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The Time Traveler's Almanac

Ann VanderMeer (Editor),

Jeff VanderMeer (Goodreads Author) (Editor)

3.87 · Rating details · 905 ratings · 146 reviews

The Time Traveler's Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century's worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved ...more

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Paperback, 948 pages

Published March 18th 2014 by Tor Books (first published November 7th 2013)

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Jan 05, 2014 Mark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As we approach the end of the year, we get another behemoth collection from the Vandermeers and Head of Zeus. After 2011s The Weird, which deservedly won awards, and last years Zombies! in 2013 we get The Time Travellers Almanac. (Or at least we do here in the UK: US readers will have to travel a little further in time until March 2014 for their copies.)

There are many collections of time travel stories out there. This one is claimed to be the biggest, and, as Im sure many reviews will say, this As we approach the end of the year, we get another behemoth collection from the Vandermeers and Head of Zeus. After 2011′s The Weird, which deservedly won awards, and last year’s Zombies! in 2013 we get The Time Traveller’s Almanac. (Or at least we do here in the UK: US readers will have to travel a little further in time until March 2014 for their copies.)

There are many collections of time travel stories out there. This one is claimed to be the biggest, and, as I’m sure many reviews will say, this is a huge book. 800+ pages of fairly small print, with over sixty authors and over one hundred stories. There’s certainly a range here.

This size is both a blessing and a curse. As a result of its size I found that it’s a book that has to be dipped into in stages, rather than try and read in one go. To help – and as the subtitle above will tell you- there is an overall connecting theme, which I liked – that this is a book brought to us from time-travellers in the future, from 2150. To further help the reader gain a grasp of this nebulous ‘timey-wimey’ concept (to paraphrase Doctor Who), the book is divided into broad sections – Experiments, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries, Mazes and Traps, and Communiques.

The first section, Experiments, features stories in which people are experimenting with time travel or are subjects of experimentation, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries is stories where people try to protect the past, Mazes and Traps are tales where time paradoxes are prevalent, and Communiques are stories about people trying to get a message to someone/somewhen out of their own time, either in the past or the future.

There are also non-fictional interludes along the way summarising key points of travel: Top Ten Tips for Time Travellers, Time Travel in Theory and Practice, Fashion for Time Travellers, Music for Time Travellers. (Some may be pleased to note that David Bowie is not mentioned in any of those.)

It is difficult to summarise such a tome, and it would perhaps be wrong of me to try. However, like the previous Vandermeer collection, I found old personal favourites (Ray Bradbury, HG Wells, Asimov, Kuttner and Moore, Connie Willis) as well as ones totally new to me (Vandana Singh, Dean Francis Alfar, Rosaleen Love, Karen Haber, Rjurik Davidson). I found stories from authors I liked, but hadn’t read (George RR Martin, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Kim Newman, Eric Frank Russell) and stories I know others will like but left me cold (Ursula K leGuin, Adam Roberts). There are some old ones (Edward Page Mitchell’s The Clock that went Backward, 1881, regarded here as one of the earliest time-travel tales, Max Beerbohn’s Enoch Soames, 1916, EF Benson’s In the Tube 1923), and some relatively new ones (John Chu’s Thirty Seconds from Now, 2011, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Mouse Ran Down, 2012). There were some that I forgot nearly as soon as I had finished reading them, even some I disliked. But that is the nature of such an eclectic assemblage: if you don’t like one, there’ll be another along in a minute that you probably will.

With such an enormous collection, there are bound to be gaps and lapses – or, as the book’s Preface put it, ‘wormholes and rifts’, although any book claiming to be ‘The Ultimate’ something is just asking for trouble. I was surprised not to find some of the ‘old timer’ tales here, even if just to show how far such tales have developed.

