Trains And Time

"You can say what you like about Mussolini. At least he made the trains run on time!" 

I have heard that saying quoted more than once with varying degrees of amusement, irony or sarcasm but  have not been able to trace its source. I even started to say to a colleague, "You can say what you like about Mussolini...," only to be interrupted by him saying, "And I do!"

Trains in the North West of England and in Scotland did not run on time today. Hot weather was blamed. Road transport would be arranged for anyone travelling further than Edinburgh.

Might time travellers have similar problems? Suppose it took a subjective hour to travel an objective million years starting from 2025 but a subjective day to travel the same distance starting from 2125? Might the service deteriorate over time?

Let's stay with the idea of a man from the "present," or from the near future, somehow transported into a reasonably remote future:

HG Wells, The Time Machine;

Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever";

James Blish, Midsummer Century;

Philip Jose Farmer, The Stone God Awakens;

Larry Niven, A World Out Of Time.

Two Acknowledgements Or Admissions

First, I have not read The Stone God Awakens although I am reliably informed that it belongs on this list.

Secondly, I will now add Robert Heinlein's The Door Into The Summer to the list even though its protagonist sleeps for only thirty years. He has something else in common with some of these other guys.

Wells' Time Traveller travels from "now" (1895 or so) to 802,701 AD and beyond and returns.

Anderson's Martin Saunders travels from 1973 to the furthest possible future and returns around the circle of time.

Blish's John Martels is time projected from 1985 to 25,000 AD and stays in that era.

Niven's Jerome Branch Corbell becomes a "corpsicle," a frozen corpse, in 1970 but someone injected with his memory RNA is still alive, with a renewable rejuvenation technology, three million years later!

Heinlein's Daniel Boone Davis survives from 1970 to 2000 by suspended animation, lives into 2001, time travels to 1970 and returns to 2001 by suspended animation.

1970 is in there twice. Also 1973 and 1985. All our yesterdays, now. But we never tire of reviewing them. At least I don't.