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Time Travel Omnibus
Volume 1: A thru M
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
How to Build a Time Machine (essay)
Dr. Stephen Hawking
3 RMS, GOOD VIEW
Karen Haber
12:01 P.M.
Richard A. Lupoff
“ALL YOU ZOMBIES—”
Robert Heinlein
A BETTER PLACE
Linda P. Baker
A BRIDGE IN TIME
Joseph P. Martino
A DREAM OF JOHN BALL
William Morris
A FEW GOOD MEN
Richard A. Lovett
A FRIEND TO ALEXANDER
James Thurber
A GUN FOR DINOSAUR
L. Sprague de camp
A HISTORY OF TEMPORAL EXPRESS
Wayne Freeze
A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR US TEMPUNAUTS
Philip K. Dick
A MATTER OF TIME
Robert Reginald
A NIGHT ON THE BARBARY COAST
Kage Baker
A NIGHT TO FORGET
C.A. Verstraete
A PASSION FOR TIME TRAVEL
Donlad J. Bingle
A PORTRAIT OF TIME
Kelly Swalis
A RELIC OF THE PLIOCENE
Jack London
A SHAPE IN TIME
Anthony Boucher
A SOUND OF THUNDER
Ray Bradbury
A TALE OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS
Edgar Allen Poe
A TOUCH OF PETULANCE
Ray Bradbury
A TRAVELER IN TIME
August Derleth
A VIEW FROM A HILL
M.R. James
A WITCH IN TIME
Janet Fox
ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT
Algernon Blackwood
AFTER-IMAGES
Malcolm Edwards
A VIEW FROM A HILL
Gene Wolfe
AIR RAID
John Varley
ALEXIA AND GRAHAM BELL
Rosaleen Love
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
Arthur C. Clarke
AMBITION
William L. Blade
AMPHISKIOS
John D. MacDonald
AN ANACHRONISM; OR MISSING ONE’S COACH
Anonymous
AN UNCOMMON SORT OF SPECTRE
Edward Page Mitchell
ANACHRON
Damon Knight
AND HAPPINESS EVERLASTING
Gerlad Warfield
AND COMES OUT HERE
Lester del Rey
ANNIVERSARY PROJECT
Joe Haldeman
ANOTHER STORY
Ursula K. Le Guin
ANYTHING WOULD BE WORTH IT
Lesley L. Smith
APOLOGY
Sam Ferree
ARISTOTLE AND THE GUN
L. Sprague de camp
ARMAGEDDON—2419 A.D.
Philip F. Nowlan
P. Schuyler Miller
AS TIME GOES BY
Tanith Lee
AT DORADO
Geoffrey Landis
AUGUST HEAT
William Fryer Harvey
AUGUSTA PRIMA
Karen Tidbeck
BACKTRACKED
Burt Filer
BACK
Susan Forest
BAD TIMING
Molly Brown
BALSAMO'S MIRROR
L. Sprague de Camp
BEEN A LONG TIME
Matthew P. Mayo
BETWEEN THE MINUTE AND THE HOUR
A.M. Burrage
BIRTH OF A NOTION
Isaac Asimov
BLANK!
Isaac Asimov
BLUE INK
Yoon Ha Lee
BROOKLYN PROJECT
William Tenn
BRUCK IN TIME
Patrick McGilligan
BUILT UPON THE SANDS OF TIME
Michael Flynn
BURNT NORTON (a poem)
T.S. Elliot
BUS
William Grewe-Mullins
BUSINESS OF KILLING
Fritz Lieber
BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE
Chris Pierson
BUTTON, BUTTON
Isaac Asimov
BULL MOOSE OF BABYLON
Don Wilcox
BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS
Robert Heinlein
BY HIS SACRIFICE
Daliso Chaponda
BY OUR ACTIONS
Michael A. Stackpole
CASTAWAY
A. Bertram Chandler
CAVEAT TIME TRAVELER
Gregory Benford
CAVERNS OF TIME
Carlos McCune
CENTURY TO STARBOARD
Liz Williams
CHAOS THEORY
Stephen Leigh
CLOSING THE TIMELID
Orson Scott Card
COME-FROM-AWAYS
Tony Pi
COMING BACK
Damien Broderick
COMPOUND INTEREST
Mack Reynolds
CONDITIONAL PERFECT
Jason Palmer
CONVOLUTION
James P. Hogan
BESPOKE
Genevieve Valentine
CORRESPONDENCE
Ruthanna Emrys
DARWIN’S SUITCASE
Elisabeth Malartre
DAY OF THE HUNTERS
Isaac Asimov
DEAR TOMORROW
Simon Clark
DEATHBED
Caroline M. Yoachim
DEATH SHIP
Richard Matheson
DECISIONS
Michael A. Burstein
DELHI
Vandana Singh
DOMINE
Rjurik Davidson
DOMINOES
