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Twice In Time
When the time projector hurled Leo Thrasher 500 years into the past, he didn't expect to find that:
-He'd need what he'd learned on his college fencing team to keep sword points from his lungs;
-He'd meet a woman he loved more than life;
-He'd be at the heart of the battle which decided whether the Turkish Janissaries would sweep over Europe.
He learned all those things; and learned something that was far more of a surprise....
FIRST COMPLETE BOOK PUBLICATION OF A TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE BY THE AUTHOR OF JOHN THE BALLADEER!
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
-He'd need what he'd learned on his college fencing team to keep sword points from his lungs;
-He'd meet a woman he loved more than life;
-He'd be at the heart of the battle which decided whether the Turkish Janissaries would sweep over Europe.
He learned all those things; and learned something that was far more of a surprise....
FIRST COMPLETE BOOK PUBLICATION OF A TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE BY THE AUTHOR OF JOHN THE BALLADEER!
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
220 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1940
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 17, 2024
Between the title and the back cover summary, there's really not a lot I can add, plot-wise. Leo Thrasher invents a time projector, and, quite naturally, uses himself as a test subject, traveling to fifteenth century Italy. Complications ensue, and he remains in the past for longer than he bargained for. I suppose I shouldn't spoil anything, but, honestly, you'll probably spot the ending coming by page two. I know I did. The book is rounded out by, “The Timeless Tomorrow,” a short story featuring no less a personage than Nostradamus as its hero.
Twice In Time may be predictable, and it's certainly not Wellman's best story. But that doesn't mean it's bad. The action moves at a brisk clip. And even if you know how it's going to end, it's fun to see how it gets there. In Wellman's defense, this was probably a somewhat fresher concept in 1940, when it was originally published.
Wellman, to my mind, is at his best with folk horror, particularly stories set in the American South. Twice In Time isn't really any of those things. But it's a reasonably engaging time travel novel that helps illustrate the breadth and scope of Wellman's interests. If you're new to his work, you might be better off starting with the John the Balladeer stories or novels. Again, this isn't a bad book, just a distinctly lesser one, and probably best left to aficionados.
Twice In Time may be predictable, and it's certainly not Wellman's best story. But that doesn't mean it's bad. The action moves at a brisk clip. And even if you know how it's going to end, it's fun to see how it gets there. In Wellman's defense, this was probably a somewhat fresher concept in 1940, when it was originally published.
Wellman, to my mind, is at his best with folk horror, particularly stories set in the American South. Twice In Time isn't really any of those things. But it's a reasonably engaging time travel novel that helps illustrate the breadth and scope of Wellman's interests. If you're new to his work, you might be better off starting with the John the Balladeer stories or novels. Again, this isn't a bad book, just a distinctly lesser one, and probably best left to aficionados.
May 14, 2013
Manly Wade Wellman is remembered almost exclusively for his John the Balladeer stories, but he produced an astonishing amount of work in many other genres as well. TWICE IN TIME is a time travel novel that first appeared in STARTLING STORIES in 1940. It was revised and abridged for hardback publication by Avalon, and then reprinted as a Galaxy paperback in 1958. Then Baen restored the story to its original form in 1988, adding an introduction by Karl Edward Wagner and another story by Wellman, "The Timeless Tomorrow" from 1947. TWICE IN TIME is a good story and shows Wellman's attention to detail and historical acumen, much like some of the better works of L. Sprague deCamp. The longer Baen version is much better than the truncated version, but I think the cover (as well as Wagner's introduction) spoiled the surprise of it. Wagner states that the reader should figure it out after a chapter or two, but I was at least halfway through the book before I got it. The other story in the Baen version is a nice piece about Nostradamus, well worth reprinting. The cover shown here in the Goodreads listing is the Wallace Wood cover from the 1958 Galaxy paperback listing, by the way, not the Greg West painting from the 1988 Baen version.
November 29, 2015
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2562427.html
At last, another novel that I feel I can nominate for the Retro Hugos alongside The Ill-Made Knight and Kallocain. It's a short book about a time-traveller who goes back to Renaissance Italy and finds that he cannot return to his own time due to a combination of local politics, equipment constraints and fuzzy memory. Any reader who is actually awake will spot the eventual punchline by the end of the second chapter, but Wellman has fun taking us there and unashamedly invokes various cliches of the time-hopping subgenre. A shame that this isn't better known, and I'm nominating it for the Retro Hugos to try and fix that.
At last, another novel that I feel I can nominate for the Retro Hugos alongside The Ill-Made Knight and Kallocain. It's a short book about a time-traveller who goes back to Renaissance Italy and finds that he cannot return to his own time due to a combination of local politics, equipment constraints and fuzzy memory. Any reader who is actually awake will spot the eventual punchline by the end of the second chapter, but Wellman has fun taking us there and unashamedly invokes various cliches of the time-hopping subgenre. A shame that this isn't better known, and I'm nominating it for the Retro Hugos to try and fix that.
