Two Dissimilar Works

Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever" (1950) and CS Lewis' Out Of The Silent Planet (1938) are very dissimilar works. "Flight..." is pulp magazine sf whereas ...Silent Planet was acknowledged as a work of literature by Arthur C. Clarke. However, we find one concept common to both works.

...Silent Planet is about space travel and ends with a reference to time travel. "Flight..." is about time travel. In ...Silent Planet, because the villain, Weston, has closed the door on interplanetary travel, Ransom tells Lewis that the only remaining way to the planets is through time travel. At the end of "Flight...," the door is closed on time travel.

Before Weston's spaceship left Mars to return to Earth, some Martians treated it in such a way that, after ninety days, whether on Earth or still in space, it would "unbody" and become nothing. When Martin Saunders returns to 1973, his time projector dissolves into nothingness because the "gods" in the far future had preprogrammed its annihilation. In both cases, the annihilation is accompanied by a flash of light.