Arthur Leo Zagat

writer
Short Story

20,000 A.D.

Tom Jenkins heads into the “Vanishing Woods” to prove that there’s nothing dangerous about them, but he doesn’t return until six months later, and he refuses to talk about where he’s been and what he’ seen—but fortunately for us, the titles of the two Wonder Story stories (“In 20,000 A.D.” in Sep 1930 and “Back to 20,000 A.D.” in Mar 1931) give us a big clue, although it doesn’t tell us that the world he visits is divided into cold-hearted Masters and their four-armed, giant human Robots.

The use of the word “robot” had not yet evolved from Čapek’s meaning of a humanoid laborer to the modern usage as a purely mechanical being.
True, he says, the Masters are far advanced, an’ able to do lots o’ thingsas a result. They’ve learnt everything there was to be learnt, they can live on the earth, in the air, in the water, or underground; they can travel to the other stars; they know how the world come about an’ when it’s ending, they think great thoughts an’things I couldn’t even understand, but, he says, what about the Robots?
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

When the Sleepers Woke

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  • Undetermined
  • Time Phenomena
Novelette

The Land Where Time Stood Still

Twentieth-century American Ronald Stratton and Arthurian damsel Elaise find themselves in a land with people from all ages as well as predators from the 400th century.

This may be the earliest use of something akin to a “wheel of time.” —Michael Main
Time’s all mixed up. It’s as if the universe were the rim of a great wheel, whirling through Time. As if, somehow, we have left that rim, shot inward along different spokes whose outer ends are different years, far apart, and reached the wheel’s axis where all the year-spokes join. The center point of the hub, that doesn’t move at all through Time, because it is the center. Where there is no Time. Where the past and the present and the future are all one. A land, in some weird other dimension, where Time stands still.
A red, bug-eyed future man and a modern-day man with ray guns hold off a Neanderthal, a Roman Centurion, and others.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Lost in Time

While crossing the Pacific alone in a small boat, Jim Dunning runs into a storm that capsizes his boat. When he comes to, the only thing in sight is a spherical ship with one passenger: the beautiful (but unconscious) Thalma of the house of Adams, who’s been thrown into the past by her evil Uncle Marnota. When Thalma recovers, she pushes random levers which result in both her and Jim returning to her time and the clutches of Marnota.
You just trust your Uncle Jim! Everything’s going to be all right, sure as God made little apples. Just sit down over here, and powder your nose, or whatever they do in your time. Then you can tell me all about it.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel