topic.
Domine by Rjurik Davidson 4/5
This story had a distinctly “The Forever War” feel to it, but from the other side of the coin, so to speak. Fascinating, really, and somewhat disturbing too.
In the Tube by EF Benson 3/5
Pretty much a narration of supernatural events is my assessment – some events of which had not occurred at the time they were witnessed by Carling. So he saw a foreshadow of them, basically. Or precogged them.
Bad Timing by Molly Brown 4/5
When Alan Strong learns that he has travelled back in time to meet Cecily Walker because he falls in love with her picture, he does just that, then attempts to go back in time with hilarious consequences.
If Ever I Should Leave You by Pamela Sargent 4/5
A gentle story of timeless love and the loss that follows death.
Palimpsest by Charles Stross 5/5
An explosive cocktail of some of the themes I love best from scifi: deep time, time travel and the time travel paradox.
My favourite stories were: The Time Machine (an extract of) by HG Wells; A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury; Fire Watch by Connie Willis; Under Siege by G.R.R. Martin; The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell; and the final story in the Almanac, Palimpsest by Charles Stross, was an absolute corker. I loved it.
Death Ship by Richard Matheson 3/5
A very interesting short story. I loved the reference to The Flying Dutchman. I do query the notion that this is actually time travel, however.
Ripples in the Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis 4/5
An entertaining and thought-provoking short.
Needle in a Timestack by Robert Silverberg 3/5
An entertaining story about some of the complications that can arise from time travel.
Another Story or Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin 2/5
I knew going in that Le Guin's writing would probably not be my cup of tea, and I was correct. The science aspect of the story was excellent, but the cultural stuff could have been left out. It felt gratuitous and, quite frankly, dragged.
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters by Alice Sola Kim 2/5
While I got the fact that Hwang time travelled every time he slept, the rest of this story confused me. How was it he had so many daughters, for starters? Some serious explaining was left out.
How the Future got Better by Eric Schaller. 3/5
Initially this story annoyed me, and felt pointless, but as I think about it more, I wonder if the effect of the story is to make one ask a lot of questions, and for that reason I give it a 3/5 rating.
Pale Roses by Michael Moorcock 3/5
An interesting character study in a futuristic setting.
The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson 3/5
An interesting enough read, but I didn't get any sense of time travel - alternate realities, perhaps - and very art deco.
The Threads of Time by C.J. Cherryh 3/5
What happens if your means of time travel no longer exists?
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick 3/5
A bit difficult to follow every now and then, but on the whole an enjoyable read about what happens when time travel goes wrong.
Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick 3/5
An amusing account of what people may do if there's a wobble in the time continuum.
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein 4/5
A clever take on "time travel", with some issues attached. BIG issues!
Himself in Anachron by Cordwainer Smith 3/5
Great visual imagery, but some concepts were difficult to follow. Interesting.
The Time Machine by HG Wells 5/5
An extract from the novel, this detailed the Traveller's first trip through time. One of the most amazing descriptions of time travel and subjective experience of it (imagined, of course).
Young Zaphod Plays it Safe by Douglas Adams 4/5
Wacky and entertaining. Minimal time travel element.
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury 5/5
Classic time travel, beautifully written.
Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore 4/5
Time travel viewed from the outside; a lesson that time travellers do not know how cold and distant they can appear to the locals when they view the locals (inhabitants of the past) as entertainment.
Thirty Seconds from Now by John Chu 4/5
A precog views his future.
Forty, Counting Down by Harry Turtledove 4/5
A failed marriage drives Justin to travel back to the past and fix things. What happens isn't what he expected going in.
The Final Days by David Langford 4/5
A politician is imbued with confidence because he believes that the "eyes of the future" are all watching him.
Fire Watch by Connie Willis 5/5
The diary of a student historian who learns that lives are always important, even those of the past, while working on the Fire Watch above St Paul's during the London Blitz.