Such matters usually lead to that great debate over what has been included and what’s not: why has Mike Moorcock’s Pale Rose been included rather than the much more famous short story Behold the Man? (The Vandermeers do actually explain that one themselves in their introduction to Mike’s story.) Why is there an extract from HG Wells’ short novel, The Time Machine, rather than his earlier short story, The Chronic Argonauts (which inspired him to write The Time Machine)? Why no Poul Anderson (Time Patrol), no H Beam Piper (Paratime stories), no Jack Finney (Time and Time Again) or L. Sprague de Camp (Lest Darkness Fall)?*

This highlights an issue with this and other such collections, as to whether as an editor you try and cover the range and show the evolution of such tales by giving stories that are (ironically) endemic of their time, or go for what you see as ‘the best’, bearing in mind that such statements are qualitative anyway. Here the Vandermeers seem to have gone for the latter, even when some may be disappointed by the choices made, and other authors have the privilege of being included more than once – Kage Baker twice, Gene Wolfe twice (though this one has good reason, being connected tales), for example, although the quality of the stories is more good than bad. Such discussions are the basis of many an Internet forum/social media site.

One minor quibble, but the sort of thing I pick up on quickly, and others may be put off by it – I was a little dismayed to find that the first thing read in the Vandermeer’s Preface was a quote, with the person’s name spelt wrong – Stephen Hawking, not Hawkings! – which made me worry that the rest of the book would be as sloppy – it’s easy to mess up in a book of this size. Thankfully, after that things calmed down a little.

Such points may make you feel that this collection is a disappointment. It’s really not, but its choices may not be to everyone’s taste. There’s enough here to generate debate, a big enough range to give the reader an idea of just how big the topic is, and enough relative quality to offset the dingbats. This is how any collection should be.

For me, if I’m brutally honest, I liked this book, more than Zombies! (which was itself very good), although it must be said not as much as The Weird. It is, for all my quibbles, a very good collection and I would go so far as to say that it is an essential read. As an accumulation of time travel tales, it is hard to beat. Recommended.

*(These are the first I thought of. I’m sure that there will be others that can be mentioned.) ...more

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Mar 22, 2014 Timothy Ward is currently reading it

Shelves: short-stories, time-travel, tor

I'm doing a group read with a few time travel fans. One story each Thursday, starting September 3. Hop in any time: http://www.timothycward.com/the-time-... or follow using #TimeTravelThursday

Sept. 3 Richard Matheson/ Death Ship (review)

4/5 stars for a terrifying hook that only gets better in the last lines.

Sept. 10 - Geoffrey A. Landis/ Ripples in the Dirac Sea (review)

4/5 stars for a great use of time travel to illustrate the energy and importance of every breath we get.

Sept. 24 Ursula K. Le ...more

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Jan 24, 2015 DJ is currently reading it · review of another edition

Reviews coming every Thursday as part of The Time Traveler's Almanac group read and will be posted first at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape

Follow along with #TimeTravelThursday

Death Ship by Richard Matheson - 3.5/5 Rating
Great start to the anthology! (My Review)

Ripples in A Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A. Landis - 4/5 Rating
This is how you science a time-travel story! (My Review)

Needle in A Timestack by Robert Silverberg - 3/5 Rating
The butterfly effect! (My Review)

Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland ...more

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Sep 12, 2019 Alan rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: All you zombies

Recommended to Alan by: A mysterious message from what I must assume was the future

Wow... what a mammoth achievement! The Time Traveler's Almanac: nine hundred pages of time-travel stories, give or take, in a single volume, all wrapped in what I must say is the perfect title and cover scheme. Its back cover calls this book "the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled," a claim which may well be true. Even so, this timeline's edition of Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer's anthology does have some significant holes.

For example: where's Bob? ...more

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Oct 29, 2018 Marjolein rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sff

Death Ship (Richard Matheson) **
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (Geoffrey A. Landis) **
Needle in a Timestack (Robert Silverberg) ****
Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea [Hainish] (Ursula K. Le Guin) ****
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters (Alice Sola Kim) *
How the Future Got Better (Eric Schaller) ***
Pale Roses [Tales from the End of Time] (Michael Moorcock) ****
The Gernsback Continuum (William Gibson) ***
The Threads of Time (C. J. Cherryh) **
Triceratops Summer (Michael Swanwick) ***
The Most ...more

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May 02, 2014 John Herbert rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel, down-the-plughole

OK..youre not going to believe this.
It was only my second outing but I skipped down to the basement and flipped the relevant gears into action, sending the Time Machine, with myself on board, back in time just a couple of years.

