From The Future II

When a time travel story opens in the historical or the prehistorical past, this is because some or at least one of the characters have time travelled to that period from our present or future. It could hardly be otherwise. 

Time travel stories do not usually begin in the future. We do not often see a futurian deciding, or setting out, to visit the twentieth or the twenty-first century. We do see the effects in the present of time travellers from the future, e.g., in Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" and The Dancer From Atlantis. 

Anderson's The Corridors Of Time opens with a contemporary setting and, in its opening sentence:

"The guard said, 'You got a visitor...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (St. Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER ONE, p. 7 -

- begins to introduce a character who will turn out to be a time traveller from the future. But it will take quite a while for this text - as opposed to the title, cover illustration and blurb - to disclose that the novel is sf and not any other genre. Let us reread the opening chapters of The Corridors... in order to remind ourselves of how the author presents his theme.