Time’s Arrow

by Arthur C. Clarke

• Release: Summer 1950
• Format: Short Story
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Age of Reptiles (252 Ma to 66 Ma: Mesozoic/Triassic/Jurassic/Cretaceous): Although the story says 50,000,000, but it was actually earlier in the age of reptiles.
• Circa AD 1950 to 1959: presumed start time

Timeline Models

• Single Static Timeline: We concluded that this is a single static timeline because it seemed that Barton uncovered the jeep tracks before the explosion.

Time Travel Methods

• Unexplained Time Travel Methods: Probably a machine of some sort that sent the jeep back in time and caused an explosion in the present.

Themes

• Paleontologists

Real-World Tags

• Dinosaurs

Groupings

• The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (anthology)
• Cited in Worlds Enough and Time, edited by Gary Westfahl ()
• Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY

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