Into Futurity

 

A time traveler experiences either a time-consuming journey or an instantaneous transition.

Instantaneous Transitions

(i) The timecycles and other temporal vehicles in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

(ii) In James Blish's Midsummer Century, John Martels loses consciousness in 1971 and regains it in 25,000 A.D.

Time-Consuming Journeys

One example is the mutant time travelers in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time. However, I want to focus on those who make a single long journey into a remote future:

HG Wells' Time Traveler goes to 802,701 A.D., then to the end of all life on Earth;

in Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," Martin Saunders in the time projector goes to the end of the universe and beyond;

in Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic, Volume IV, The Road To Nowhere, Mister E and Timothy Hunter magically walk through possible futures to the end of the universe.

Personified Death returns Timothy to 1991 without delay but tells E that he must walk back one step at a time. In 1991, John Constantine seems to think that E is still making his own way back... Even a writer like Neil Gaiman forgets the difference between time and space.