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The Internet Time Travel Database

Tony Westermayr

narrator, translator

a Haertel Complex story

Common Time

by James Blish

Spaceman Garrard is the third pilot to attempt the trip to the binary star system of Alpha Centauri using the FTL drive invented by Dolph Haertel (the next Einstein!) The Haertel Complex stories provide little in the way of actual time travel, but this one does have minor relativistic time dilation and more significant differing time rates.
— Michael Main
Figuring backward brought him quickly to the equivalence he wanted: one second in ship time was two hours in Garrard time.

“Common Time” by James Blish, in Shadow of Tomorrow, edited by Frederik Pohl (Permabooks, July 1953).

When You Care, When You Love

by Theodore Sturgeon

Sylva—an heiress who is used to getting her way—devises a plan to (sort of) save her terminally ill lover, Guy Gibbon.
— Michael Main
But lots of things were crazier and some bigger, nd now they’re commonplace.

“When You Care, When You Love” by Theodore Sturgeon, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1962.

Up the Line

by Robert Silverberg


Up the Line by Robert Silverberg, 2-part serial, Amazing Stories, July and September 1969.

The Utterly Perfect Murder

by Ray Bradbury

A moving story of an outcast boy who continued to feel the pain of how he’d been excluded throughout his adult life. You’ll need to decide for yourself whether time travel creeps in.
— Michael Main
I tossed the few bits of gravel and did the thing that had never been done, ever in my life.

“My Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury, in Playboy, August 1971.

What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

by Robert Silverberg

When all eleven families on Redford Crescent receive a newspaper from the middle of next week, the result is a hastily called neighborhood meeting and an assortment of get-rich-quick plans.
— Michael Main
Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper?

“What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper” by Robert Silverberg, in Infinity Four, edited by Robert Hoskins (Lancer Books, November 1972).

Breckenridge and the Continuum

by Robert Silverberg

Wall Street investor Noel Breckenridge has been summoned to the far future, possibly to tell stories, but is there a larger purpose?
— Michael Main
Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.

“Breckenridge and the Continuum” by Robert Silverberg, in Showcase, edited by Roger Elwood (Harper and Row, June 1973).

Many Mansions

by Robert Silverberg

With eleven years of marriage behind them, Ted and Alice’s fantasies frequently start with a time machine and end with killing one or another of their spouse’s ancestors before they can procreate. So naturally, they each end up at Temponautics, Ltd. Oh, and Ted’s grandpa has some racy fantasies of his own.
In Silverberg’s Something Wild Is Loose (Vol. 3 of his collected stories), he posits that this story is “probably the most complex short story of temporal confusion” since Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941) or “—All You Zombues—” (1959), but I would respectfully disagree. In particular, I would describe Heinlein’s two stories as the most complex short stories of temporal consistency in that there is but a single, static timeline and (in hindsight) every scene locks neatly into place within this one timeline. By contrast, Silverberg story involves multiple time travel choices by the characters in what I would call parallel universes. The confusion, such as it is, stems more from what appears to be alternate scenes in disconnected universes rather than temporal confusion per se.
— Michael Main
On the fourth page Alice finds a clause warning the prospective renter that the company cannot be held liable for any consequences of actions by the renter which wantonly or wilfully interfere with the already determined course of history. She translates that for herself: If you kill your husband’s grandfather, don’t blame us if you get in trouble.

“Many Mansions” by Robert Silverberg, in Universe 3, edited by Terry Carr (Random House, October 1973).

as of 2:47 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
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