Noble Mold by Kage Baker 4/5
Two immortals with very different attitudes towards people from the past seek a grape vine.
Under Siege by G.R.R. Martin 5/5
A mutant from the future timerides into the past to attempt to change the course of history.
Where or When by Steven Utley 4/5
Three time travellers land up in the Virginia in the first week of May 1864 instead of in the Crystal Palace, London, 1851.
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages 4/5
A physicist researching another physicist who was researching time travel at the time of her death has an opportunity to travel back in time to meet her idol.
On the Watchtower at Plataea by Garry Kilworth 4/5
A very interesting story. Time vortices, opposing time travellers and an engaging view of the siege of Plataea by the Spartans.
Alexia and Graham Bell by Rosaleen Love 2/5
The invention of telephones makes life go faster. But not in the way you think.
A Night on the Barbary Coast by Kage Baker 3/5
A fun outing with two time travellers on the trail of lichen.
This Tragic Glass by Elizabeth Bear 3/5
A future researcher seeks to determine the gender of Christopher Marlowe.
The Gulf of the Years by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud 3/5
A beautiful story about a man called Manoir who travels back in time to save a boy.
Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties by Max Beerbohm 2/5
A study on desire for fame and recognition, and bargains with the Devil.
The Clock that went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell 4/5
When great-aunt Gertrude falls dead after winding up her backwards-timing clock, two cousins inherit it. An early time travel story that packs plenty. I enjoyed this one a lot.
Yesterday was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon 4/5
A delightful story about "little people" and what happens when we humans sleep.
Is There Anybody There? by Kim Newman 2/5
What happens when a seance is interrupted by an internet user who taps into the Ouija board? This was a good story, but not one I liked personally.
Fish Night by Joe Lansdale 4/5
There's a special night, Fish Night, when two worlds collide. A gorgeous story.
The Lost Pilgrim by Gene Wolfe 2/5
A Mayflower passenger gets sidetracked. A story influenced by Greek mythology, with lions, giants, warriors and kings.
Palindromic by Peter Crowther 3/5
A screwy time-travel story with elements going both ways.
Augusta Prima by Karin Tidbeck 3/5
A weird, casually violent story of a place where time doesn't exist. Until someone finds a clock that ticks.
Life Trap by Barrington J. Bayley 4/5
An investigation into what happens beyond death. Interesting read.
Lost Continent by Greg Egan 4/5
A time travel perspective on the plight of illegal immigrants fleeing conflicts back home.
The Mouse Ran Down by Adrian Tchaikovsky 4/5
Some time after the end of time, human refugees from the end of time hide out in time fragments, shifting from fragment to fragment in a bid to survive. But there’s a catch. They’re losing fragments, as an enemy is shutting them down one by one.
The Great Clock by Langdon Jones 4/5
A visceral, gritty story of the man who maintains the great clock.
Traveller's Rest by David I. Masson 4/5
A fascinating, very well-crafted story, reminiscent in some ways of The Forever War, with clever plot devices to signify places where time moves more quickly and places where it moves at a more leisurely pace.
Delhi by Vananda Singh 3/5 stars
A man in Delhi can see different times overlaid on his present. Can he influence those times?
Come-From-Aways by Tony Piln 4/5 stars
A Welsh man time-jumps off the Newfoundland coast. A peaceful, fun story.
Terminós by Dean Francis Alfar 4/5
Mr. Henares trades in time. What do his clients experience when they purchase moments in time?
The Weed of Time by Norman Spinrad 4/5
Whatever you do, do not consume Temp. The stuff is dangerous! Very well written, conveying a very difficult concept with alacrity.
The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell 5/5
A hilarious story of what happens when you meet with people/creatures/beings who simply run on a different time-speed to yours. I loved this story.
What If by Isaac Asimov 3/5
Illustrates the pitfalls of playing the "What if?" game, using the construct of alternate reality.
As Time Goes By by Tanith Lee 4/5
Messing around with temporal paradoxes on a time-neutral space station orbiting a white hole.
