Short Story
Ian Watson
writer
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Short Story
The Very Slow Time Machine
- by Ian Watson
- in Anticipations, edited by Christopher Priest (Faber and Faber, 1978)
In 1985, a small impenetrable living pod appears out of nothing at the National Physics Laboratory. A window on one side shows the pod’s occupant: a delirious man who grows younger and saner through the years, although generally doing little other than sitting and reading, leading the observers to conclude that his quarters are in fact a VSTM taking him back through time at the rate of one year for each year of his life.
As of writing this, I am only partway through my reading and wondering so many things: When the man in the world at large who will eventually enter the machine realize that he is the traveler? From his perspective, what happened to the machine (and him!) when it materialized in 1985? (Ah! That question is answered shortly after it occurs to me.) For that matter, why doesn’t he himself, while in the pod, already know that he will reach 1985? To what extent does his very appearance cause the technology that permits his trip to occur? VCIS! (Very Cool Idea-Story!), although it offers little in plot or character.
As of writing this, I am only partway through my reading and wondering so many things: When the man in the world at large who will eventually enter the machine realize that he is the traveler? From his perspective, what happened to the machine (and him!) when it materialized in 1985? (Ah! That question is answered shortly after it occurs to me.) For that matter, why doesn’t he himself, while in the pod, already know that he will reach 1985? To what extent does his very appearance cause the technology that permits his trip to occur? VCIS! (Very Cool Idea-Story!), although it offers little in plot or character.
Our passenger is the object of popular cults by now—a focus for finer feelings. In this way his mere presence has drawn the world’s peoples closer together, cultivating respect and dignity, pulling us back from the brink of war, liberating tens of thousands from their concentration camps. These cults extend from purely fashionable manifestations—shirts printed with his face, now neatly shaven in a Vandyke style; rings and worry-beads made from galena crystals—through the architectural (octahedron and cube meditation modules) to life-styles themselves: a Zen-like “sitting quietly, doing nothing.”
Short Story
The Thousand Cuts
- by Ian Watson
- in The Best of Omni Science Fiction No. 3, edited by Ben Bova and Don Myrus (Omni Publications International Ltd., February 1982)
Alison, Don, and Hugh have philosophical discussions on what it means when the entire world skips two or three days at a time and then picks up at some random moment in the future. In the blackout period, amazing progress is made in arms control and hostage negotiations. Time travel? Maybe not, but certainly a fun read with some echoes of Sturgeon’s “Yesterday Was Monday.”
Novel
Novelette
Slow Birds
- by Ian Watson
- Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1983
Every year, Jason Babbidge competes in the skate-sailing race on the two-and-a-half-mile-wide glass surfaces left behind by slowly flying birds when they occassionally explode before disappearing. This year’a race is not a win for Jason, but even worse is what happens when his brother Daniel climbs aboard one of the birds afterwards. —Michael Main
Short Story
Ghost Lecturer
- by Ian Watson
- in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 1984
A conceited man brings Lucretius to the present in order to explain to the classical scientist exactly where he was wrong, but it turns out that Lucretius’s classical atomism was brought along with him.
Novelette
In the Upper Cretaceous with the Summerfire Brigade
- by Ian Watson
- Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1990
Short Story
Novella
Novella