The Vandermeers were discussing the possible topics for their next anthology, when I landed right smack bang in the middle of their dining table, cutlery and food flying everywhere.
Of course it had the desired effect that I was seeking: it totally disrupted their current ...more

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Oct 09, 2017 Fred Hughes rated it liked it

It was really hit and miss on the stories that grabbed my attention. However that is true of all anthologies as they are the results of a single persons' interpretation of what is good. Still a reasonable value for the price

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May 03, 2018 Robin Bonne rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, anthology-and-short-stories

Wow, this books was heavy. The stories are crammed in with tiny text, and I thought it might squish me while I was reading it.

There are a wide variety of stories relating to Time Travel in their own ways. I picked it up because it contained a couple short stories that a friend recommended I read.

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Aug 16, 2017 Katlyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, correct-edition, hardcover, time-travel, sci-fi, anthology

As with all anthologies featuring multiple authors, the quality of this book was highly variable. There were some stories I couldn't get into in the slightest and others that I adored. All in all though, it seemed to be a nice collection involving a variety of authors, writing styles, and time periods. I may look into some of the authors a bit more, I have meant to try more short stories by Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury in particular. I honestly haven't read much sci-fi, so my list of favourites ...more

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Aug 08, 2014 Matt Hlinak rated it really liked it

The Time Travelers Almanac purports to be the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled, and I was unable to find anything capable of disputing this claim. The editors have compiled 72 pieces by luminaries of the genre like H.G. Wells, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov. Highly recommended for all sci-fi and time travel buffs.

Read my full review at Pop Mythology.

Matt Hlinak
Author of DoG ...more

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Apr 25, 2014 Jeff Deck is currently reading it

Stories:

Death Ship (Matheson) -- 3 stars -- two for the story, one for the fact that it is Richard Matheson
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (Landis) -- 5 stars -- Wow, this was great.
Needle in a Timestack(Silverberg) -- 3 stars -- Anticlimactic. Started off cool.
Another Story (Le Guin)-- 1 star -- Too complicated and boring. I enjoy other Le Guin but could not get into this.
Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters (Sola Kim) -- 4 stars -- Not sure exactly about the "whys" of this one, but it was still pretty ...more

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Dec 20, 2013 Johanne rated it liked it · review of another edition

oh this started so well and then lost me. In the first two sections I was completely hooked. All the stories gripped me but then in the remainder I found fewer and fewer that caught my imagination. So the ones I liked were the experiments and investigators, the paradoxes and communicators didn't grab me. Maybe this is my sci-fi heritage just showing itself. The later sections seemed largely to feature newer works whereas the early pieces were more 60s and 70s items; the era of my introduction to ...more

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Nov 06, 2015 Laurel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, time-travel

This is a fantastic collection of mostly time travel stories. There were a few I couldn't figure out why they were included. But on the whole, some excellent stuff.

My favourite stories were: The Time Machine (an extract of) by HG Wells; A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury; Fire Watch by Connie Willis; Under Siege by G.R.R. Martin; The Waitabits by Eric Frank Russell; and the final story in the Almanac, Palimpsest by Charles Stross, was an absolute corker. I loved it.