At Dorado by Geoffrey A Landis 4/5
A poignant look at life on a space station orbiting the wormhole Dorado.
3 RMS, Good View by Karen Haber 4/5
What do you do if you decide to live in the past and have to sign a non-interference contract… and then a child gets killed because you did nothing?
Twenty-One, Counting Up by Harry Turtledove 4/5
In this partner story to “Forty, Counting Down”, one sees the events as they happen in the first story (with a few added elements) from the younger Justin Kloster’s point of view.
Loob by Bob Lehman 3/5
A young man's life is severely impacted by the temporal paradoxes created by the town's so-called idiot.
The House that made the Sixteen Loops of Time by Tamsyn Muir 4/5
An entertaining story of a house that has issues. Severe issues.
Against the Lafayette Escadrille by Gene Wolfe 3/5
An interesting story of a replica builder and his Fokker triplane.
Swing Time by Carrie Vaughn 4/5
Time travel with dancing. And some danger.
The Mask of the Rex by Richard Bowes 3/5
An intriguing story about people taken out of their time to, so far as I could figure out, protect time portals to different places on Earth.
Message in a Bottle by Nalo Hopkinson 4/5
Can you imagine travelling back into the past to search for a specific sea shell that gets lost? A consideration of the observation that all creatures are artists.
The Time Telephone by Adam Roberts 3/5
A strange story with a very clever plot device.
Red Letter Day by Kristine Katheryn Rusch 4/5
A very interesting twist on the time travel concept, and an exploration into the consequences of foreknowledge of the future. Very well written, and very much a current topic.
Domine by Rjurik Davidson 4/5
This story had a distinctly “The Forever War” feel to it, but from the other side of the coin, so to speak. Fascinating, really, and somewhat disturbing too.
In the Tube by EF Benson 3/5
Pretty much a narration of supernatural events is my assessment – some events of which had not occurred at the time they were witnessed by Carling. So he saw a foreshadow of them, basically. Or precogged them.
Bad Timing by Molly Brown 4/5
When Alan Strong learns that he has travelled back in time to meet Cecily Walker because he falls in love with her picture, he does just that, then attempts to go back in time with hilarious consequences.
If Ever I Should Leave You by Pamela Sargent 4/5
A gentle story of timeless love and the loss that follows death.
Palimpsest by Charles Stross 5/5
An explosive cocktail of some of the themes I love best from scifi: deep time, time travel and the time travel paradox.
May 4, 2018
Wow, this books was heavy. The stories are crammed in with tiny text, and I thought it might squish me while I was reading it.
There are a wide variety of stories relating to Time Travel in their own ways. I picked it up because it contained a couple short stories that a friend recommended I read.
There are a wide variety of stories relating to Time Travel in their own ways. I picked it up because it contained a couple short stories that a friend recommended I read.
April 28, 2022
Large collection of time travel stories. Bottom line: Time travel not a good idea.
March 8, 2018
Aún con sus altos y bajos las historias logran tener un libro bien macizo.
Si les gusta la ciencia ficción es una cosas beshisima.
El tratado acerca de la música y los viajes en el tiempo me pareció PRECIOSO.
Si les gusta la ciencia ficción es una cosas beshisima.
El tratado acerca de la música y los viajes en el tiempo me pareció PRECIOSO.
July 27, 2016
The Time Traveler's Almanac is collection of time travel fiction and features authors that range from Ursula K. Le Guin to H G Wells (who wrote one of the most well known pieces of time travel fiction, The Time Machine) to newer, not-so-well-known writers like Tony Pi.
The Weird is one of my favorite--if not my most favorite--anthologies of all time so I really didn't expect to like Almanac as much but I have to say that it comes pretty darn close. For one, I felt like the stories in Almanac were consistently good. In The Weird, there were a few stories I didn't care for at all although I don't disagree with their presence in the anthology as I think they would have appealed to some weird fiction fans but not me. I think in the Almanac I enjoyed pretty much every story at some level.
In having so many great stories, I find it hard to compile a list of all my favorites but I'll try to mention some. One of my favorites was "Enoch Soames" by Max Beerbohm. It's a story from 1916 about an eccentric writer that I found to be somewhat dark but also quite humorous in an absurdist way. Also, I found there is a followup story by Teller (of Penn and Teller) that I plan to read.
Some of my other favorites were by more contemporary authors that I had not heard of like Alice Sola Kim and Tony Pi. The latter wrote an interesting story about the Welsh legendary prince Madoc who shows up in present day Canada. There were also some excellent stories by well known authors like Douglas Adams and Ursula K. Le Guin. Then there were some well known authors I had not heard of before too like C. J. Cherryh whose "Threads of Time" story I really enjoyed and Connie Willis whose "Fire Watch" was another favorite of mine.
The Weird is one of my favorite--if not my most favorite--anthologies of all time so I really didn't expect to like Almanac as much but I have to say that it comes pretty darn close. For one, I felt like the stories in Almanac were consistently good. In The Weird, there were a few stories I didn't care for at all although I don't disagree with their presence in the anthology as I think they would have appealed to some weird fiction fans but not me. I think in the Almanac I enjoyed pretty much every story at some level.
In having so many great stories, I find it hard to compile a list of all my favorites but I'll try to mention some. One of my favorites was "Enoch Soames" by Max Beerbohm. It's a story from 1916 about an eccentric writer that I found to be somewhat dark but also quite humorous in an absurdist way. Also, I found there is a followup story by Teller (of Penn and Teller) that I plan to read.
Some of my other favorites were by more contemporary authors that I had not heard of like Alice Sola Kim and Tony Pi. The latter wrote an interesting story about the Welsh legendary prince Madoc who shows up in present day Canada. There were also some excellent stories by well known authors like Douglas Adams and Ursula K. Le Guin. Then there were some well known authors I had not heard of before too like C. J. Cherryh whose "Threads of Time" story I really enjoyed and Connie Willis whose "Fire Watch" was another favorite of mine.
September 3, 2017
As with all anthologies featuring multiple authors, the quality of this book was highly variable. There were some stories I couldn't get into in the slightest and others that I adored. All in all though, it seemed to be a nice collection involving a variety of authors, writing styles, and time periods. I may look into some of the authors a bit more, I have meant to try more short stories by Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury in particular. I honestly haven't read much sci-fi, so my list of favourites may seem odd to some seasoned fans, but the following stories stuck out to me:
Favourite stories:
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Vintage Season by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner
Forty, Counting Down by Harry Turtledove
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages
Yesterday Was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon
Lost Continent by Greg Egan
Come-From-Aways by Tony Pi
The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell
Twenty-One, Counting Up by Harry Turtledove
Message in a Bottle by Nalo Hopkinson
Red Letter Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
3.5/5 Sept. 2017
Favourite stories:
The Most Important Thing in the World by Steve Bein
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Vintage Season by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner
Forty, Counting Down by Harry Turtledove
Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages
Yesterday Was Monday by Theodore Sturgeon
Lost Continent by Greg Egan
Come-From-Aways by Tony Pi
The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell
Twenty-One, Counting Up by Harry Turtledove
Message in a Bottle by Nalo Hopkinson
Red Letter Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
3.5/5 Sept. 2017
August 8, 2014
‘The Time Traveler’s Almanac’ purports to be “the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled,” and I was unable to find anything capable of disputing this claim. The editors have compiled 72 pieces by luminaries of the genre like H.G. Wells, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov. Highly recommended for all sci-fi and time travel buffs.
Read my full review at Pop Mythology.
Matt Hlinak
Author of DoG
Read my full review at Pop Mythology.
