Time-Travel Fiction

We are masters of time. We live at the farthest frontier of time itself, and all the ages belong to us. No words could begin to describe the vastness of our empire or the futility of opposing us.

A curious feature of time travel back from the present is that one gets younger and younger, becoming successively a youth, a child, an embryo and finally nothing at all.

‘Four-dimensional, Mr. Mac? But the fourth dimension is time.’ I had learned that the year before, in the third grade.

The technicians would “save” themselves ten years of labor and the new sweeping highway in the future and the past would be open to mankind within the life of its discoverer.

I’ve simply come back into time at the wrong point.

Are you not a Man, and do not Men know everything? But I am only a...

Years ago in one of those American magazines, there was a story of a man who saw himself. He came through a woods somewhere and stumbled on a machine, got in, and it took him three days back in time. Then, he lived forward again, saw himself get in the machine and go back.

The German professor had a nice idea for making archeology a branch of Blitzkrieg technique—with the aid of a little tinkering with Time.
—from John W. Campbell’s introduction to the story

Kenrube was at Gribe Schloss before two P.M., March 21st. This completely nullifies the six P.M. story. Place these scoundrels under arrest, and bring them before me at eight o’clock tonight.
—comment on a memo from Himmler

Well, didn’t you realize that this uncertainty holds for the past, too? I hadn’t until Quarrels pointed it out. All we have is a lot of incomplete data. Is it just because we’re stupid? Not at all. We can’t find a unique wave function.

Elliot Gallant went back into time thirty years. He liked the peaceful days of yesteryear. He married, had a son.

Well, sir, that little machine traveled so fast that before we could stop it we found ourselves in the last century. Somewhere in the 1890s. We were going to drop our oil drip there but I happened to remember that my grandfather was spending his honeymoon in Tokyo sometime during that decade—

Yes, they were practically all here, thought Doc Smith, as his gaze moved from one to another of the circle. Williamson, Miller, Hubbard, Bond, McClary, Rocklynne, Heinlein and MacDonald, and many others who had once written about the mysteries of time travel—so many hundreds of years ago now.

That is only to be expected when you jump five hundred years, but it is nonetheless perplexing to have your first query of" “What city is this?” answered by the sentence: “Stappers will get you. Or be you Slanduch?”

The—robot— was trying to be helpful. Only Kerry would have preferred to remain drunk.

We can use a limited number of agents for our “foreign” department, but they must be wiry, active, of unusually sound constitution, and familiar with the use of all types of weapons. They MUST be resourceful, of quick decision, tact and of proven courage, as they may be called upon to work in difficult and dangerous situations without guidance or supervision. Previous experience in purchasing or sales work desirable but not necessary. EX-COMMANDO MEN usually do well with us.

With the aid of the mystic powers of Princess Ione, mistress of scientific wonders...
—from the splash page