Isaac Asimov

writer
Short Story

Cosmic Corkscrew


“Cosmic Corkscrew” was the first story that Asimov ever wrote for submission to the pulp magazines of the day. In the first part of his autobiography, he describes starting the story, setting it aside, and returning to it some thirteen months later. It was the story that he took with him on his first visit to John Campbell, inquiring about why the July 1938 Astounding was late arriving. Alas, the story was rejected and then lost, but it did have time travel!
In it, I viewed time as a helix (this is, as something like a bedspring). Someone could cut across from one turn directly to the next, thus moving into the future by some exact interval, but being incapable of traveling one day less into the future. (I didn’t know the term at the time, but what I had done was to “quantize” time travel.)
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time Pussy


Mr. Mac tells of the troubles of trying to preserve the body of a four-dimensional cat.
‘Four-dimensional, Mr. Mac? But the fourth dimension is time.’ I had learned that the year before, in the third grade.
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  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Thiotimoline


I don’t know if this is time travel or not, but it certainly violates causality when the time for thiotimoline to dissolve in water is minus 1.12 seconds.
Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline.
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  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Red Queen’s Race

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1949

By my count, this was Asimov’s fourth foray into time travel, but his first as Dr. Asimov. In the story, the dead Elmer Tywood also had a Ph.D. and a plan to translate a modern chemistry textbook into Greek before sending it back in time to inaugurate a Golden Age of science long before it actually occurred.
There was a short silence, then he said: “I’ll tell you. Why don’t you check with his students?”

I lifted my eyebrows: “You mean in his classes?”

He seemed annoyed: “No, for Heaven’s sake. His research students! His doctoral candidates!”
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

The Red Queen’s Race

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Astounding Science Fiction, January 1949

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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Pebble in the Sky


Joseph Schwartz takes one step from 1949 to the year 847 of the Galactic Era, where he meets archaeologist Bel Arvardan, Earth scientist Dr. Shekt, the doctor’s beautiful daughter Pola, and a plot to destroy all non-Earth life in the galaxy.
He lifted his foot to step over a Raggedy Ann doll smiling through its neglect as it lay there in the middle of the walk, a foundling not yet missed. He had not quite put his foot down again. . .
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  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Day of the Hunters


A midwestern professor tells a half-drunken story of time travel and the real cause of the dinosaur extinction. —Michael Main
Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs.
A woman in a red bathing/space suit and thigh-high boots wields a ray gun while
                carrying off an unconscious man.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

What If—


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  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Short Story

Button, Button


Harry Smith has an eccentric scientist uncle who needs to make some money from his astonishing invention that can bring one gram of material from the past.
Do you remember the time a few weeks back when all of upper Manhattan and the Bronx were without electricity for twelve hours because of the damndest overload cut-off in the main power board? I won’t say we did that, because I am in no mood to be sued for damages. But I will say this: The electricity went off when my uncle Otton turned the third knob.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novella

The End of Eternity


A petrified, mushroom-shaped structure emerges through clouds with two mushroom
                clouds and a bright sun in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Immortal Bard


Dr. Phineas Welch tells an English professor a disturbing story about a matter of temporal transference and a student in the professor’s Shakespeare class.
I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I’ve got his signature. As a memento, you know.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The End of Eternity


Andrew Harlan, Technician in the everwhen of Eternity, falls in love and starts a chain of events that could lead to the end of everything. —Michael Main
He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned to him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century.
A black-and-white drawing of an elderly man standing at an electronic control
                board with a futuristic sphere in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Message


Time traveler and historian George tries to travel back to World War II without making any changes to the world.
George was deliriously happy. Two years of red tape and now he was finally back in the past. Now he could complete his paper on the social life of the foot soldier of World War II with some authentic details.
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  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novelette

The Dead Past


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  • Undetermined
  • Time Phenomena
Short Story

Gimmicks Three


Isidore Wellby makes a timely pact with the devil’s demon.
Ten years of anything you want, within reason, and then you’re a demon. You’re one of us, with a new name of demonic potency, and many privileges beside. You’ll hardly know you’re damned.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Last Question


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  • Undetermined
  • Undetermined Time Travel
Short Story

Blank!


Dr. Edward Barron has a theory that time is arranged like a series of particles that can be traveled up or down; his colleague and hesitant collaborator August Pointdexter isn’t so sure about the application of the theory to reality.
An elevator doesn’t involve paradoxes. You can’t move from the fifth floor to the fourth and kill your grandfather as a child.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

A Loint of Paw


Master criminal Montie Stein has found a way around the statute of limitations.
It introduced law to the fourth dimension.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Ugly Little Boy


Edith Fellowes is hired to look after young Timmie, a Neanderthal boy brought from the past, but never able to leave the time stasis bubble where he lives.
He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him dearly.
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  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

A Statue for Father

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Satellite Science Fiction, February 1959

A wealthy man’s father was a time-travel researcher who died some years ago, but not before leaving a legacy for all mankind.
They’ve put up statues to him, too. The oldest is on the hillside right here where the discovery was made. You can just see it out the window. Yes. Can you make out the inscription? Well, we’re standing at a bad angle. No matter.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Unto the Fourth Generation


During an ordinary day of business, Sam Marten is obsessively drawn to different men named Levkowich, each with a different spelling.

