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Sirius

Periodicals

The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator

by Murray Leinster
Pete Davidson has inherited all the properties of an uncle who had been an authority on the fourth dimension, including the Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator that can pull copies of matches, coins, dollar bills, fiancées, and kangaroos out of the past.
— Michael Main
“These,” said Pete calmly, “are my fiancée.”
“The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator” by Murray Leinster, Astounding, December 1935.

The Twonky

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
A man, dazed from running into a temporal snag, appears in a radio factory, whereupon (before returning to his own time) he makes a radio that’s actually a Twonky, which promptly gets shipped to a Mr. Kerry Westerfield, who is initially quite confounded and amazed at everything it does.

Because of the story’s opening, I’m convinced the Twonky is from the future. The “temporal snag” that brought it to 1942 feels like an unexpected time rift to me, although the route back to the future is an intentional journey via an unexplained method.

— Michael Main
“Great Snell!” he gasped. “So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!”
“The Twonky” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Ray Bradbury
When a typewriter appears on the floor of his boarding room and begins typing messages from the future, down-on-his-luck Steve Temple thinks it must be his old jokester friend Harry—but he’s wrong about that, and the fate of the world 500 years down the line now depends on what Steve does about a recently elected man. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” doesn’t have the notoriety of that other Bradbury story about time travel and an elected official, but even though this one’s riddled with ridiculous ideas on time, it does accurately predict text messaging!
— Michael Main
Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimensional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry.
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Ray Bradbury, in Fantastic Adventures, May 1947.

The Choice

by Wayland Hilton-Young
In about 200 words, Williams goes to the future and returns with the memory of only one small thing.
— Michael Main
How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?
“The Choice” by Wayland Hilton-Young, in Punch, 19 March 1952.

All the Time in the World

by Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Ashton is offered a huge amount of money to carry out a foolproof plan of robbing the British Museum of its most valuable holdings.
— Michael Main
Your time scale has been altered. A minute in the outer world would be a year in this room.
“All the Time in the World” by Arthur C. Clarke, Startling Stories, July 1952.

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).

I’m Scared

by Jack Finney
In the 1950s, a retired man in New York City speculates on a variety of cases of odd temporal occurrences such as the woman who realized that the old dog who persistently followed her in 1947 was actually the puppy she adopted several years later. And then there was the now famous case of Rudolph Fentz who seemingly popped into Times Square on an evening in the 1950s, apparently straight from 1876.
— Michael Main
Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Square—the theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the world—and this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before.
“I’m Scared” by Jack Finney, in Collier’s, 15 September 1951, pp. 24ff..

Poor Little Warrior!

by Brian Aldiss
You are reading an artsy story, told in the second-person, about a time traveler from AD 2181 who hunts a brontosaurus.
Time for listening to the oracle is past; you’re beyond the stage for omens, you’re now headed in for the kill, yours or his; superstition has had its little day for today; from now on, only this windy nerve of yours, this shakey conglomeration of muscle entangled untraceably beneath the sweat-shiny carapice of skin, this bloody little urge to slay the dragon, is going to answer all your orisons.
“Poor Little Warrior!” by Brian Aldiss, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1958.

“—All You Zombies—”

by Robert A. Heinlein
A 25-year-old man, originally born as an orphan girl named Jane, tells his story to a 55-year-old bartender who then recruits him for a time-travel adventure.
— Michael Main
When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.
“‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959.

The Trouble with the Past

by Alex Eisenstein and Phyllis Eisenstein
“The Trouble with the Past” by Alex Eisenstein and Phyllis Eisenstein, in New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories, edited by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, 1971).

Prsten

English release: The Ring Literal: Ring

by Goran Hudek
[ex=bare]“Prsten” | Ring[/ex] by Goran Hudek, Sirius #52, October 1980.

Sailing to Byzantium

by Robert Silverberg
Charles Phillips is a 20th-century New Yorker in a future world of immortal leisurites who reconstruct cities from the past.
— Michael Main
He knew very little about himself, but he knew that he was not one of them. That he knew. He knew that his name was Charles Phillips and that before he had come to live among these people he had lived in the year 1984, when there had been such things as computers and television sets and baseball and jet planes, and the world was full of cities, not merely five but thousands of them, New York and London and Johannesburg and Parks and Liverpool and Bangkok and San Francisco and Buenos Ares and a multitude of others, all at the same time.
“Sailing to Byzantium” by Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1985.
as of 4:35 a.m. MDT, 6 May 2024
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