Time Machines: The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written

by Bill Adler Jr. (Editor)

The notion of traveling forward or backward across history—changing the events of your own life or those which came before you or those that have yet to occur—starts here with Edgar Allan Poe's "Three Sundays in a Week" and Rudyard Kipling's "Wireless," progresses through the years with past masters Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and John W. Campbell, Jr., and finishes with contemporary science fiction by such writers as Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Jack Finney, and Rod Serling. "An interesting collection of time travel short fiction from varied perspectives"—Library Journal

Genres: Time Travel, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Travel, Audiobook

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

Bill Adler Jr. is an American writer living in Tokyo.

He's the author of Outwitting Squirrels (The Wall Street Journal: "A masterpiece"; Boing Boing: "One of the funniest books I've ever read"), Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relations With Gadgets, Tell Me a Fairy Tale: A Parent's Guide to Telling Mythical and Magical Stories, and No Time to Say Goodbye, a time travel novella, and other books.

Reviews

[useFOSS · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Shape in Time (1970) by Anthony Boucher 3/5
Who's Cribbing? (1953) by Jack Lewis 4/5
The Business, As Usual (1952) by Mack Reynolds 4/5
The Third Level (1950) by Jack Finney 5/5
A Touch of Petulance (1980) by Ray Bradbury 3/5
The History of Temporal Express (1997) by Wayne Freeze 3/5
Star, Bright (1952) by Mark Clifton 4/5
The Last Two Days of Larry Joseph's Life—In This Time, Anyway (1988) by Bill Adler, Jr. 3/5
Three Sundays in a Week (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe 3/5
Bad Timing (1991) by Molly Brown 5/5
Night (1935) by John W. Campbell, Jr. 5/5
Time Travelers Never Die (1996) novella by Jack McDevitt 3/5
Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation (1977) by Larry Niven 3/5
What Goes Around (1997) by Derryl Murphy 3/5
You See But You Do Not Observe (1995) by Robert J. Sawyer 4.5/5
Ripples in the Dirac Sea (1988) by Geoffrey A. Landis 3/5
The Odyssey of Flight 33 (1961) by Rod Serling 4/5
Fire Watch (1982) by Connie Willis 3/5
What If (1952) by Isaac Asimov 4/5
There and Then (1993) by Steven Utley 3/5
Wireless (1902) by Rudyard Kipling 3/5
The Last Article (1988) by Harry Turtledove 3/5

[Russell Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories about time travel. Some of them, such as the stories by Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling are older. Others are newer.

One, Time Travelers Never Die, is a novella by Jack McDevitt. Once I had finished the novella and was still reading the book I happened to look over on my night stand to books I had received from PaperBackSwap.com but not read yet and saw that I had the book Time Travelers Never Die. The book is an expansion of the novella, has at least one added character, and a different ending. Some people like the book better, others the novella.

Additional authors include Anthony Boucher, Jack Lewis, Mack Reynolds, Jack Finney, Ray Bradbury, Wayne Freeze, Mark Clifton, Bill Adler, Jr., Molly Brown, Larry Niven, Derryl Murphy, Robert J. Sawyer, Geoffrey A. Landis, Rod Serling, Connie Willis, Isaac Asimov, Steven Utley, and Harry Turtledove.

Although I didn't enjoy every story in the book, it is definitely a keeper, and my favorite time travel anthology.

[Richard Tolleson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is truly a mixed bag. Some stories are as engaging as anything I've read; others are duller than dishwater. I will say this for the editor, Bill Adler: he selected stories representing all manner of time travel stories. You have some in which there is a technical explanation of how the time travel is achieved; others require the reader to "go with it." I enjoyed the variety, if not some of the individual stories. The good thing about a short story collection is that one can skip to the next story if a story isn't engaging.

[Ron Me]

This is a nice collection. The main issue is that it was published twenty years ago, and so newer items in the genre are not included. My favorite time travel story of all time is included in this collection, so on that basis alone I highly recommend it.

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like most other short stories I've read recently, I've already read some of the stories elsewhere and they were OK. Some the rest were not very good at all. So I'm giving it a "OK" rating.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's certainly a time capsule, especially that "Gandhi and the Nazi" story

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very poor collection of mostly dated time travel stories. One of which doesn't actually contain a time machine or involve time travel! WTF

[Karen Shillings · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a time travel story!

[M. Ray Holloway Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent selection of short stories about time travel by some of the better known writers of the past. The only reason that I did not give it five stars is that there were a couple of very weak stories included in the mix. One, I would not even consider a time travel story at all.

[Riversue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've decided I'm not a fan of short stories. thee is just too little meat. Most of the stories I read in this nathology were good - interesting - fun - reads but just not my cup of tea.

[Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of the 20 or so short stories in this compilation, only 5-6 were attention grabbing or truly clever.

[Cee Burgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm usually not a short-story reader, but I loved this collection.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Fire Watch by Connie Willis