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The Internet Time Travel Database

Jack Williamson

writer

The Meteor Girl

by Jack Williamson
When a meteor lands on the beachfront airfield of our narrator and his partner Charlie King, Charlie realizes that it provides a space-time portal through which they view the death-at-sea of Charlie’s ex-fiancée.
— Michael Main
A terrestrial astronomer may reckon that the outburst on Nova Persei occurred a century before the great fire of London, but an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with equal accuracy that the great fire occurred a century before the outburst on the Nova.
“The Meteor Girl” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, March 1931.

Through the Purple Cloud

by Jack Williamson
“Through the Purple Cloud” by Jack Williamson, Wonder Stories, May 1931.

The Stone from the Green Star

by Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson’s college buddy Dick Smith is transported a couple million years into the future where he meets a blind scientist, falls in love with the scientist’s beautiful daughter, fights the evil lord of the Dark Star, seeks the fountain of youth, wanders through the galaxy, and eventually transmits a manuscript of his adventures back in time to Williamson.
“That is a space-port where the ships come in from the stars,” the girl said. (Of course, all conversations recorded in Smith’s notes have been translated into our English—if they were not, no one would be able to read them.)

“Ships from the stars!” Dick ejaculated.

The Stone from the Green Star by Jack Williamson, in Amazing, Oct to Nov 1931.

The Moon Era

by Jack Williamson
Stephen’s rich inventor uncle sends him on a trip to the moon in an antigravity capsule without realizing that a side-effect also sends the capsule back to when the moon was young, green, and populated by the evil Eternal Ones and the last of the Mothers.
Time was a fourth dimension, he had said. An extension as real as the three of what we call space, and not completely distinguishable from them. A direction in which motion would carry one into the past, or into the future.
“The Moon Era” by Jack Williamson, in Wonder Stories, February 1932.

In the Scarlet Star

by Jack Williamson
“In the Scarlet Star” by Jack Williamson, Amazing Stories, March 1933.

Terror Out of Time

by Jack Williamson
Until I started reading 1930s pulps, I didn’t realize how ubiquitous were the scientist with a beautiful daughter and her adventurous fiancé. This story has Dr. Audrin, his machine (to project the brain of a present-day man forty million years into the future and possibly bring another mind back), his beautiful daughter Eve, and her manly fiancé, Terry Webb. Manly Webb agrees to be the test subject for the machine, much to the dismay of beautiful Eve.
— Michael Main
I must have a subject. And there is a certain—risk. Not great, now, I’m sure. My apparatus is improved. But, in my first trial, my subject was—injured. I’ve been wondering, Mr. Webb, if you—
“Terror Out of Time” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, December 1933.

The Legion of Time

by Jack Williamson
After two beautiful women of two different possible futures appear to physicist Denny Lanning, he finds himself swept up by a time-traveling ship, the Chronion, along with a band of fighting men who swear their allegiance to The Legion of Time and its mission to ensure that the eviler of the two beautiful women never comes to pass.
But Max Planck with the quantum theory, de Broglie and Schroedinger with the wave mechanics, Heisenberg with matrix mechanics, enormously complicated the structure of the universe—and with it the problem of Time.

With the substitution of waves of probability for concrete particles, the world lines of objects are no longer the fixed and simple paths they once were. Geodesics have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of sub-atomic indeterminism.

Still, of course, in large masses the statistical results of the new physics are not much different from those given by the classical laws. But there is a fundamental difference. The apparent reality of the universe is the same—but it rests upon a quicksand of possible change.

The Legion of Time by Jack Williamson, serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, May to July 1938.

Hindsight

by Jack Williamson
Years ago, engineer Bill Webster abandoned Earth for the employ of the piratical Astrarch far beyond the orbit of Mars; now the Astrarch is aiming the final blow at a defeated Earth, and Bill wonders whether the gun sights he invented can spot—and change!—events in the past.
— Michael Main
The tracer fields are following all the world lines that intersected at the battle, back across the months and years. The analyzers will isolate the smallest—hence most easily altered—essential factor.
“Hindsight” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, May 1940.

Backlash

by Jack Williamson
Although it doesn’t involve Hitler by name, this story certainly contributed to the Kill-Hitler subgenre of time travel stories.
With the new tri-polar units I can deflect the projection field back through time. That’s where I’m going to attack Levin—in his vulnerable past.
“Backlash” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, August 1941.

Minus Sign

by Jack Williamson
“Minus Sign” by Jack Williamson, Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1942.
as of 1:02 a.m. MDT, 6 May 2024
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