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The Best Time Travel Stories Of The 20th Century edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg
01/09/2005 . Source: Paul Hanley 
pub: Del Rey/Ballantine. 425 page hardback. Price: $17.95 (US), $25.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-345-46094-4. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out websites: www.delreydigital.com
This is a collection of 18 short stories. They share a common theme, time travel, and I always think this makes for a more enjoyable read than a group of tales with differing themes. These stories also all seem to written by the most renowned of Science Fiction writers such as Theodore Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and L. Sprague de Camp. Many of these writers are, alas, dead and their stories as well as those of still living writers are often quite old ones. This, I would hasten to add does not make them inferior per se, but it may mean you have read them already elsewhere.
Time travel is certainly a well-worn path but the stories do approach it from very different angles and I found them all enjoyable reads.
'Time's Arrow' by Arthur C. Clarke is one I had not come across before. A group of palaeontologists are laboriously unearthing the tracks a dinosaur left in mud flats millions of years ago and using a road drill to prise away the layers of rock that have shrouded and preserved the footprints. Barton and Davies are two young geologists working under an eminent professor. It has taken weeks of hard work to unearth the spoor. Although the area is part of the desolate desert in the American West there is an intriguing research establishment in the same valley and the scientists speculate on what is being researched there. They recognise the cooling stacks of a nuclear power plant and have come to the conclusion it is some form of secret military research base when the professor, the eminent head of the Geological Society, is invited to visit. He reveals it is run by a pair of famous physicists which intrigues the other scientists even more.
When the professor returns from his visit he informs his assistants that he cannot tell them anything at all about the project. The next day one of the famous physicist's pay a return visit and is fascinated by the diggings and what the palaeontologists are able to interpret from a few footprints frozen into stone. He is rather dismissive of the immense amount of work required to expose a hundred yards or so of the dinosaur's trail. It would save you a lot of trouble, wouldn't it, if you could actually see what took place in the past? Thereafter, the professor begins to spend more and more time at the strange base driving himself over in the expedition's jeep.
Our two geologists, now left to their own devices in supervising the other members of the expedition and continuing to unearth the dinosaurs trail, keep digging. The creature has clearly spotted something because it has changed direction and its stride is lengthening as it sets off in pursuit.
The two geologists speculate on what the eminent physicists are working on and by reading their published scientific papers speculate it may be a device to see into the past.
Finally, the professor and one of the physicists are heard in conversation saying that tomorrow is 'Der Tag', the day.
In the excavation trench the next day, they see that the ancient creature has gone from striding to hoping in pursuit of whatever prey it is after. Barton and Davies are working in the trench when the secretive base disappears in a huge fireball. Davies looks at Barton who had been using the pneumatic drill. He is staring at the trench in horror. There from 60 million years ago are the distinctive tyre tracks of their jeep partly obliterated by the massive footprints of the dinosaur as it prepares to pounce on its fleeing prey. It was not seeing but visiting the past that the physicists were attempting but with grisly results. This was an excellent, well told story.
I do not want to give away too many of the plots. Several are based on safari-type companies organising trips back to dinosaur times so that those wealthy enough can go big game hunting. Ray Bradbury's 'Sound Of Thunder' speculates on how the future world might be changed if one of those would be big game hunters accidentally trod on a butterfly. L. Sprague de Camp also sets his story in a safari organisation setting out to hunt a tyrannosaurus rex. They are over-rated says one of the character's, more a carrion eater than an active predator but it nevertheless manages to gobble up one of the expedition's paying customers. The interesting contrast between Sprague de Camp's story and Ray Bradbury is that the latter story revolves around the time travel aspects especially possible time paradoxes while the former story skips over the time travel aspects in a couple of lines and becomes an adventure story. One fascinating point about changing times and mores is that I imagine if time travel were invented now going dinosaur hunting with a gun rather than a camera is liable to be heavily frowned upon. One purpose of Science Fiction is to explore the possible effects of then current trends and it is interesting to see these through the eyes of hindsight.
Poul Anderson's 'The Man Who Came Early' is about an American soldier stationed in Cold War Iceland who suddenly finds himself still there but back in its Viking past. His claims are dismissed as wild speculation and worse by the locals and no matter what technology he has seen and knows can be made he is only a man with what he is carrying on him and in practice he cannot change anything.
This is an excellent book with 18 well-written short stories. Thoroughly recommended but do check you have not read too many of the stories before.
Paul Hanley
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