Death Ship by Richard Matheson ...more

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Aug 12, 2019 Randal rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

As comprehensive a selection of time travel tales as one could hope for, even from such a doorstop.
I liked the range -- from the more traditional entries inevitably involving a paradox and / or a surprise ending to ones where the time travel was more or less implied but not a central part of the plot.
There were a few from newer authors toward the end that were pleasant surprises, but most of the writers are familiar and nobody really plowed any new ground: Authors I already liked wrote stories I ...more

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Sep 01, 2014 Mjhancock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, short-story-collection, time-travel

(Given the book's massive length, I was very tempted to do some sort of labored joke about how reading it was like time travelling into the distant future. I've (mostly) spared you from that; you're welcome.) The Time Traveller's Almanac is an anthology of science-fiction stories about time travel. And really, the first thing that will strike you about the book is how vast an anthology it is, with 71 different short stories--maybe 70, depending on how you count Harry Turtledove's two part (Given the book's massive length, I was very tempted to do some sort of labored joke about how reading it was like time travelling into the distant future. I've (mostly) spared you from that; you're welcome.) The Time Traveller's Almanac is an anthology of science-fiction stories about time travel. And really, the first thing that will strike you about the book is how vast an anthology it is, with 71 different short stories--maybe 70, depending on how you count Harry Turtledove's two part contribution. It's divided into four sections--"experiments", in which the individuals are experimenting with time travel; "reactions and revolutionaries," in which tourists want the "truth" behind time, and others want to change what happens; "mazes and traps" where the paradox of time travel, and its punishing aspect, become the main event; and "communiques," in which people are trying to get a message to a different time line. To be honest, I didn't really notice the shifts when I was reading through, but I appreciate that the divisions where there. The editors--Ann and Jeff VanderMeer--clearly put some effort into making sure there was gender and minority representation on the list, and as someone who occasionally struggles to find sci-fi outside of the white guy norm, this was appreciated. While some stories are a little roughly written, the variety outweighs almost all negativity. Going through all seventy stories would be a massive effort; for brevity's sake, I'll name two or three from each section that impressed me.

In Experiments, Ursala Le Guin's "Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea" has time travel take a back seat to the more interesting part of the story, the wonderful sci-fi world Le Guin has sketched out in O, a world where four parent mating couples are the norm, and the society that grows out of such a world; it's a story about deciding what's really the most important thing in your life. And Alice Sola Kim's "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" is a wonderfully chaotic story about an ordinary man made immortal time traveller and utterly unable to cope with it. In "Reactionaries and Revolutionaries," John Chu's "Thirty Seconds From Now" looks at how relationships don't get any easier when you're constantly seeing multiple possible timelines at every moment--including the ones where your lover is moments away from leaving you. Kage Baker has two stories, "Noble Mold" and "A Night on the Barbary Coast," both featuring Joseph and Mendoza, father and daughter time travelers working for a mysterious, possibly corrupt, Company; if this is typical of Baker's work, I really do have to seek it out. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" which has a premise immediately appealing to any English major: in the future, time travel is perfected and common enough to the point where an English department professor can put in for a grant to bring Christopher Marlowe out of time just before his death in order to prove an aspect of her research. In "Mazes and Traps," Gene Wolfe's "The Lost Pilgrim" features a man who goes back to do a mission regarding the Argos, but instead is swept up into the great company; Wolfe does a great job conveying the wondrous, alien part of this culture. Greg Egan's "Lost Continent" depicts time traveler refugees attempting to make a new life for themselves despite the future people being very ambiguous about their presence; it's a very on the nose indictment of the modern refugee systems. Vadana Singh's "Dehli" features a protagonist who's slightly unstuck in time, constantly seeing glimpses of Dehli's future and past. The story's main question is less time paradox and more about where individual meaning comes from, when so much of the future is set in stone. Finally, Communiques has some of my favorite premises, if not stories: Krsitine Kathryn Rusch's "Red Letter Day" explores the social implications of students receiving a letter from their fifty-year old selves--and what it means when that letter doesn't arrive. I love how it uses knowledge of the future as a sort of placeholder to explore that terrifying moment in high school, where you're just about to graduate, and it seems already like half the class's future is laid out. Pamela Sargent's "If Ever I Should Leave You" looks at a woman whose lover, knowing he had a terminal disease, spent his last six months darting around time, so that they'd be able to meet again after his death. The big question, then, is how the woman rations the time left with the love of her life. And finally, in the book's last story, longer than the others, Charles Stross' Palimpsest does a combination of a very personal story and a very high concept one--the high concept is that an agency uses time travel for terraforming on a scale of billion years, shepherding the Earth out of the solar system before the sun dies out. The personal level is how you construct a life when you are both immortal and yet your existence may be overwritten at any time.

What I appreciated the most about this book is the variety of perspectives it offered. And more than anything, it demonstrates how much time travel stories--for all that they're purportedly about far futures or different pasts--are reflections of the society they're written in, whether that's 19th century Britain, the cold war state of the sixties, and the (comparably) greater social freedoms of today, allowing a few queer time travel stories into the mix. It's introduced me to a lot of new authors I want to get into.

On the other hand, though--it's an anthology about time travel stories, and not a single one is about going back in time to kill Hitler. What's up with that? (Connie Willis' Fire Watch comes close, but still doesn't quite do it.) ...more

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Oct 10, 2017 Diana rated it liked it

Shelves: reading-for-me-alone

collection of short stories on this theme of time travel. Some are very clever and interesting; others, less so. Also, since the stories come from various time periods, some feel modern, others are quite dated.

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Sep 09, 2017 Philton rated it really liked it

The biggest and best collection of short stories about time travel ever. While not every single one of them was a winner, there were enough good ones, and some downright excellent ones, to make this a worthy read. There is even a playlist of songs recorded over the years about time travel in the middle of the book. Some day I will find the time to listen to all of them.

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May 15, 2019 Anat rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, short-stories, ebook, time-travel

Some really good stories in this one!

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Nov 03, 2018 Hebe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a huge read but absolutely worth it!

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Aug 09, 2019 Robert Mayer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A must-read for those into time-travel fiction. Includes both classics from the golden age of science fiction, but also pieces from the infancy of the genre and well as some modern pieces that should stand out for their originality.

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Jul 27, 2014 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed

Originally published at "The Nameless Zine". Check it out for more reviews.

If you are enthralled by the beauty and passion of 18th Century Scotland in Outlander or long to journey through time and space with The Doctor, award-winning anthologists Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have assembled the perfect guidebook for you.
The Time Travelers Almanac is the definitive compilation of time-travel related stories, including 70 fiction and non-fiction works from the earliest published story about a time Originally published at "The Nameless Zine". Check it out for more reviews.

If you are enthralled by the beauty and passion of 18th Century Scotland in Outlander or long to journey through time and space with The Doctor, award-winning anthologists Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have assembled the perfect guidebook for you.
The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the definitive compilation of time-travel related stories, including 70 fiction and non-fiction works – from the earliest published story about a time machine, “The Clock that Ran Backwards” by Edward Page Mitchell, through stories by current faves like Carrie Vaughn (“Swing Time”). Along the way are stories by such masters as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ted Sturgeon, William Gibson, Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, H.G. Wells. About the only authors not included are Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

With so many works included, it’s impossible not to find something to suit your taste. A personal favorite was “Ripples in the Dirac Sea” by Geoffrey Landis. The story follows a time-travel researcher who discovers he is unable to change the past, and is also unable to change his future. Trapped in a burning building, with only minutes left, he journeys to the past over and over, living lifetimes yet unable to escape his inevitable death in the present. “Ripples” won the Hugo in 1989 and is one of the best in the collection.

Another favorite is Connie Willis’s homage to the heroic Brits who survived the Blitz, “Fire Watch.” Also a Hugo winner, this introduction to her Oxford Historians series follows a time traveler from the mid-21st Century studying the fire watch defenders of St. Paul’s Cathedral during World War II. While it doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch of her later “Doomsday Book”, it is still a masterful love-letter to the brave souls who protected England’s landmarks during the Blitz.

Other highlights include:

Douglas Adams’ “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe.” Originally published in a Comic Relief charity anthology in the mid ‘80s, this story provides a glimpse into the background of the two-headed president of the galaxy from the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” series. It focuses on the time when he unleashed Ronald Reagan on an utterly insignificant little blue green planet in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy.

John Chu’s “30 Seconds from Now.” This heartbreaking story follows a reclusive young man who can see the future in all its possible iterations. The story charts one of his potential paths as he finds love and ultimately loss, reaffirming his isolation.