Matt Hlinak
Author of DoG
August 16, 2014
I would like to be honest. I have failed to complete this book despite sticking to/at it for months (ages?), and yet I am so sick of finding it grinning at me like a hideous laughing Buddha statue whenever I check-in at Goodreads, that I decided to mark it as read. However, I have a justification handy. This tome is like OED, and that book, as everyone would agree, can't be COMPLETED, despite being full of riveting as well as important stuff. Therefore, using that analogy, I am stuffing the tome to the shelf harbouring dictionaries, with the hope of getting to COMPLETE it sometime in the future. Highly Recommended, anyway.
January 7, 2014
oh this started so well and then lost me. In the first two sections I was completely hooked. All the stories gripped me but then in the remainder I found fewer and fewer that caught my imagination. So the ones I liked were the experiments and investigators, the paradoxes and communicators didn't grab me. Maybe this is my sci-fi heritage just showing itself. The later sections seemed largely to feature newer works whereas the early pieces were more 60s and 70s items; the era of my introduction to time travel.
February 6, 2022
I might have liked this better if I didn't have to get through 900+ pages in time to return it to the library by the due date. This anthology had a lot of stories, some enjoyable, some not, some memorable and some not. Unfortunately, I really didn't like the last story in the book (Palimpsest by Charles Stross), so that skews my reaction overall.
The most memorable are two stories by Harry Turtledove which tell the same story from two different viewpoints: the main character at age 40 is able to travel into the past where he hopes to change something in his life by re-living events from his twenties. The first one is told from the 40-year old's viewpoint; the second from the twenty year old. I didn't necessarily think they were the best or most enjoyable, but the concept stuck with me out of the 72 stories in the book.
Favorites are by Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, Ellen Klages and Molly Brown.
The most memorable are two stories by Harry Turtledove which tell the same story from two different viewpoints: the main character at age 40 is able to travel into the past where he hopes to change something in his life by re-living events from his twenties. The first one is told from the 40-year old's viewpoint; the second from the twenty year old. I didn't necessarily think they were the best or most enjoyable, but the concept stuck with me out of the 72 stories in the book.
Favorites are by Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, Ellen Klages and Molly Brown.
August 12, 2019
As comprehensive a selection of time travel tales as one could hope for, even from such a doorstop.
I liked the range -- from the more traditional entries inevitably involving a paradox and / or a surprise ending to ones where the time travel was more or less implied but not a central part of the plot.
There were a few from newer authors toward the end that were pleasant surprises, but most of the writers are familiar and nobody really plowed any new ground: Authors I already liked wrote stories I liked, authors I don't like as well didn't knock my socks off here, either. Somewhat predictable then that Charles Stross wrote the longest, most convoluted story here (which I very much liked, btw).
The quality is generally good, however, and there's enough here that if you feel like skimming a story or two, there's another coming along in just a few pages. A good collection to own, so you can dip your toes in from time to time. A bit of a struggle for two of us to get through it in a library loan period.*
*For the record, returned on time and thanks to Portland (ME) Public Library for the ILL. ;)
I liked the range -- from the more traditional entries inevitably involving a paradox and / or a surprise ending to ones where the time travel was more or less implied but not a central part of the plot.
There were a few from newer authors toward the end that were pleasant surprises, but most of the writers are familiar and nobody really plowed any new ground: Authors I already liked wrote stories I liked, authors I don't like as well didn't knock my socks off here, either. Somewhat predictable then that Charles Stross wrote the longest, most convoluted story here (which I very much liked, btw).