October 7, 2026
It was hammered out by Manly Wade Wellman, a fine old southern gentleman who’s mostly famous around these parts for writing folklore horror about Silver John up in the Appalachian mountains. Our main fella is a nineteen-year-old college student named Leo Thrasher. While he’s out vacationing in Italy, he starts messing around with a radical new "time projector" laser-disc machine he built in his workshop. Well, the machine acts up, sparks fly, and Leo accidentally "reflects" himself exactly five hundred years backward into the past. He drops smack-dab into the middle of the 15th-century Italian Renaissance, right in the territory of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the high-and-mighty Medici family. At first, poor Leo is in a fix deeper than a swamp. He immediately gets tangled up with an evil sorcerer practicing the black arts. But our boy Leo is a quick thinker. He uses what he learned on his college fencing team to keep local knights from sticking cold steel through his lungs, and he uses his knowledge of twentieth-century blueprints to start sketching out "future" inventions for the local rulers. Before you can say "Mamma Mia," he gets caught up in the real-life Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and finds himself fighting to stop Turkish Janissaries from sweeping across Europe. But the real kicker—the big twist that’s older than your grandma’s cast iron skillet—is that Leo begins to realize his own sketches and diaries are destined to be dug up in the 20th century under a completely different name: Leonardo da Vinci! Mr. Wellman didn't just guess at the history. Like L. Sprague de Camp, he packs the pages with real details about the Renaissance, making the old streets of Florence smell like real wood-smoke and leather. This old book is a dandy, comfort-food piece of speculative fiction from an era when time-travel was full of wonder instead of headache-inducing paradoxes. Manly Wade Wellman brings a wonderful, folktale charm to the courts of Italy, showing that a smart kid with a fencing foil and a decent memory can conquer just about any century he lands in. If you want a quick, classic yarn to read on the porch while the cicadas are buzzing, this one is a blue-ribbon winner.
November 26, 2018
A time-travel story about a man from the Twentieth century who was transported to the 1400s and becomes involved in current Italian cultural/political issues. I suppose when this story first appeared it was rather unique, but much of it is now predictable. I also found the footnotes to be a distraction to the story.
The second story (The Timeless Tomorrow) appearing in this book was a much more fun read.
The second story (The Timeless Tomorrow) appearing in this book was a much more fun read.
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May 17, 2024Reprinted stories from the pulps, a simple pulpy little time travel novel full of adventures in Renaissance Italy, with a fairly obvious twist that I won't spoil. Also includes a short story about the prophetic powers of Nostradamus and his lover. Nothing in here really rocked my world, but it was readable and fun. It would have had me turning pages in Weird Tales or what-have-you, as much to see his researched details as for the adventure itself.
April 8, 2026
DNFd at page 98. Found I did not care what was happening or about any of the characters.
Man goes back in time with intentions of building a new tone machine from memory in the 1500s in order to return home.
While there we find out he can beat trained soldiers at sword fighting, is an expert horse rider, is a genius painter and engineers, and can teach any science you care to name from memory.
Dreadful.
Man goes back in time with intentions of building a new tone machine from memory in the 1500s in order to return home.
While there we find out he can beat trained soldiers at sword fighting, is an expert horse rider, is a genius painter and engineers, and can teach any science you care to name from memory.
Dreadful.
July 8, 2020
Utterly ridiculous and useless concept. Wellman really biffed it with this one.
April 26, 2013
Manly Wade Wellman is remembered almost exclusively for his John the Balladeer stories, but he produced an astonishing amount of work in many other genres as well. TWICE IN TIME is a time travel novel that first appeared in STARTLING STORIES in 1940. It was revised and abridged for hardback publication by Avalon, and then reprinted as a Galaxy paperback in 1958. Then Baen restored the story to its original form in 1988, adding an introduction by Karl Edward Wagner and another story by Wellman, "The Timeless Tomorrow" from 1947. TWICE IN TIME is a good story and shows Wellman's attention to detail and historical acumen, much like some of the better works of L. Sprague deCamp. The longer Baen version is much better than the truncated version, but I think the cover (as well as Wagner's introduction) spoiled the surprise of it. Wagner states that the reader should figure it out after a chapter or two, but I was at least halfway through the book before I got it. The other story in the Baen version is a nice piece about Nostradamus, well worth reprinting.
February 11, 2016
Leo, a skilled painter and engineer, invents a time machine and uses it to travel back to the renaissance. There he becomes embroiled in Italian politics and meeting his love, Lisa. (Now where could this be possibly going???)
Whilst I enjoy a good paradox and interesting to see this one just prior to its famous introduction into the popular imagination, once you see where it is (very obviously) leading towards it just becomes a trudge through history. I am not a student of these events but I recognised from just general knowledge most of what was happening and even some of the dialogue. For me therefore, this book got wearing fairly quickly.
Whilst I enjoy a good paradox and interesting to see this one just prior to its famous introduction into the popular imagination, once you see where it is (very obviously) leading towards it just becomes a trudge through history. I am not a student of these events but I recognised from just general knowledge most of what was happening and even some of the dialogue. For me therefore, this book got wearing fairly quickly.
January 5, 2011
One of the coolest ideas for a time travel story I've ever read. It's worth it and please for the love of all books, don't find out what the ending is from someone else!
January 23, 2016
The first short story is the best.
April 8, 2020
Interesting concept.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews