Monday, 12 October 2026

The Tradition

We have identified a literary tradition whose characters transition or "travel" (inaccurate and misleading though that word is) into the future. Three primary authors are:

HG Wells
both time travel and suspended animation

Robert Heinlein
three circular causality narratives, one featuring suspended animation as well as time travel

Poul Anderson
six time travel volumes: 

three novels; 
one series; 
enough short stories for a collection

Another major name, in my opinion, is CS Lewis whose Ransom Trilogy is a Christian response to Wellsian secular sf and whose "The Dark Tower" is specifically a response to the The Time Machine because it begins by arguing the impossibility of physical time travel and then presents both a chronoscope and mental travel between alternative timelines. And, to cap it all, both Heinlein and Lewis mention the two ladies at Trianon.

Poul Anderson's readers can, if they want to, move to other authors with common themes and then to reports of psychic experiences.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I looked up the "two ladies at Trianon" incident, and it seems to have been convincingly debunked.

Ad astra! Sean