When I began putting together this Big List in 2005, I started with all the Asimov time travel stories that I could remember. Somehow I forgot about this story which I first read in 1973 in Nightfall and Other Stories. But then, while scouring the 1950s back issues of F&SF for more obscure stories, there it was: Sam Marten’s great, great grandfather brought from his deathbed to meet Sam, and there, also, was a moment of time travel for Sam himself.

Two new sentences were added at the end of the original story for the reprinting in Asimov’s collection, so I thought it would be appropriate to quote those new sentences here:
Yet somehow he knew that all would be well with him. Somehow, as never before, he knew.
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  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Obituary


A young man looking for love in 1959 Brooklyn finds and answers a letter from a young woman in 1869 Brooklyn.
The folded paper opened stiffly, the crease permanent with age, and even before I saw the date I knew this letter was old. The handwriting was obviously feminine, and beautifully clear—it’s called Spencerian, isn’t it?—the letters perfectly formed and very ornate, the capitals especially being a whirl of dainty curlicues. The ink was rust-black, the date at the top of the page was May 14, 1882, and reading it, I saw that it was a love letter.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Thiotimoline to the Stars

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, edited by Harry Harrison (Random House , November 1973)

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  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Big Game

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Before the Golden Age, edited by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, April 1974)

Jack Trent hears a half-drunken story of time travel and the real cause of the dinosaur extinction.

Asimov wrote this story in 1941, but it was lost until a fan found it in the Boston University archives in the early ’70s.
Jack looked at Hornby solemnly. “You invented a time machine, did you?”

“Long ago.” Hornby smiled amiably and filled his glass again. “Better than the ones those amateurs at Stanford rigged up. I’ve destroyed it, though. Lost interest.”
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Birth of a Notion


The world’s first time traveler, Simeon Weill, goes back to 1925 and gives some ideas to Hugo.
That the first inventor of a workable time machine was a science fiction enthusiast is by no means a coincidence.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

Classics Dark and Dangerous (s01e05)

The Ugly Little Boy


A neanderthal boy lies on a modern hospital bed in a white button-down shirt.
  • Undetermined
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Fair Exchange?

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine, Fall 1978

John Sylva has invented a temporal transference device that allows his friend Herb to enter the mind of a man in 1871 London and to thereby attend three performances of a lost Gilbert & Sullivan play.

I read this story as I was starting my graduate studies in Pullman in 1978. Sadly, there was no second issue of Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine.
We can’t be sure how accurate our estimates of time and place are, but you seem to resonate with someone in London in 1871.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Winds of Change

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in Speculations, edited by Isaac Asimov and Alice Laurance (Houghton Mifflin, 1982)

Jonas Dinsmore is not half the physicist as his colleagues, the politically astute Adams and the brilliant Muller, but in their presence, he claims to have figured out how to interpret Muller’s Grand Unified Theory to allow time travel.
Time-travel, in the sense of going backward to change reality, is not only technologically impossible now, but it is theoretically impossible altogether.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Norby


In the second book of this children’s series (Norby’s Other Secret, 1984), the precocious robot reveals his time-travel powers to his pal Jeff; their mishaps in time continue in at least three later books (Norby and the Queen’s Necklace, Norby Finds a Villain, and Norby and Yobo’s Great Adventure).
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  • Science Fiction
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Writing Time


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  • Science Fiction
  • No Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Конец Вечности


A spiked red ball, a disembodied head, and a disembodied hand shooting a
                raygun.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Turning Point

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in The Drabble Project, edited by Rob Meades and David B. Wake (Beccon Publications, April 1988)

In exactly 100 words, Madison goes back in time to meet himself at the turning point of his young life.

Thanks to Marc Richardson for sending this one to me. —Michael Main
He was a clerk.
Lurid green cover for [_The Drabble Project_], listing all the authors
                of its 100-word stories.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Instability


Professor Firebrenner explains to Atkins how they can go forward in time to study a red dwarf and then return back to Earth.
Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will take us to observe the star?
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Time Traveler


The little demon Azazel (the hero of many an Asimov tale) sends a world-renowned writer travels back in time to see his first writing teacher at a 1934 school that is remarkably like Asimov’s own Boys High in Brooklyn.
“Because,” and here he struck his chest a resounding thump, “the burning memories of youthful snubs and spurnings remain unavenged and, indeed, forever unavengable.”
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

Child of Time


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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Robot Visions


A team of Temporalists send robot RG-32 200 years into the future where it seems to almost all that mankind is doing better than expected on Earth and in space.
RG-32 was a rather old-fashioned robot, eminently replaceable. He could observe and report, perhaps without quite the ingenuity and penetration of a human being—but well enough. He would be without fear, intent only on following orders, and he could be expected to tell the truth.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Novel

The Ugly Little Boy


The story of Ms. Fellowes and Timmie is augmented by the story of what his tribe did during his time away.
He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him more dearly than anything in the world.
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  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel