REVIEW: Time Machines edited by Bill Adler, Jr.
REVIEW SUMMARY: 4 standouts + 12 good stories - 6 Meh = a good collection overall.
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Anthology of 22 stories about time travel.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: 16 stories good or better, including the first alternate history story I actually liked!
CONS: 6 mediocre or less stories. It was a stretch to pigeonhole some of these stories as time travel tales. The story introductions offered very little and in some cases spoiled the story. D'oh!
BOTTOM LINE: A mixed bag, quality-wise, but the good outweighs the bad overall.
I'm always dubious when a book contains a subtitle like Time Machines does, in this case "The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written". Just about everyone has their own opinion of what the best stories are. ("Hello? Where's Heinleins 'All You Zombies…'") Even assuming an editor's personal choices do resonate with a large majority of readers, story inclusion is still hindered by obtaining reprint permissions. Still, I guess it sells more copies than "The Best Time Travel Stories for Which We Could Obtain the Reprint Rights!"
My dubiousness (MS Word tells me that's actually a word. Go figure.) was proved somewhat valid as some of the stories contained herein were of questionable value. Sadly, one of those was by the late, great Isaac Asimov. Worse for the book, the editor's story introductions offered very little and oftentimes they even spoiled the story! Gah! Eventually, I came to read the story intros after I read the story or I'd just skip them altogether.
Fortunately, there were other longer and better stories that pulled this collection's overall rating to land in between good and very good, even a couple of them could only marginally be classified as time travel stories. Standout stories included "The Third Level" by Jack Finney, "Star, Bright" by Mark Clifton, "Bad Timing" by Molly Brown, "You See But You Do Not Observe" by Robert Sawyer, "Fire Watch" by Connie Willis and "The Last Article" by Harry Turtledove.
Reviewlettes follow:
STORIES IN THIS ANTHOLOGY:
- "A Shape in Time" by Anthony Boucher [1970 short story] (Rating:
) [Read 09/04/05]
- Synopsis: A female agent of the time-traveling Marriage-Prevention Bureau named L-3H fails her first mission.
- Review: Meh. Kind of a weak start to this anthology. The ability of the agent to change shape was interesting, as was the particular union she was sent to foil, but this short, short story still failed to impress.
- "Who's Cribbing?" by Jack Lewis [1953 short story] (Rating:
) [Read 09/04/05]
- Synopsis: A science fiction writer finds that all of his original stories have been previously submitted in the past by another writer.
- Review: Humorous and inventive. The story is told through a series of letters between the writer, Jack Lewis, and various editors.
- "The Business, as Usual" by Mack Reynolds [1952 vignette] (Rating: ) [Read 09/04/05]
- Synopsis: A 20th century time traveler tries to bring a 30th century artifact back to his own time.
- Review: A humorous episode predicated on a simple rule of time travel: objects can only travel forward. That knowledge is kept by the 30th century pedestrian and unbeknownst to the 20th century traveler during his 15 minute stay.
- "The Third Level" by Jack Finney [1950 short story] (Rating:
) [Read 09/04/05]
- Synopsis: A man discovers a third level to Grand Central Station that transports him back to 1894.
- Review: Excellent writing makes this story more believable than the premise would lead you to believe it could be.
- "A Touch of Petulance" by Ray Bradbury [1980 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 09/07/05]
- Synopsis: A man travels back in time to warn his younger self to start saving his marriage so that he does not kill his wife in 20 years.
- Review: Told from the perspective of the younger man, this story's good premise was dragged down a bit by the too-lyrical writing style which made the younger man's reactions seem way too melodramatic.
- "The History of Temporal Express" by Wayne Freeze [1997 short story] (Rating:
)
- Synopsis: A term paper on the history of Temporal Express. "When it absolutely, positively has to be there yesterday."
- Review: An interesting idea with a flawed execution. Although the "paper" attempts to define the rules of time travel, it fails to do so. The so-called Theory of Useless Information is flawed from the initial example that is used to describe it.