Kim Newman’s “Is There Anybody There.” A 1920s spiritualist uses an Ouija board and accidentally connects with a 21st century computer hacker who stalks women in chat rooms. She soon finds her psychic powers extend beyond merely predicting the future.

The collection also includes a handful of essays regarding proper time-travel etiquette and fashion, as well as the ideal playlist for a time-traveler – which, of course, includes “The Time Warp” and “In the Year 2525.”

So whenever you get around to installing that Flux Capacitor on your DeLorean, The Time Traveler’s Almanac should be an essential addition to your glove box. And until then, it will provide plenty of inspiration. ...more

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Jun 08, 2014 angie rated it it was amazing

"When were talking about whether or not a storys 'time travel logic' makes sense, it is important to remember that every story builds its own framework for its own logic."--from the intro to The Time Traveler's Almanac

Though I am still reading The Time Travler's Almanac, I just have to go ahead and write something about how wonderful the collection is so far...I especially love the amazing short story by Robert Silverberg called "Needle In A Timestack."

It's part love story, part self-discovery ...more

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Mar 11, 2014 David Davis rated it really liked it

The Time Traveler's Almanac is collection of time travel fiction and features authors that range from Ursula K. Le Guin to H G Wells (who wrote one of the most well known pieces of time travel fiction, The Time Machine) to newer, not-so-well-known writers like Tony Pi.

The Weird is one of my favorite--if not my most favorite--anthologies of all time so I really didn't expect to like Almanac as much but I have to say that it comes pretty darn close. For one, I felt like the stories in Almanac were ...more

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May 03, 2016 Janice rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fiction

So, a very large collection of time travel short stories. Like all such collections, some were better than others. There were a couple I didn't care for (not surprising given the shear quantity of material presented), many that I was more or less ambivalent about (not bad, but didn't really catch me) and a few that were quiet good. I've listed these last few below.

Another Story of A Fisherman of the Inland Sea - Le Guin
Didn't necessarily realize this was Le Guin until I went to make this list. ...more

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Feb 22, 2019 Peter Johnston added it · review of another edition

Delicious smorgasbord of time travel stories. The great joy of short story collections is you can just skip ahead if the current one bores you.

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Jan 20, 2014 Riju Ganguly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I would like to be honest. I have failed to complete this book despite sticking to/at it for months (ages?), and yet I am so sick of finding it grinning at me like a hideous laughing Buddha statue whenever I check-in at Goodreads, that I decided to mark it as read. However, I have a justification handy. This tome is like OED, and that book, as everyone would agree, can't be COMPLETED, despite being full of riveting as well as important stuff. Therefore, using that analogy, I am stuffing the tome ...more

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Dec 02, 2014 Samantha Glasser rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This is a massive volume of short stories all relating to time travel. Some are quite good, and some are awful, so it is really a mixed bag. I would not recommend reading many of them in one sitting as they will begin to blur together but to read them slowly over time to properly contemplate each, as some are profound and will stick with you.

Highlights include Thirty Seconds From Now by John Chu, Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages, and Palindromic by Peter Crowther among others.

I read this with the ...more

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Sep 03, 2015 Dave rated it really liked it

This is the most comprehensive and best anthology of Time Travel stories possible. It functions as a collection of many great stories, a historical account of the topic and an artifact of history in its own right. Additionally, this is an introduction to many writers I may never have come across. it is also an opportunity to revisit familiar masters of the short story (regardless of genre). Overall this is an excellent collection on several levels.

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Dec 12, 2013 A.M. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction

An incredibly long book but well worth reading if you're a time travel fan - there is something for everyone in here and some truly engrossing stories.

My only nitpick was the inclusion of excerpts from longer time travel stories (as they were very clearly incomplete and unsatisfactory to read) however this is more than made up for by the general quality and variety of stories.

