Tryst in Time

by C. L. Moore

Bold and bored soldier-of-fortune Eric Rosner meets a scientist who sends him skipping through time, always meeting the same beguiling girl with the smoke-blue eyes.

I can transport you into the past, and you can create events there which never took place in the past we know—but the events are not new. They were ordained from the beginning, if you took that particular path. You are simply embarking upon a different path into a different future, a fixed and preordained future, yet one which will be strange to you because it lies outside your own layer of experience. So you have infinite freedom in all your actions, yet everything you can possibly do is already fixed in time.

“Tryst in Time” by C. L. Moore, Astounding, December 1936.

Greater Than Gods

by C. L. Moore

“Greater Than Gods” by C. L. Moore, Astounding, July 1939.

The Twonky

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

A man, dazed from running into a temporal snag, appears in a radio factory, whereupon (before returning to his own time) he makes a radio that’s actually a Twonky, which promptly gets shipped to a Mr. Kerry Westerfield, who is initially quite confounded and amazed at everything it does.

Because of the story’s opening, I’m convinced the Twonky is from the future. The “temporal snag” that brought it to 1942 feels like an unexpected time rift to me, although the route back to the future is an intentional journey via an unexplained method.

— Michael Main

“Great Snell!” he gasped. “So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!”

“The Twonky” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942.

Time Locker

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Once again, drunken genius Gallegher invents something without knowing that he has done so. This time around, it’s a box that swallows things up until they reappear at now + x.

He was, Vanning reflected, an odd duck. Galloway was essentially amoral, thoroughly out of place in this too-complicated world. He seemed to watch, with a certain wry amusement, from a vantage point of his own, rather disinterested for the most part. And he made things—

“Time Locker” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding, January 1943.

Mimsy Were the Borogoves

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

A scientist in the far future sends back two boxes of educational toys to test his time machine. One is discovered by Charles Dodgson’s niece in the 19th century, and the other by two children in 1942.

This story was in the first book that I got from the SF Book Club in the summer of 1970, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 1 (edited by Robert Silverberg). I read and reread those stories until the book fell apart.

Neither Paradine nor Jane guessed how much of an effect the contents of the time machine were having on the kids.

“Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding, February 1943.

Shock

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“Shock” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1943.

Endowment Policy

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

A futuristic old man asks the taxi dispatcher specifically for Denny Holt’s cab. When the man gets in the cab, he offers Denny $1000 to protect him from pursuit for just one night and to steal a brown notebook with a secret formula from the War Department.

Now, shielding the bills with his body, he took them out for a closer examination. They looked all right. They weren’t counterfeit; the serial numbers were O.K.; and they had the same odd musty smell Holt had noticed before.

“You must have been hoarding these,” he hazarded.

Smith said absently, “They’ve been on exhibit for sixty years—” He caught himself and drank rye.

“Endowment Policy” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding, August 1943.

Doorway into Time

by C. L. Moore

Treasures and beings from across time and space populate the halls of an age-old collector whose tiredness of life can be renewed only by the danger of the next hunt, which in this case means going naked and weaponless against Paul, defender of the lovely Alanna.

On the wall before him, in the dimness of the room, a great circular screen looked out opaquely, waiting his touch. A doorway into time and space. A doorway to beauty and deadly peril and everything that made livable for him a life which had perhaps gone on too long already.

“Doorway into Time” by C. L. Moore, in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, September 1943.

When the Bough Breaks

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“When the Bough Breaks” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1944.

What You Need

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Reporter Tim Carmichael visits Peter Talley, a shopkeeper on Park Avenue who provides things that his select clientele will need in the future.

I don’t always include prescience stories in my list, but like Heinlein’s “Life-Line,” this one is an exception, both because of the origin of Peter Talley’s prescience and because it was made into episodes of Tales of Tomorrow (the TV show) and [work-142 | The Twilight Zone[/ex].

— Michael Main

By turning a calibrated dial, I check the possible futures

“What You Need” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, in Astounding Science Fiction, October 1945.

Line to Tomorrow

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“Line to Tomorrow” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1945.

The Cure

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“The Cure” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science Fiction, May 1946.

Vintage Season

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

More and more strange people are appearing each day in and around Oliver Wilson’s home; the explanation from the euphoric redhead leads him to believe they are time travelers gathering for an important event.

— Michael Main

Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.

“Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding, September 1946.

Happy Ending

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

“Happy Ending” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.

Private Eye

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

A jilted man plans murderous revenge while trying to avoid any behavior that would reveal his plans to the government’s all-seeing technology that can reconstruct the past from electromagnetic and sound waves.

— Michael Main

It was sensitive enough to pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter, descramble and screen them, and reproduce the image of what had happened.

“Private Eye” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science Fiction, January 1949.

The Twonky

written and directed by Arch Oboler

Unlike in the original short story of “The Twonky,” the movie’s mad machine is a TV rather than a radio. Also, we never explicitly see the machine’s construction by a time traveler, but the professor’s discussions with the coach make it clear that they believe the machine is from the future, and that’s good enough for us. And finally, when you watch the wacky film, you’ll see that Arch Oboler devised a different fate for the Twonky than that of Kuttner and Moore’s original story.

— Michael Main

Kerry: Then it is from another world?
Coach Trout: No, from our world, centuries in the future.

The Twonky written and directed by Arch Oboler (at movie theaters, USA, 10 June 1953).

The Twilight Zone (r1s01e12)

What You Need

by Rod Serling, directed by Alvin Ganzer

Rod Serling does an admirable job translating the original story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore to the small screen. The story’s two main incidents (the scissors and the shoes) come through with little change. In this version, the curious shopkeeper has become a street vendor, and the man who’s interested in the vendor’s goods is now a darker lowlife than the original newspaperman. Also, the science fiction aspect has been replaced by psychic precognition, solidly in the realm of fantasy, but not quite into weird fiction.

— Michael Main

What have you got in there? Some sort of machine? Crystal ball?. . . You can see ahead, can’t you? You can look into the future.

The Twilight Zone (v1s01e12), “What You Need” by Rod Serling, directed by Alvin Ganzer (CBS-TV, USA, 25 December 1959).

Timescape

written and directed by David Twohy

Timescape written and directed by David Twohy (Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, mid-January 1992).

The Last Mimzy

by Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich, directed by Robert Shaye

The people of the future are dying, so they send time-traveling dolls back to 2007 where they can communicate only with sappy Seattle children.

— Michael Main

They’ve been sending other Mimzies to the past to look for it, but none of them have come back.

The Last Mimzy by Bruce Joel Rubin and Toby Emmerich, directed by Robert Shaye (Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, 23 January 2007).