Si Morley 1

Time and Again

by Jack Finney

• Release: 1970
• Format: Novel
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Audience: Adults
• Content: Definite Time Travel
• Original Language: English

There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

• Circa AD 1800 to 1899: AD 1882
• Circa AD 1970 to 1999: AD 1970, starting time

Timeline Models

• Multiple Naive Timelines
• Remembering Different Timelines: Danziger remembers someone who no longer exists because a traveler changed the past.
• Travelers Are Immune to Timeline Changes: Even though Si stopped Danzinger’s parents from ever meeting, Si himself still lived through Danzinger’s Program in 1970.

Time Travel Methods

• Hypnosis, Potions, and Drug-Induced Travel: the archetype for self-hypnosis travel

Themes

• Future Is “Down”: “As Einstein himself pointed out. He said we’re like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can’t see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it’s there.”
• Messing with Someone’s Ancestors: To end the Project, Si takes the drastic step of messing with Danziger’s parents’ meeting in 1882.
• Never Change the Past!: Danziger: What do we know? We know that in one out of four or possibly five successes we have affected the past. And therefore the present. And that is all we know. That next attempt could be disastrous. There is no case at all, Rube, for a calculated risk. Because there is no calculation, but only risk. Who has given us the right to decide for the entire world that it should be taken?
• True Histories: The true history of the fire that destroyed the New York World’s building.

Real-World Tags

• Thomas F. Byrnes: Policeman Byrnes picks up Si and Julia, accusing them of starting the NY World fire.

Groupings

• Cited in Worlds Enough and Time, edited by Gary Westfahl ()
• Si Morley (story series): 1
• Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY

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