Happy :-)

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Feb 24, 2019 Pat rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, ebooks, science-fiction, anthology, time-travel

I do enjoy time travel stories (I wrote one: The House at the Edge of Time), so a huge collection that probably works best as an ebook is a treat. Also, I love anthologies because they allow me to sample writers I haven't read, and if I don't like works by one author, there's surely another whose works I'll enjoy. Good thing, here, because there were a several stories I skimmed or didn't finish, and a number of stories I very much enjoyed.

The stories focus on character instead of technology, I do enjoy time travel stories (I wrote one: The House at the Edge of Time), so a huge collection that probably works best as an ebook is a treat. Also, I love anthologies because they allow me to sample writers I haven't read, and if I don't like works by one author, there's surely another whose works I'll enjoy. Good thing, here, because there were a several stories I skimmed or didn't finish, and a number of stories I very much enjoyed.

The stories focus on character instead of technology, which makes this a nice collection. (It's fun to see how many ways authors came up with for time travel to happen.) The anthology starts strong (Swanwick, LeGuin), and tries to end strong (there are a lot of people who enjoy Stross's writing more than I do); and the book has at some standard stories ("Sound of Thunder," Wells' "Time Machine," "Enoch Soames"), with some stories that don't work as well for me. (I'd read "Vintage Season" as a teenager and didn't remember either the title or the author; it still didn't appeal.)

dnf: "Palimpsest," by Charles Stross, which started well and then began to wander around, being wordy and obtuse and generally ... boring. Also, both stories by Harry Turtledove, which seemed more interested in showing how much Turtledove knows about the time period his characters are living in; really: we don't need every single detail.

Some other stories weren't quite as tedious and got skimmed. Writer to avoid: Kage Baker, whose world just doesn't interest me, though the stories weren't unfinishable. Apparently the only E. F. Benson I enjoy are the "Lucia" books, since I didn't enjoy his story here and also haven't enjoyed his ghost stories.

memorable because I really enjoyed them: One story that was weirdly effective is "Loob" (Bob Leman), which seems to be going in circles of tedium and tell-don't-show, but becomes an interesting (and heart-breaking) tangle. As does "Red Letter Day" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch). (Both (view spoiler) writers do a splendid job of so very gradually letting the reader know what's going on--a difficult thing to accomplish.)

Also enjoyed "Is There Anybody There?" (Kim Newman), with its crosstime conniptions and the amusing "Trousseau: Fashion for Time Travelers" (Genevieve Valentine), which appears not to be a collected story, but is entertaining. Very much loved "Triceratops Summer" (Michael Swanwick), which has a marvelous opening where it's not entirely clear to the reader that triceratops crossing the road isn't an ordinary thing for the characters; the story's delightful.

A good collection that appears to cover much of the field and can be dipped into at random. ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Time Travel: The Clock That Went Backward- Edward Page Mitchell (7/26/2015)	7	38	Feb 29, 2016 01:05PM
Time Travel: "Where or When" - Steven Utley (5/31/15)	6	23	Oct 06, 2015 09:28AM
Time Travel: The Lost Pilgrim- Gen Wolf (8/23/15)	11	20	Sep 28, 2015 12:36PM
Time Travel: This Tragic Glass- Elizabeth Bear (7/5/15)	9	21	Sep 12, 2015 09:03AM
Time Travel: On The Watchtower at Plataea-Gary Kilworth (6/14/15)	6	15	Jul 23, 2015 08:20AM
Time Travel: Triceratops Summer-Michael Swanwick 3/1-3/7	37	38	Jun 28, 2015 11:46AM
Time Travel: Vintage Season-C.L. Moore (4/12-4/18)	9	21	Jun 21, 2015 04:38PM

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About Ann VanderMeer

Ann VanderMeer

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Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.

Her work as Fiction Editor of Weird Tales won a Hugo Award. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. Ann was also the founder ...more

Books by Ann VanderMeer

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Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (Steampunk, #2)

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

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“There is no “makes sense” in the universal sense – that is to say, criticizing a time travel story because its rules do not line up with rules in the real world is akin to dismissing the Harry Potter books because the conductive properties of wood could never sustain the energy required for spell casting.” — 4 likes

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