The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF Read online

  Mike Ashley is a full-time writer, editor and researcher with almost a hundred books to his credit. He has compiled over fifty Mammoth books including The Mammoth Book of Extreme SF, The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF, The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF and The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes. He has also written a biography of Algernon Blackwood, Starlight Man. He lives in Kent with his wife and three cats and when he gets the time he likes to go for long walks.

  Recent Mammoth titles

  The Mammoth Book of Weird News

  The Mammoth Book of Antarctic Journeys

  The Mammoth Book of Muhammad Ali

  The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

  The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

  The Mammoth Book of Lost Symbols

  The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

  The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

  The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

  The Mammoth Book of New CSI

  The Mammoth Book of Gangs

  The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

  The Mammoth Book of One-Liners

  The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance

  The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25

  The Mammoth Book of Jokes 2

  The Mammoth Book of Horror 23

  The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies

  The Mammoth Book of Street Art

  The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women

  The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11

  The Mammoth Book of Irish Humour

  The Mammoth Book of Unexplained Phenomena

  The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

  The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

  The Mammoth Book of Combat

  The Mammoth Book of Quick & Dirty Erotica

  The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic

  The Mammoth Book of New Sudoku

  The Mammoth Book of Zombies!

  THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

  Time Travel SF

  Edited by Mike Ashley

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

  Copyright © Mike Ashley, 2013

  (unless otherwise stated)

  The right of Mike Ashley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-24601-799-9 (paperback)

  UK ISBN: 978-1-24601-026-9 (ebook)

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  First published in the United States in 2013 by Running Press Book Publishers,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4813-5

  US Library of Congress Control Number: 2012942539

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

  Running Press Book Publishers

  2300 Chestnut Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

  Printed and bound in the UK

  Cover design and illustration by JoeRoberts.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION: TIME AFTER TIME

  Mike Ashley

  CAVEAT TIME TRAVELER

  Gregory Benford

  CENTURY TO STARBOARD

  Liz Williams

  WALK TO THE FULL MOON

  Sean McMullen

  THE TRUTH ABOUT WEENA

  David J. Lake

  THE WIND OVER THE WORLD

  Steven Utley

  SCREAM QUIETLY

  Sheila Crosby

  DARWIN’S SUITCASE

  Elisabeth Malartre

  TRY AND CHANGE THE PAST

  Fritz Leiber

  NEEDLE IN A TIMESTACK

  Robert Silverberg

  DEAR TOMORROW

  Simon Clark

  TIME GYPSY

  Ellen Klages

  THE CATCH

  Kage Baker

  REAL TIME

  Lawrence Watt Evans

  THE CHRONOLOGY PROTECTION CASE

  Paul Levinson

  WOMEN ON THE BRINK OF A CATACLYSM

  Molly Brown

  LEGIONS IN TIME

  Michael Swanwick

  COMING BACK

  Damien Broderick

  THE VERY SLOW TIME MACHINE

  Ian Watson

  AFTER-IMAGES

  Malcolm Edwards

  “IN THE BEGINNING, NOTHING LASTS . . .”

  Mike Strahan

  TRAVELLER’S REST

  David I. Masson

  TWEMBER

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  THE PUSHER

  John Varley

  PALELY LOITERING

  Christopher Priest

  RED LETTER DAY

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION:

  TIME AFTER TIME

  Mike Ashley

  We all travel through time but for most of us (there may possibly be exceptions) we move ahead a second, a minute, an hour at a time, day after day, month after month. We can’t move any faster or slower, or go back in time, other than in our memories.

  Yet that desire to somehow shift out of time and move ahead faster or backwards is surely in all of us. I suspect most of us have wished we could go back and relive an event, either because it was such a happy moment or, quite the reverse, a moment we wish we could change or eradicate completely.

  But we can’t go back and we can’t speed up and move ahead of everyone else. We are trapped in our moment in time. And the fact that we are prisoners of time is what makes us all the more fascinated with breaking free.

  This anthology contains twenty-five stories that consider all aspects of time. Many feature not just journeys into the past or the future, but the consequences of travelling in time. What happens if you try to change the past? Would it be possible and, if so, would it set up a series of alternate timelines each stemming from some modification? And if that happens, how would you ever get back to your original time?