- "Star, Bright" by Mark Clifton [1952 novelette] (Rating:
) [Read 09/08/05]
- Synopsis: A young, super-intelligent girl named Star learns that she can fold space and travel in time.
- Review: : Excellent story. The way Star slowly learns her capabilities is well done. Her widower father intuits her abilities a little too quickly, but this is still an excellent story.
- "The Last Two Days of Larry Joseph's Life-In This Time, Anyway" by Bill Adler, Jr. [1988 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 09/11/05]
- Synopsis: Slowpoke Larry's two housemates lament about his constant tardiness and slow-running watch.
- Review: Is it narcissistic to include your own story in a book you've compiled and subtitled "The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written"? Without the introduction explaining what's going on, a reader would be hard-pressed to figure out that Larry is moving through time more slowly than the rest of us. However, if that is the case, how come Larry does not notice everyone moving faster?
- "Three Sundays in a Week" by Edgar Allan Poe [1841 short story] (Rating:
) [Read 09/11/05]
- Synopsis: A man promises that a suitor can have his daughter's hand in marriage when three Sundays happen within the same week.
- Review: Forgetting the fact that the "suitor" is actually the girl's cousin and that the girl is fifteen years old - because that whole thing's a little creepy - this hardly qualifies as a time travel story just because two captains travel around the world in opposite directions so that each is one calendar day off from local time. That said, it was still a decent story.
- "Bad Timing" by Molly Brown [1991 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 09/24/05]
- Synopsis: A man fulfills his romantic destiny by contacting a woman from the past, except his timing is poor.
- Review: Very enjoyable and light-hearted story.
- "Night" by John W. Campbell, Jr. writing as Don A. Stuart [1935 novelette] (Rating: ) [Read 09/28/05]
- Synopsis: A pilot testing a new gravity device is accidentally transported to the far future where the Sun and the stars have died.
- Review: Reminiscent of Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" as both are first-hand accounts of a completed adventure on an alien world (even if the "alien" world in this case is a dead Earth. Top notch golden-age science fiction.
- Note: One of Campbell's two "Dying Earth" stories.
- "Time Travelers Never Die" by Jack McDevitt [1996 novella] (Rating: ) [I reviewed this in October, 2004. Here's what I said then.]
- Synopsis: A pair of time travelers use their secret time travel watch devices to experience famous historical happenings. Thanks to the causality of time travel, one of them dies…twice. The other, with the help of a woman who completes a love triangle, must fix the paradox before the current time line is destroyed.
- Review: Very good and well-written story. The first part of the story is more of a murder mystery with no time travel. Then, when the time travel parts kick in (various jaunts into the past) with the paradox cleanup that follows, you feel like your getting three stories in one.
- "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation" by Larry Niven [1977 vignette] (Rating: ) [Read 10/02/05]
- Synopsis: A mathematician tells his Galactic Emperor how to use a rotating cylinder time machine to destroy his wartime enemy.
- Review: Good, but not enough oomph, even for it's small length.
- "What Goes Around" by Derryl Murphy [1997 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 10/02/05]
- Synopsis: Henry Angel, the down-and-out star of the failed 50's TV series Space Cop, is whisked away to the future to be an inspiration for the space pilots.
- Review: A good premise (can you say Galaxy Quest?) whose full potential was not fully realized. Interestingly, this light-hearted story was structured as a series of short "episodes" each offering alternating points of view - thus it read like a TV show.
- "You See But You Do Not Observe" by Robert Sawyer [1995 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 10/03/05]
- Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are brought to the 21st century to solve the riddle of Fermi's paradox.
- Review: As a Sherlock Holmes fan, I can't help but to love this story which, of course, is written like Sherlock Holmes story itself. There's even a re-enactment of "The Final Problem" which is used to solve the paradox. Some of the talk about Schrödinger's Cat and reality being defined by what an observer seems is a little contrived, but it plays into a really fun tale.
- "Ripples in the Dirac Sea" by Geoffrey A. Landis [1988 short story] (Rating: ) [I reviewed this in October, 2004. Here's what I said then.]
