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The Internet Time Travel Database

Lester del Rey

writer

My Name Is Legion

by Lester del Rey
At the end of World War II, as the Allies occupation army closes in on Hitler, a man offers him a way to bring back thousands of copies of himself from the future.
Years ago in one of those American magazines, there was a story of a man who saw himself. He came through a woods somewhere and stumbled on a machine, got in, and it took him three days back in time. Then, he lived forward again, saw himself get in the machine and go back.
“My Name Is Legion” by Lester del Rey, Astounding, June 1942.

. . . and It Comes Out Here

by Lester del Rey
Old Jerome Boell, inventor of the household atomic power unit, visits his young self to make sure that the household atomic power unit gets invented, so to speak.
But it’s a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always have—or do—or will. I don’t know, verbs get all mixed up. We don’t have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
“. . . and It Comes Out Here” by Lester del Rey, in Galaxy, February 1951.

Absolutely No Paradox

by Lester del Rey
Old Ned recalls the time fifty years ago when his young friend Pete LeFranc set off for the future despite Ned’s warning that time travel can lead to nothing but paradoxes. And, asks Ned (anticipating Hawking), if time travel were so easy, then where are all the time travelers from the future?
If yours works, there’ll be more time machines built. With more built, they’ll be improved. They’ll get to be commonplace. People’d use them—and someone would turn up here with one. Or in the past. Why haven’t we met time travelers, Pete?
“Absolutely No Paradox” by Lester del Rey, in Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1951.

Fool’s Errand

by Lester del Rey
Roger Sidney, a 23rd-century professor of paraphysics, travels back to ask an aging Nostradamus whether he truly wrote those uncannily accurate predictions that were not found until 1989, but Sidney overshoots his target and ends up searching for a young Nostradamus in a tavern in southern France.

“Fool’s Errand” was the second story del Rey wrote after moving to New York in 1944 where he rented a $3/week room near Ninth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street, but Campbell rejected the story for Astounding as being too obvious. It was another seven years before Roger Sidney would find his way into the pages of Science Fiction Quarterly, one of the new spate of 1950s sf magazines.

If Nostradamus would accept the manuscript as being his, the controversy would be ended, and the paraphysicists could extend their mathematics with sureness that led on toward glorious, breathtaking possibilities. Somewhere, perhaps within a few feet, was the man who could settle the question conclusively, and somehow Sidney must find him—and soon!
“Fool’s Errand” by Lester del Rey, in Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1951.

Unto Him That Hath

by Lester del Rey
After losing a leg fighting the Pan-Asians, Captain Michael Dane returns home to his brilliant physicist girlfriend, his father, and a college professor/general who wants his help in swiping technology from the future. But when they grab a future fighter plane, his father is seemingly sucked into the future and his girlfriend may be a spy.
The government was convinced enough to finance Project Swipe, so it can’t be too crazy. We’re actually reaching into the future. Look, we’re losing the war—we know that. Pan-Asia is matching our technology and beating our manpower. But somewhere ahead, they’ve got things that Pan-Asia can’t have—and we're going to get some of that.
“Unto Him That Hath” by Lester del Rey, in Space Science Fiction, November 1952.

Tunnel Through Time

by Lester del Rey
When Bob Miller’s dad invents a time machine and sends Doc Tom gets trapped in the time of the dinosaurs, there’s only one possible solution: send a pair of 17-year-olds (including Bob) back on a rescue mission!

This was the first book that I got through the Scholastic Book Club when we moved to Bellevue in 1968. Each month, the club would give you a flier where you ticked off the books that you wanted, and the next month the books would magically show up at school!

But they’d overlooked someone. Me. Somehow, by hook or crook, I was going to make that trip, too. Doc Tom wasn’t the only one who liked dinos!
Tunnel Through Time by Lester del Rey (May 1966).
as of 4:04 a.m. MDT, 6 May 2024
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