Wednesday, 19 August 2020

A Time Travel Culmination

Not for the first time, I try to show Poul Anderson's time travel fiction as a culmination by summarizing relevant works.

Anon., "Missing One's Coach," a visit to the past, either dreamed or real;

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court, attempted historical change;

HG Wells, "The Chronic Argonauts," a temporal vehicle, circular causality;

HG Wells, The Time Machine, a temporal vehicle, human devolution, the end of life on Earth;

L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall, deliberate historical change;

Robert Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps," circular causality;

(too many other circular causality works to list here;)

Ward Moore, Bring The Jubilee, accidental historical change;

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever," a temporal vehicle, beyond the end of the universe;

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol series, temporal vehicles, human evolution, an organization to prevent historical changes; both causality paradoxes, mythology as well as history.

See also here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And of course we have stories set in alternate or parallel universes. They could be considered time traveling stories in a way, based on the premise on what might have happened if events had turned out differently. Anderson's contributions being THREE HEARTS AND TREE LIONS, the OPERATION books, A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST. And other writers, such as Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling, have specialized in that branch of SF.

Ad astra! Sean