Down Through The Past To The Present

Here, I quote a page of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time (New York, 1973) on which the time travelers traverse geological epochs, then stop "...for a last rest in the house of a young farmer..." (p. 158). They began their journey with glaciers, then arrived near the period that we regard as our present.

A similar effect is generated by the first 257 pages of Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991). The novel began in 310 BC (not quite as far back) and has progressed through AD 19, 359, 641, 998, 1050, 1072, 1221, 1239, 1570, 1640 and 1710 to Chapter XIII, set in 1855, when newly introduced characters have the kinds of names with which we are familiar like Matthew and Jane Edmonds. We are approaching our "present," in this case 1975, and after that will continue into an indefinite future.

In mainstream fiction, no single character or group of characters would be able to survive through all these periods but both immortals and time travelers can.