Suspended Animation Or Temporal Stasis (And Time Travel)

OK. We, editorially speaking, are thinking about HG Wells, Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson. Heinlein is a successor of Wells and Anderson is a successor of both.

Wells' When The Sleeper Wakes, about suspended animation, was serialized in The Graphic in 1899.

Anderson's "Time Heals," about temporal stasis, was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949.

Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, about both suspended animation and time travel, was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956.

(Both The Door Into Summer and Anderson's first story about Nicholas van Rijn, "Margin of Profit," were published in late 1956 when I was in my first term at a Scottish boarding school. In a science fictional future, I write about these works on a world-wide web of computers in 2026.)

The Sleeper's inherited wealth has been put into a trust that has become the basis of the world order.

In "Time Heals," Hart has invested all his money before going into temporal stasis. That money does not survive historical changes but, in 2837/2841, he avails of free public transport and an unlimited government credit card.

In The Door Into Summer, Dan Davis had lived in Connecticut, recalling the title of Mark Twain's time travel novel. Insurance companies promoting suspended animation give away free copies of Wells' book and Davis knows all about compound interest and stock appreciation. People with incurable diseases go into suspended animation as they had gone into temporal stasis in "Time Heals."

We can also list one time travel novel by each of these three authors:

Wells, The Time Machine (1895)

Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (1956)

Anderson, There Will Be Time (1972)

Anderson, of course, wrote much more than just this single volume about time travel. However, There Will Be Time seems particularly appropriate as a successor to The Time Machine. Anderson's mutant time travellers, like Wells' Time Traveller, see the world flashing past them while they are in transit.