Time Travel In SF

Space travel can mean Terrestrials departing or aliens arriving. See "Space Travel In SF," here. As with space travel, so also with time travel. Fictional time travelers may either depart from the present or arrive from the future.

Although Wells' Time Traveler invented the Time Machine in the late nineteenth century, J.B. Priestley wrote a story in which a character argued that it was far more likely that time travelers would arrive now from our future. Needless to say, Poul Anderson addresses both options:

in some stories, the characters develop time travel technology in their present, our near future;

Jack Havig, living "now," finds that he has the mutant ability to time travel by an act of will;

Manse Everard is recruited into a Time Patrol that will be founded in the future;

Malcolm Lockridge is recruited into a war that is waged from the future;

a handful of characters are pulled into their past by a malfunctioning temporal vehicle from their future.

Poul Anderson covers far more angles than any other sf writer.