C.M. Kornbluth
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Robert Sheckley
DOWNTOWN KNIGHT
James M. Ward
DOXIES
Brandon Alspaugh
DRAFT DODGER’S RAG
Jeff Hecht
DRINK IN A SMALL TOWN
Peter Wood
ENDOWMENT POLICY
Henry Kuttner
ENOCH SOAMES: A MEMORY OF THE EIGHTEEN-NINETIES
Max Beerbohn
ENTER A SOLDIER. LATER: ENTER ANOTHER
Robert Silverberg
ETCHED IN MOONLIGHT
James Stephens
EVERYWHERE ELSE AND OTHERWISE
Algernon Blackwood
EXPERIMENT
Fredric Brown
EXTEMPORE
Damon Knight
FISH NIGHT
Joe R. Lansdale
FIRE WATCH
Connie Willis
FIRST FIGHT
Mary Robinette Kowal
FLAME FOR THE FUTURE
William P. McGivern
FLIGHT FROM TOMORROW
H. Beam Piper
FLUX
Michael Moorcock
FORTY, COUNTING DOWN
Harry Turtledove
FULL CHICKEN RICHNESS
Avram Davidson
FUTURES MARKET
Mitchell Edgeworth
GET ME TO THE JOB ON TIME
Ian Randal Strock
GRANDFATHER PARADOX
Ian Stewart
GREENWICH NASTY TIME
C
arl Frederick
HALL OF MIRRORS
Fredic Brown
HE COULD BE AMBROSE BIERCE
Shaenon Kelty Garrity
HE WALKED AROUND THE HORSES
H. Beam Piper
HEREDITY
Isaac Asimov
HERITAGE
Robert Abernathy
HEY, LOOK AT ME
Jack Finney
HIMSELF IN ANACHRON
Cordwainer Smith
HOLE-IN-THE-WALL
Bridget McKenna
HOME ALONE
Jack Finney
HOT TIP
Billy Bruce Winkles
HOUSE OF BONES
Robert Silverberg
HOW I LOST THE SECOND WORLD WAR . . .
Gene Wolfe
HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
Pat Murphy
HOW THE FUTURE GOT BETTER
Eric Schaller
HWANG’S BILLION BRILLIANT DAUGHTERS
Alice Sola Kim
I HEAR YOU CALLING
Eric F. Russell
I LOVE GALESBURG IN THE SPRINGTIME
Jack Finney
IAN'S IONS AND EONS
Paul Levinson
IF THIS IS WINNETKA, YOU MUST BE JUDY
F.M. Busby
I’M SCARED
Jack Finney
“IN THE BEGINNING, NOTHING LASTS . . .”
Michael A. Stackpole
IN THE CARDS
Alan Cogan
IN THE CRACKS OF TIME
David Grace
IN THE TUBE
E.F. Benson
INSIDE TIME
Tim Sullivan
INSIDE THE BOX
Edward M. Lerner
IF I EVER SHOULD LEAVE YOU
Pamela Sargent
IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?
Kim Newman
IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME
James M. Ward
JOHN BARTINE’S WATCH
Ambrose Bierce
JOIN OUR TEAM OF TIME TRAVEL PROFESSIONALS
Sarah Pinkser
JUST ENOUGH TIME
Douglas K. Beagley
KIDNAPED INTO THE FUTURE
William P. McGivern
KNOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S KNOT
Howard V. Hendrix
LAST BORN
Isaac Asimov
LEGIONS IN TIME
Michael Swanwick
LETTING GO
Alex Shvartsman
LEVIATHAN!
Larry Niven
LIFE TRAP
Barrington J. Bayley
LIMITED TIME OFFER
Dean Leggett
LOOB
Bob Leman
LOST CONTINENT
Greg Egan
LOST IN TIME
Arthur Leo Zagat
LOST IN THE FUTURE
John Victor Peterson
LOVE AND GLASS
Michael Scott Bicker
LOVE AT THE CORNER OF TIME AND SPACE
Annie Bellet
LUNCH-HOUR MAGIC
Jack Finney
MAN FROM THE FUTURE
Don Wilcox
MAN IN HIS TIME
Brian W. Aldiss
MARATHON PHOTOGRAPH
Clifford D. Simak
MATING HABITS OF THE LATE CRETACEOUS
Don Bailey
MEMORIES OF LIGHT AND SOUND
Steven Saus
MEMORIES OF MY MOTHER
Ken Liu
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
Nalo Hopkinson
MIDNIGHT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
Eric Ian Steele
MR. PAUL REVERE AND THE TIME MACHINE
J.B. Priestley
MR. STENBERRY’S TALE
A.W. Bernal
MUNDANE LANE
Kevin J. Anderson
MY NAME IS LEGION
Lester del Rey
HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE
Dr. Stephen Hawking
All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast . . .
‘Through the wormhole, the scientist can see himself as he was one minute ago. But what if our scientist uses the wormhole to shoot his earlier self? He’s now dead. So who fired the shot?’
Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking. Physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free. Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions, such as: is time travel possible? Can we open a portal to the past or find a shortcut to the future? Can we ultimately use the laws of nature to become masters of time itself?
Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I’m not so cautious. In fact, I’m more like the people who built Stonehenge. I’m obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I’d even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.
To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do—at the fourth dimension. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length.
But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension.
To see what that means, let’s imagine we’re doing a bit of normal, everyday car travel. Drive in a straight line and you’re travelling in one dimension. Turn right or left and you add the second dimension. Drive up or down a twisty mountain road and that adds height, so that’s travelling in all three dimensions. But how on Earth do we travel in time? How do we find a path through the fourth dimension?
Let’s indulge in a little science fiction for a moment. Time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine. The machine creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time. A time traveller, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when. The concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from this, but the idea itself is not so crazy.
Physicists have been thinking about tunnels in time too, but we come at it from a different angle. We wonder if portals to the past or the future could ever be possible within the laws of nature. As it turns out, we think they are. What’s more, we’ve even given them a name: wormholes. The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they’re too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me.
A ‘wormhole-tunnel’
A wormhole is a theoretical ‘tunnel’ or shortcut, predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity, that links two places in space-time—visualised above as the contours of a 3-D map, where negative energy pulls space and time into the mouth of a tunnel, emerging in another universe. They remain only hypothetical, as obviously nobody has ever seen one, but have been used in films as conduits for time travel—in Stargate (1994), for example, involving gated tunnels between universes, and in Time Bandits (1981), where their locations are shown on a celestial map
Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you’ll find holes and wrinkles in it. It’s a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids. Now it’s easy to show that this is true in the first three dimensions. But trust me, it’s also true of the fourth dimension. There are tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids in time. Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a plac
e called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times.
Unfortunately, these real-life time tunnels are just a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimetre across. Way too small for a human to pass through—but here’s where the notion of wormhole time machines is leading. Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it many trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to enter.
Given enough power and advanced technology, perhaps a giant wormhole could even be constructed in space. I’m not saying it can be done, but if it could be, it would be a truly remarkable device. One end could be here near Earth, and the other far, far away, near some distant planet.
Theoretically, a time tunnel or wormhole could do even more than take us to other planets. If both ends were in the same place, and separated by time instead of distance, a ship could fly in and come out still near Earth, but in the distant past. Maybe dinosaurs would witness the ship coming in for a landing.
The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000mph. But to travel in time we’ll have to go more than 2,000 times faster
Now, I realise that thinking in four dimensions is not easy, and that wormholes are a tricky concept to wrap your head around, but hang in there. I’ve thought up a simple experiment that could reveal if human time travel through a wormhole is possible now, or even in the future. I like simple experiments, and champagne.
So I’ve combined two of my favourite things to see if time travel from the future to the past is possible.
Let’s imagine I’m throwing a party, a welcome reception for future time travellers. But there’s a twist. I’m not letting anyone know about it until after the party has happened. I’ve drawn up an invitation giving the exact coordinates in time and space. I am hoping copies of it, in one form or another, will be around for many thousands of years. Maybe one day someone living in the future will find the information on the invitation and use a wormhole time machine to come back to my party, proving that time travel will, one day, be possible.
In the meantime, my time traveller guests should be arriving any moment now. Five, four, three, two, one. But as I say this, no one has arrived. What a shame. I was hoping at least a future Miss Universe was going to step through the door. So why didn’t the experiment work? One of the reasons might be because of a well-known problem with time travel to the past, the problem of what we call paradoxes.
Paradoxes are fun to think about. The most famous one is usually called the Grandfather paradox. I have a new, simpler version I call the Mad Scientist paradox.
I don’t like the way scientists in movies are often described as mad, but in this case, it’s true. This chap is determined to create a paradox, even if it costs him his life. Imagine, somehow, he’s built a wormhole, a time tunnel that stretches just one minute into the past.