The Long Night
- by Charles Willard Diffin
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “The Long Night” by Charles Willard Diffin, Astounding Stories, May 1934.
Garry Coyne devises a way to move into the future via suspended animation, which (as we all know) is not time travel, but once he arrives in the future to fight throwback hominids and take shelter with a small band of normal men, he does have a moment where he slides back to the present for a brief communication with his trusted friend and a realization about the nature of time.
—Michael Main
Past, present, future—all one. And we, moving along the dimension called time, intersect them. I can’t grasp it. But I can’t deny it. If only there were proof—
Tags
(7)
- Time Periods
- Far Future
- Unspecified Future Year: Possible home time of the story, although it could certainly be later.
- Timeline Models
- Cognizant Eternalism: “I grant you, Coyne, the possibility of synchronous existence of all events—the possibility, I say. Past, present, future—all one. And we, moving along the dimension called time, intersect them.”
- Time Travel Methods
- Unexplained Time Travel Methods: When Conye passes out, he’s pulled back in time where he wakes in his body, not long after first entering suspended animation. The travel is not fully explained, but seems to have something to do with the “synchronous existence of all events.”
- Themes
- Long Sleep, Cryogenics, Etc.: Coyne gets to the future via suspended animation obtained through a study of reptiles. “These reptiles—suspended animation—you get that of course.”
- Fictional Tags
- Post-Apocalyptic and Post-Holocaust Worlds: “A dead city—in a dead world!”
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “The Long Night” by Charles Willard Diffin, Astounding Stories, May 1934.