The quality is generally good, however, and there's enough here that if you feel like skimming a story or two, there's another coming along in just a few pages. A good collection to own, so you can dip your toes in from time to time. A bit of a struggle for two of us to get through it in a library loan period.*
*For the record, returned on time and thanks to Portland (ME) Public Library for the ILL. ;)
September 1, 2014
(Given the book's massive length, I was very tempted to do some sort of labored joke about how reading it was like time travelling into the distant future. I've (mostly) spared you from that; you're welcome.) The Time Traveller's Almanac is an anthology of science-fiction stories about time travel. And really, the first thing that will strike you about the book is how vast an anthology it is, with 71 different short stories--maybe 70, depending on how you count Harry Turtledove's two part contribution. It's divided into four sections--"experiments", in which the individuals are experimenting with time travel; "reactions and revolutionaries," in which tourists want the "truth" behind time, and others want to change what happens; "mazes and traps" where the paradox of time travel, and its punishing aspect, become the main event; and "communiques," in which people are trying to get a message to a different time line. To be honest, I didn't really notice the shifts when I was reading through, but I appreciate that the divisions where there. The editors--Ann and Jeff VanderMeer--clearly put some effort into making sure there was gender and minority representation on the list, and as someone who occasionally struggles to find sci-fi outside of the white guy norm, this was appreciated. While some stories are a little roughly written, the variety outweighs almost all negativity. Going through all seventy stories would be a massive effort; for brevity's sake, I'll name two or three from each section that impressed me.
In Experiments, Ursala Le Guin's "Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea" has time travel take a back seat to the more interesting part of the story, the wonderful sci-fi world Le Guin has sketched out in O, a world where four parent mating couples are the norm, and the society that grows out of such a world; it's a story about deciding what's really the most important thing in your life. And Alice Sola Kim's "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" is a wonderfully chaotic story about an ordinary man made immortal time traveller and utterly unable to cope with it. In "Reactionaries and Revolutionaries," John Chu's "Thirty Seconds From Now" looks at how relationships don't get any easier when you're constantly seeing multiple possible timelines at every moment--including the ones where your lover is moments away from leaving you. Kage Baker has two stories, "Noble Mold" and "A Night on the Barbary Coast," both featuring Joseph and Mendoza, father and daughter time travelers working for a mysterious, possibly corrupt, Company; if this is typical of Baker's work, I really do have to seek it out. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" which has a premise immediately appealing to any English major: in the future, time travel is perfected and common enough to the point where an English department professor can put in for a grant to bring Christopher Marlowe out of time just before his death in order to prove an aspect of her research. In "Mazes and Traps," Gene Wolfe's "The Lost Pilgrim" features a man who goes back to do a mission regarding the Argos, but instead is swept up into the great company; Wolfe does a great job conveying the wondrous, alien part of this culture. Greg Egan's "Lost Continent" depicts time traveler refugees attempting to make a new life for themselves despite the future people being very ambiguous about their presence; it's a very on the nose indictment of the modern refugee systems. Vadana Singh's "Dehli" features a protagonist who's slightly unstuck in time, constantly seeing glimpses of Dehli's future and past. The story's main question is less time paradox and more about where individual meaning comes from, when so much of the future is set in stone. Finally, Communiques has some of my favorite premises, if not stories: Krsitine Kathryn Rusch's "Red Letter Day" explores the social implications of students receiving a letter from their fifty-year old selves--and what it means when that letter doesn't arrive. I love how it uses knowledge of the future as a sort of placeholder to explore that terrifying moment in high school, where you're just about to graduate, and it seems already like half the class's future is laid out. Pamela Sargent's "If Ever I Should Leave You" looks at a woman whose lover, knowing he had a terminal disease, spent his last six months darting around time, so that they'd be able to meet again after his death. The big question, then, is how the woman rations the time left with the love of her life. And finally, in the book's last story, longer than the others, Charles Stross' Palimpsest does a combination of a very personal story and a very high concept one--the high concept is that an agency uses time travel for terraforming on a scale of billion years, shepherding the Earth out of the solar system before the sun dies out. The personal level is how you construct a life when you are both immortal and yet your existence may be overwritten at any time.
What I appreciated the most about this book is the variety of perspectives it offered. And more than anything, it demonstrates how much time travel stories--for all that they're purportedly about far futures or different pasts--are reflections of the society they're written in, whether that's 19th century Britain, the cold war state of the sixties, and the (comparably) greater social freedoms of today, allowing a few queer time travel stories into the mix. It's introduced me to a lot of new authors I want to get into.
On the other hand, though--it's an anthology about time travel stories, and not a single one is about going back in time to kill Hitler. What's up with that? (Connie Willis' Fire Watch comes close, but still doesn't quite do it.)
In Experiments, Ursala Le Guin's "Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea" has time travel take a back seat to the more interesting part of the story, the wonderful sci-fi world Le Guin has sketched out in O, a world where four parent mating couples are the norm, and the society that grows out of such a world; it's a story about deciding what's really the most important thing in your life. And Alice Sola Kim's "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" is a wonderfully chaotic story about an ordinary man made immortal time traveller and utterly unable to cope with it. In "Reactionaries and Revolutionaries," John Chu's "Thirty Seconds From Now" looks at how relationships don't get any easier when you're constantly seeing multiple possible timelines at every moment--including the ones where your lover is moments away from leaving you. Kage Baker has two stories, "Noble Mold" and "A Night on the Barbary Coast," both featuring Joseph and Mendoza, father and daughter time travelers working for a mysterious, possibly corrupt, Company; if this is typical of Baker's work, I really do have to seek it out. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" which has a premise immediately appealing to any English major: in the future, time travel is perfected and common enough to the point where an English department professor can put in for a grant to bring Christopher Marlowe out of time just before his death in order to prove an aspect of her research. In "Mazes and Traps," Gene Wolfe's "The Lost Pilgrim" features a man who goes back to do a mission regarding the Argos, but instead is swept up into the great company; Wolfe does a great job conveying the wondrous, alien part of this culture. Greg Egan's "Lost Continent" depicts time traveler refugees attempting to make a new life for themselves despite the future people being very ambiguous about their presence; it's a very on the nose indictment of the modern refugee systems. Vadana Singh's "Dehli" features a protagonist who's slightly unstuck in time, constantly seeing glimpses of Dehli's future and past. The story's main question is less time paradox and more about where individual meaning comes from, when so much of the future is set in stone. Finally, Communiques has some of my favorite premises, if not stories: Krsitine Kathryn Rusch's "Red Letter Day" explores the social implications of students receiving a letter from their fifty-year old selves--and what it means when that letter doesn't arrive. I love how it uses knowledge of the future as a sort of placeholder to explore that terrifying moment in high school, where you're just about to graduate, and it seems already like half the class's future is laid out. Pamela Sargent's "If Ever I Should Leave You" looks at a woman whose lover, knowing he had a terminal disease, spent his last six months darting around time, so that they'd be able to meet again after his death. The big question, then, is how the woman rations the time left with the love of her life. And finally, in the book's last story, longer than the others, Charles Stross' Palimpsest does a combination of a very personal story and a very high concept one--the high concept is that an agency uses time travel for terraforming on a scale of billion years, shepherding the Earth out of the solar system before the sun dies out. The personal level is how you construct a life when you are both immortal and yet your existence may be overwritten at any time.
What I appreciated the most about this book is the variety of perspectives it offered. And more than anything, it demonstrates how much time travel stories--for all that they're purportedly about far futures or different pasts--are reflections of the society they're written in, whether that's 19th century Britain, the cold war state of the sixties, and the (comparably) greater social freedoms of today, allowing a few queer time travel stories into the mix. It's introduced me to a lot of new authors I want to get into.
On the other hand, though--it's an anthology about time travel stories, and not a single one is about going back in time to kill Hitler. What's up with that? (Connie Willis' Fire Watch comes close, but still doesn't quite do it.)
November 4, 2021
Mammoth collection that took 3 months to finish - roughly a story every couple of days. Newer stories are overrepresented here - no Heinlein, no Poul Anderson, no Jack Finney, though their stories are in other, older Time Travel collections.
The stories were broken into "sections", with a little non-fiction around as well. This breakdown was tenuous at best - or maybe that's the months talking.
My favorites were "Triceratops Summer" by Michael Swanwick (2005), "Noble Mold" by Kage Baker (1999), and the classic "Yesterday was Monday" by Theodore Sturgeon. I didn't enjoy the creepy "Twenty-One, Counting Up" by Harry Turtledove (1999), and was a little irritated that they shoehorned an excerpt from The Time Machine in here.
This anthology and one other have made up half of my electronic reading this year, with this monster consuming more than 21 hours. Of the 12 books I've read this way so far, this is 3rd from the bottom in words per minute. It wasn't me contemplating the stories - there were only a few that really dragged me in, and a majority that did not. So it goes.
The stories were broken into "sections", with a little non-fiction around as well. This breakdown was tenuous at best - or maybe that's the months talking.
My favorites were "Triceratops Summer" by Michael Swanwick (2005), "Noble Mold" by Kage Baker (1999), and the classic "Yesterday was Monday" by Theodore Sturgeon. I didn't enjoy the creepy "Twenty-One, Counting Up" by Harry Turtledove (1999), and was a little irritated that they shoehorned an excerpt from The Time Machine in here.
This anthology and one other have made up half of my electronic reading this year, with this monster consuming more than 21 hours. Of the 12 books I've read this way so far, this is 3rd from the bottom in words per minute. It wasn't me contemplating the stories - there were only a few that really dragged me in, and a majority that did not. So it goes.
October 15, 2022
2.5 ⭐️
As much as I love time travel stories, this collection is too long.
Weird complaint, I know.
But it’s taken me 2 years to read it.
And I read 20 books a month.
You get bogged down in stories you don’t favor, and then put it down, and don’t get back to it, and then it’s 2 years and you’re finally finishing.
At that point it’s hard to recall which ones you like.
And that’s precisely why I read a lot of short story collections - to find new authors.
So, while there are a lot of great gems in here, they get lost in a thousand pages. Seriously - it’s 944 pages long.
As much as I love time travel stories, this collection is too long.
Weird complaint, I know.
But it’s taken me 2 years to read it.
And I read 20 books a month.
You get bogged down in stories you don’t favor, and then put it down, and don’t get back to it, and then it’s 2 years and you’re finally finishing.
At that point it’s hard to recall which ones you like.
And that’s precisely why I read a lot of short story collections - to find new authors.
So, while there are a lot of great gems in here, they get lost in a thousand pages. Seriously - it’s 944 pages long.
November 13, 2020
An interesting collection of time travel stories that I've been dipping in and out of for years. A couple weren't so good but it was enjoyable for the most part. My favourite stories were: Young Zaphod Plays it Safe (you can't beat a bit of Douglas Adams), Needle in a Timestack, Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters, A Sound of Thunder, Yesterday was Monday, The Mouse Ran Down, Come-From-Aways, What If, and Swing Time.
September 9, 2017
The biggest and best collection of short stories about time travel ever. While not every single one of them was a winner, there were enough good ones, and some downright excellent ones, to make this a worthy read. There is even a playlist of songs recorded over the years about time travel in the middle of the book. Some day I will find the time to listen to all of them.
October 10, 2017
collection of short stories on this theme of time travel. Some are very clever and interesting; others, less so. Also, since the stories come from various time periods, some feel modern, others are quite dated.
May 11, 2020
I've been on and off reading short stories from this book since 2014, I love how it takes the concept of time travel and expands it to worlds I never would have imagined. Kept it on my e-reader since I bought it, and recommend it often
January 23, 2021
The good thing about an anthology of short stories is that even if some stories are not all that great, they're short stories so pretty soon you'll be done with one you don't like and the next one might be better. Of course, that also means that when you're reading a good one, you know pretty soon it will be done and the next one might be boring. On the whole I enjoy novels more, because you really get to know the characters better. But there's lots of variety here, some very different takes on the idea of time travel. And I can't dislike a book that contains one of my favorite time travel stories, "Fire Watch," by one of my favorite time travel writers, Connie Willis.
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