- Synopsis: A scientist tests his time travel on himself before the rules are completely understood (can travel only to the past; nothing can be brought forward; you cannot change the future). He is fated to die in a hotel fire except he postpones if repeatedly with the machine, forever inching closer to his doom.
- Review: Good story, structured in three threads that slowly fit the puzzle pieces together. Even with the enjoyably dark mood of the piece, the time travel rules seem a bit contrived to support the situation.
- Note: Winner of the 1990 Nebula Award for best short story.
- "The Odyssey of Flight 33" by Rod Serling [1961 adaptation] (Rating: ) [Read 10/03/05]
- Synopsis: An adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode in which a Boeing 707 inexplicably increases speed to break the time barrier, arriving in the time of dinosaurs, then back home, but not quite far enough.
- Review: Pretty good story that I suspect plays better on the small screen.
- "Fire Watch" by Connie Willis [1982 novelette] (Rating: ) [Read 10/04/05]
- Synopsis: For his final exam, a time traveling history student goes back to St. Paul's Cathedral during WWII - posing as a fire watch volunteer smothering bombs that land on its rooftop - to perform some as-yet-undetermined task.
- Review: Excellent story made all the more appealing by the awesome, spunky writing style - several lines of which elicited laughter, a welcome (but brief) respite from the ever-increasing tensions as the protagonist, "Bartholomew", learns the true goal of his practicum. Wonderful imagery, beautifully worded (and terse) writing make this an exceptionally good story.
- Note: Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novelette in 1983.
- Note: Set in the same universe as Doomsday Book (also the winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards - in 1993) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (the 1999 Hugo winner which I read some years back and liked very much).
- "Fire Watch" was adapted as a one-hour radio drama at the SciFi Channel's Seeing Ear Theater.
- "What If" by Isaac Asimov [1952 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 10/05/05]
- Synopsis: A couple on a train meet a mysterious man who shows them a slab of glass that reveals a how their lives could have been if the event that brought them together (the lurching of a streetcar) never happened.
- Review: Meh. Interesting premise but the couple's relationship came across as too Ozzie and Harriet for my tastes. I wanted to see a more dramatic alternate reality (leaving alone for the moment that there was no time travel involved as was advertised). I will say that it read like a Twilight Zone episode.
- "There and Then" by Steven Utley [1993 novelette] (Rating: ) [Read 10/06/05]
- Synopsis: Days in the life of a research ship (as in sea-faring vessel) sent back in time to study the Paleozoic era. A visitor (Jack King) arrives from a corporation that wants to raid the past for natural resources and ruffles the jealous feathers of a writer (Kevin) as he gains the attention of the female crew member (Vicki) that the writer pines for.
- Review: I'm not sure what I was expecting. Although the story was about the people, as all good stories should be, I wasn't all that interested in the characters. As the protagonist, Kevin just seemed like an unimportant observer. Still, the story had some high points. The dialogue was conversational and the contention between Kevin and King was nicely done.
- "Wireless" by Rudyard Kipling [1902 short story] (Rating: ) [Read 10/07/05]
- Synopsis: After drinking a concoction made at a turn-of-the-century chemist where they are testing a "Marconi device", a man becomes an induction vessel for someone in the past - the poet Keats.
- Review: Meh. The idea of induction was decent enough to base a story on, but instead of the device picking up a signal from the past, a poet is channeled? Sigh.
- "The Last Article" by Harry Turtledove [1988 novelette] (Rating: ) [Read 10/08/05]
- Synopsis: It's Gandhi vs. Hitler! Actually, it's Gandhi versus a Nazi Field Marshal in an alternate history story in which the German forces have conquered India.
- Review: This was an excellent story in its own right, but to me it seems all the more extraordinary because this is the first alternate history story I actually liked. Then again, maybe it was because the story was light on the history and emphasized the simple "violence vs. passive resistance" theme that is so central to the plot. Whatever the reason, this was a top-notch tale. The title is in reference to a Gandhi quote that appears at the start of the story: "Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed."
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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday October 08, 2005 at 11:39 PM
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