  The stories also consider the mystery of time itself. After all, what is time? We are all aware of it, especially if it seems to be rushing past or dragging, but do we really know what it is? And would meddling with time set off other consequences, maybe slow it down, or stop it all together, or even set it running backwards? Maybe we would become trapped in an endless loop of time running round and round, as in the film Groundhog Day.

  Writers have been fascinated with time for centuries. It has been the subject of thousands of science-fiction and fantasy stories, novels and films, most famously with H. G. Wells’s The Time Mach
ine (1895), but even earlier than that. I shall mention some of the classic works of time travel throughout this book as I introduce each story. For this volume, however, I have concentrated on relatively recent stories, mostly from the last ten or twenty years, featuring some of the more unusual and original treatments of time and all its mysteries. There is one new story, by Simon Clark, written specially for this book. Most of the other stories have seldom been reprinted so should be new to many readers.

  The stories cover all aspects of time and the consequences of any attempt to manipulate it so it is my hope that you will find stories that are not only diverse in their approach but also raise questions that are not easily answered and which will linger in your mind long after you have finished reading. And maybe that will bring you back to the subject and the stories time after time.

  Mike Ashley

  CAVEAT TIME TRAVELER

  Gregory Benford

  Gregory Benford is Professor of Plasma Physics and Astrophysics at the University of California, Irvine, as well as the internationally acclaimed writer of such science-fiction classics as In the Ocean of Night (1976), Across the Sea of Suns (1984) and, of particular relevance here, the award-winning Timescape (1980). In that novel scientists in the near future attempt to send messages into the past to warn scientists of the ecological and political disasters to come.

  The following story, though, is a light aperitif to get us in the mood and prepare us for some of the problems likely to beset the unwary time traveller.

  He was easy to spot – clothes from the 21st Century, a dazed look, eyes a bit rattled.

  I didn’t have to say anything. He blurted out, “Look, I’m from the past, a time traveler. But I get snapped back there in a few minutes.”

  “I know.” They stood in a small street at the edge of the city, dusk creeping in. Distant, glazed towers gleamed in the sunset and pearly lights popped on down along the main road. Jaunters always chose to appear at dawn or dusk, where they might not be noticed, but could see a town. No point in transporting into a field somewhere, which could be any time at all, even the far past. Good thing he couldn’t see the city rubble, too. Or realize this was how I made a living.

  His mouth twisted in surprise. “You do? I thought I might be the first to come here. To this time.”

  I gave him a raised eyebrow. “No. There was another last week.”

  “Really? The professor said the other experiments failed. They couldn’t prove they’d been into the future at all.”

  They always want to talk, though they’d learn more with their mouths closed.

  He rattled on, “I have to take something back, to show I was here. Something—”

  “How about this?” I pulled out a slim metal cylinder. “Apply it to your neck five times a day and it extracts cancer precursors. In your era, that will extend your average lifetime by several years.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Wow! Sure—” He reached for it but I snatched it back.

  “What do I get in exchange?” I said mildly.

  That startled him. “What? I don’t have anything you could use . . .” He searched his pockets in the old-fashioned wide-label jacket. “How about money?” A fistful of bills.

  “I’m not a collector, and those are worthless now, inflated away in value.”

  The time jaunter blinked. “Look, this is one of the first attempts to jump forward and back. I don’t have—”

  “I know. We’ve seen jaunters from your era already. Enough to set up a barter system. That’s why I had this cancer-canceller.”

  Confusion swarmed in his face. “Lady, I’m just a guinea pig here. A volunteer. They didn’t give me—”

  I pointed. “Your watch is a pleasant anachronism. I’ll take that.” I gave him the usual ceramic smile.

  He sighed with relief. “Great—” but I kept the cylinder away from him.

  “That’s an opener offer, not the whole deal.” A broader smile.

  He glanced around, distracted by my outfit. I always wore it when the chron-senser networks said there was a jaunt about to happen. Their old dress styles were classic, so they weren’t prepared for my peekaboo leggings, augmented breasts and perfectly symmetric face. The lipstick was outrageous for our time, but fit right into the notorious 21st Century kink.

  He raised a flat ceramic thing and it whirred. Taking pictures, like the rest. They still hadn’t learned, whenever this guy came from.

  “Your pictures won’t develop,” I told him with a seemingly sympathetic smile.

  “Huh? They gave me this—”

  “You’ve heard of time paradoxes, yes? Space-time resolves those nicely. You can’t take back knowledge that alters the past. All that gets erased automatically, a kind of information cleansing. Very convenient physics.”

