Ancestral Voices

by Nat Schachner

• Release: December 1933
• Format: Short Story
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

The year of grace 1935! A dull year, a comfortable year! Nothing much happened. The depression was over; people worked steadily at their jobs and forgot that they had every starved; Roosevelt was still President of the United States; Hitler was firmly ensconced in Germany; France talked of security; Japan continued to defend itself against China by swallowing a few more provinces; Russia was about to commence on the third Five Year Plan, to be completed in two years; and, oh, yes—Cuba was still in revolution.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Ancient History (3000 BC to AD 476: Bronze/Iron Ages): AD 452
• Circa AD 1930 to 1939: 1935

Timeline Models

• Narrative Time: At the mmoment in the story when Pennypacker kills the Hun, all of the Hun's ancestors (including Pennypacker) disappear from the story.
• Remembering Different Timelines: Sam Corey and others remember all the people who disappeared.
• Self-Erasure

Time Travel Methods

• Time Spheres, Cubes, etc.: “Resting on a movable platform was a large square box, tall enough and wide enough to accommodate several men, as well as a cluster of shiny machinery, tubes, numerous gadgets and controls.”

Themes

• Grandfather Paradox
• Never Change the Past!: “ What’s done is done. ‘The moving finger writes, and, having writ, moves on’—You know the rest. We try to introduce an anachronistic element into the past, and the consequences may be incalculable.”

Real-World Tags

• Attila
• Roman Empire: the sacking of Aquileia

Groupings

• Astounding · Analog (periodical): Astounding Stories, December 1933
• Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY

We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.