Common Time
- by James Blish
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Time Phenomena
- English
- “Common Time” by James Blish, in Shadow of Tomorrow, edited by Frederik Pohl (Permabooks, July 1953).
Spaceman Garrard is the third pilot to attempt the trip to the binary star system of Alpha Centauri using the FTL drive invented by Dolph Haertel (the next Einstein!) The Haertel Complex stories provide little in the way of actual time travel, but this one does have minor relativistic time dilation and more significant differing time rates.
—Michael Main
Figuring backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he wanted: one second in ship time was two hours in Garrard time.
Tags
(11)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: In David Ketterer’s timeline, the FTL drive was invented by Haertel in 2030.
- Timeline Models
- Time Travel Methods
- FTL Time Travel: 22.4 times the speed of light
- Themes
- Differing Time Rates: At FTL speeds, Garrand’s subjective time vastly differs from the ship’s clock time.
- Long Sleep, Cryogenics, Etc.: Garrard goes into a long sleep at both the beginning of the story and as he returns to Earth.
- Relativistic Time Dilation: At any speed below the velocity of light, subjective and objective time were exactly the same as far as the pilot was concerned. For an observer on Earth, time aboard the ship would appear to be vastly slowed at near-light speeds, but for the pilot himself, there would be no apparant change.
- Real-World Tags
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “Common Time” by James Blish, in Shadow of Tomorrow, edited by Frederik Pohl (Permabooks, July 1953).
Translations
(10)
- Croatian.
“Paralelno vrijeme” [Parallel time] by James Blish, Sirius #50, August 1980. - Dutch.
“Gewone tijd” [Ordinary time] by James Blish, in Het testament van Andros (Bruna, 1972). - French.
“Sautes de temps” [Time jumps] by James Blish, in Terre, il faut mourir ( Denoël, 1961). - German.
“Zwischen Zeit und Unendlichkeit” [Between time and infinity] by James Blish, in 8 Science Fiction Stories, edited by Arnulf D. Krauß and Helmuth W. Mommers (Heyne, 1967). - German.
“Die gewöhnliche Zeit” [The ordinary time] by James Blish, in Eine Handvoll Sterne (Goldmann, 1974). - German: alternative title of “Zwischen Zeit und Unendlichkeit.”“Im Griff der Zeit” [In the grip of time] by James Blish, in Die Fünfziger Jahre I, edited by Hans Joachim Alpers and Werner Fuchs (Hohenheim, October 1981).
- German.
“Normalzeit” [Standard time] by James Blish, in Welten im All (Bastei Lübbe, October 1987) [Two translators were credited for the collection Welten im All, but the stories were not individually credited.].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . narrated by Eva Bauche-Eppers as by Eva Eppers - Italian.
“Il tempo dell'uomo” [The time of man] by James Blish, in Prigione senza sbarre, e altri racconti (Fanucci Editore, 1977). - Italian.
“Tempo comune” [Common time] by James Blish, in Le grandi storie della fantascienza 15, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg (Armenia Editore, May 1987). - Serbian.
“Zajedničko vreme” [Time together] by James Blish, in Savremenici budućnosti: Priče i tvorci naučne fantastike, edited by Zoran Živković (Narodna Knjiga, 1983).