  Startled, he glanced at his compact camera. “So . . . it’ll be blank?”

  “Yes,” I said crisply. My left eye told me the chron-senser network was picking up an approaching closure. I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. “Thanks! It’s such a thrill to meet someone from the ancient times.”

  That shook him even more. Best to keep them off balance.

  “So how do I get that cancer thing?” he said, eyes squinting with a canny cast.

  “Let me have your clothes,” I shot back.

  “What? You want me . . . naked?”

  “I can use them as antiques. That cancer stick is pretty expensive, so I’m giving you a good deal.”

  He nodded and started shucking off his coat, pants, shoes, wallet, coins, cash, set of keys. Reached for his shorts—

  “Never mind the underwear.”

  “Oh.” He handed me the bundle and I gave him the cancer stick. “Hey, thanks. I’ll be back. We just wanted to see—”

  Pop. He vanished. The cancer stick rattled on the ground. It was just a prop, of course. Cancer was even worse now.

  They never caught on. Of course, they don’t have much time. That made the fifth this month, from several different centuries.

  Time was like a river, yes. Go with the flow; it’s easy. Fight against the current and space-time strips you of everything you’re carrying back – pictures, cancer stick, memories. He would show up not recalling a thing. Just like the thousands of others I had turned into a nifty little sideline.

  The past never seemed to catch on. Still, they stimulated interest in those centuries where time jaunters kept hammering against the laws of physics, like demented moths around a light bulb.

  I hefted the clothes and wallet. These were in decent condition, grade 0.8 at least. They should fetch a pretty price. Good; I needed to eat soon. Time paid off, after all. A sucker born every minute, and so many, many moments in the lost, rich past.

  CENTURY TO STARBOARD

  Liz Williams

  The oldest concept in fiction dealing with time is that of being able to step outside of time and exist in a separate time frame. The idea became most closely associated with the world of faery and there are many children’s tales, such as Ludwig Tieck’s “The Elves” (1811), where children enter the world of faery for just a few hours or days and return to their own world to find that years or centuries have passed. The following story, redolent with a feeling of dislocation, uses a similar idea to take us way out of time.

  Liz Williams is a British writer more closely associated with fantasy than science fiction, though her first novel, The Ghost Sister (2001), skilfully blended fantasy imagery with a solid science-fiction setting involving settlers seeking to solve the mystery of what happened to a planet’s original colonists. Williams is probably best known for her Detective Inspector Chen novels, which began with Snake Agent (2005), where her Singapore detective has to fight all manner of supernatural foe. The following story has previously appeared only on the internet and this is its first publication in print.

  Vittoria Pellini, Diary entry, 12 August 2008

  Julio and I went down to the port today, to see the Ship for the first time. It’s truly
amazing – I had no idea how big it would be. The hull, if that’s what you call it, must have been hundreds of feet up from the water, and I couldn’t see the other end at all. Not surprising, since it’s supposed to be a mile long, but even so . . .

  We flew into Singapore from Rome this morning – Julio had to see some people, so we thought we’d combine his business, whatever that is, with a visit to the Ship. After all, in only a few months, it’s going to be our home. Rome’s so hot these days, with all these climate changes, and the villa in St Barthelemy’s been simply unliveable in. So, as I said to Julio, it really does make sense to go and live on something that can move around all over the place. I know it’s costing a few million, but it isn’t as though we can’t afford it – and there’s the whole tax avoidance issue, of course. And if the brochure’s anything to go by, the shopping will be wonderful – the latest seasons will be showing, and as I told him, I’ll really be saving on all the airfares, because it costs so much to go to New York these days, now that they’ve brought in the flight restrictions. So the Ship definitely makes sense. Julio muttered something about people saying the same thing about the Titanic, but he just likes to grumble. It’s his ulcer.

  Diary entry, 14 November 2008

  Back in Singapore again, and this time we’ve actually been on board. I’m just so thrilled. We’ve seen our apartment, and it’s a dream, it really is. It’s twice the size of our place in Monaco, and the furnishings are beautiful – exactly as I told the design consultant, and you know how hard it is for these people to get things right. It’s high up, too – right on the uppermost deck, just as we wanted. There are gardens below, and swimming pools, and full satellite links so Julio can work. I can’t wait, but I’ll have to, because the Ship doesn’t set out until May. That’s nearly six months away, and I’m going to go crazy in Italy.