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Time Machines

Weird Fantasy #14 (1950)

The Trap of Time!

by Gardner Fox and Jack Kamen

Physicist Don Hartley has a plan to save his beloved Adele, who died in a car crash on a hot July night.
— Michael Main
You will be tampering with tremendous natural forces, Don! It is dangerous! You may unleash some awful catastrophe!

“The Trap of Time!” by Gardner Fox and Jack Kamen, Weird Fantasy #14 (EC Comics, July/August 1950).

Weird Fantasy #15 (1950)

I Died Tomorrow!

by Gardner Fox and Jack Kamen

When a mad scientist with a time machine gets together with a power-crazed university president, the result is deadly (and time travel aspects of the plot makes little sense).
— Michael Main
I licked my lips greedily! I had to have that time-machine!

“I Died Tomorrow!” by Gardner Fox and Jack Kamen, Weird Fantasy #15 (EC Comics, September/October 1950).

Weird Fantasy #17 (1951)

The Time Machine and the Shmoe!

by Harvey Kurtzman

Cleaning man Donald Yubyutch is fed up with everyone at the time travel lab thinking he’s nothing but a shmoe.
— Michael Main
Please sir, professor, sir! Can I go along with you on the time machine?

“The Time Machine and the Shmoe!” by Harvey Kurtzman, Weird Fantasy #157 (EC Comics, January/February 1951).

Journey into Mystery #28

They Wouldn’t Believe Him!

by unknown writers and Pete Tumlinson

To escape a forced marriage, a woman in the future tries to disappear into the pase, but her fiance tracks her down.
— Michael Main
I’ll marry you, Everest! But first may I go on a short time-vacation?

“They Wouldn’t Believe Him!” by unknown writers and Pete Tumlinson, in Journey into Mystery #28 (Atlas Comics, November1955).

Unusual Tales #5

The Man Who Changed Times

by Joe Gill [?] and Dick Gordano [?]

A prisoner, Vincent Rand, is offered a way out of his ten-year sentence.
— Michael Main
Wouldn’t you prefer being free, even five hundred years in the past, to serving out a ten year sentence in this prison?

“The Man Who Changed Times” by Joe Gill [?] and Dick Gordano [?], Unusual Tales #5 (Charlton Comics, September 1956).

Jessamy

by Barbara Sleigh

Visiting with the caretaker of an empty old mansion, orphaned Jessamy emerges from the nursery closet into the world of 1914 when her namesake lived in the same house and left her adventures and a mystery to be solved again in the present.
— from publicity material
Somehow I’ve become another Jessamy in a different time! It must be a different time because of the clothes. Nobody wears long skirts like Matchett and Aunt now—I mean that—oh, I don’t know what I mean!

Jessamy by Barbara Sleigh (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967).

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).

Closing the Timelid

by Orson Scott Card

Centuries in the future, Orion throws an illicit party in which the partygoers get to experience complete death in the past.
— Michael Main
Ah, agony in a tearing that made him feel, for the first time, every particle of his body as it screamed in pain.

“Closing the Timelid” by Orson Scott Card, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1979.

Horrid Henry stories 13.2

Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine

by Francesca Simon

Henry builds a time machine out of the box that the washing machine arrived in, and he’s his usual horrid self in bringing with his little brother Peter up to speed about the whole thing.
— Michael Main
“I’m going to the future and you can’t stop me,” said Peter.

“Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine” by Francesca Simon, in Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine [four stories] (Orion Children’s Books, 2005).

Horrid Henry [s01e16]

Horrid Henry’s Time Machine

by Francesca Simon

In the cartoon version of the short story, Henry imagines that his time machine is an elaborate time ship, at least until his perfect little brother brings him out of his daydream and back to the real world of cardboard.
— Michael Main
Peter: “I'm going to the future. I want to see it for myself!”

Horrid Henry’s Time Machine by Francesca Simon, from Horrid Henry [s01e16] by Malcolm Williamson, directed by Dave Unwin (ITV, UK, 18 December 2006).

Arthur Travels Back in Time

by Gene Lipen and Judith San Nicolas

Arthur the fearless dog travels to different times in a large blue cannister. The story is written in verse that ignores meter and uses rhymes that don’t quite work.
— Ruthie Mariner
With sights on events his eyes have never seen, Arthur is ready for his new time machine.

Arthur Travels Back in Time by Gene Lipen and Judith San Nicolas (Gene Lipen, November 2020).

Da Vinci’s Cat

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

As a hostage to Pope Julius II in 1511 Rome, 11-year-old Federico is lonely until he receives a visit from a tawny cat, an art collector from the 20th century, and an 11-year-old kid named Bee from the 21st century.
— Michael Main
All we need is to get Raphael to draw me and make sure he signs it.

Da Vinci’s Cat by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Greenwillow Books, May 2021) [print · e-book].

Your Cat

by Beth Cato

You travel back in time to save your childhood cat in exactly the way that you know she was saved.
— Michael Main
You have traveled thirty years back in time to save your cat.

“Your Cat” by Beth Cato, Daily Science Fiction, 21 September 2021 [webzine].

as of 3:28 p.m. MDT, 18 May 2024
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