isaac asimov time travel short story

Isaac Asimov’s Best Short Stories 📚

Isaac Asimov has written many novels and short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction genre.

Quick Facts

Article written by Joshua Ehiosun

C2 certified writer.

Isaac Asimov first got into the writing space by selling his short stories. After creating and selling about five stories, he wrote the first  ‘ Foundation ’  story. After the first story, Isaac began to write a sequel. With the sequel to the first novel complete, he wrote more stories that eventually formed the Foundation Trilogy.

‘First Law’  is a short story created by Isaac Asimov and published in October 1956. The short story became a part of the 1964 novel  ‘The Complete Robot.’ ‘First Law’  is three pages long and talks about the story of an incident on Titan as narrated from Mike Donovan’s perspective. Mike tells the story of a malfunctioning robot, Emma, whom he met while lost during a storm. With the robot having an offspring, Mike discovered that it chose to protect it instead of helping Mike, whose life was in danger.

The Bicentennial Man

‘The Bicentennial Man’  is a short story initially written by Isaac to honor the United States Bicentennial. The novelette begins with Andrew Martin requesting an operation from a robot surgeon. However, due to the First Law of Robotics, the robot refuses to operate for Andrew, causing him to disclose that he was a robot. The story goes 200 years back to tell the story of a robot with a serial number starting in ‘NDR,’ bought by a man called Gerald Martin. Gerald’s daughter names the robot Andrew asks him to carve her a pendant from wood. Andrew creates a beautiful pendant that when Gerald’s daughter shows it to her father, he is taken aback by the sheer skill. Soon, Andrew becomes a highly skilled woodcarver. With the sales of his products, his master puts half of the profits he makes into an account. With Gerald’s daughter now grown up with a child, Andrew asks to become free. 

As a free robot, he begins wearing clothes. However, an incident with some people forces Andrew to seek ways to become a human. Meeting with the head of U.S. Robotics, Andrew gets an android body, and with his research on Robo-biology, he installs himself a digestive and excretory system. Andrew becomes a celebrated inventor, and deciding that he wants to be a man, he sets his age limit to 200 years. After revealing that he had turned himself human, the World President declares him a bicentennial man.

Mother Earth

‘ Mother Earth ’ is a science fiction novella published in May 1949. The novella tells the story of Earth facing a confrontation with its colonies in the Outer Worlds. With a historian looking back in time, the story goes back 150 years into the past when Aurora, a planet, gets permission to introduce positronic robots into their community. With rumors of the Earth creating a weapon called the Pacific Project, the Auroreans shrug off the idea that their civilization is in danger and continually use authoritarian means to suppress those who wanted to help Earth.

Soon, Earth sends out a message to threaten the outer worlds leading to a three-week war that Earth loses. With the planets no longer needing Earth for its agricultural products, laws get placed to prevent Earthmen from traveling beyond the solar system. However, this leads the Earth to make rapid reforms in its robotics, hydroponic agriculture, and population. With Earth cut off, the outer worlds split and weakened because their worlds could not maintain human life biologically.

All the Troubles of the World

‘All the Troubles of the World’  is a short story that first appeared in the April 1958 issue of Super-Science Fiction. The novelette tells the story of Joseph Manners, a man who got arrested for a crime he had not yet committed. With Joseph placed under house arrest, the odds of the future murder increase as Multivac, the computer, theorizes that the more the government interferes, the higher the chances of the murder happening.

Soon, the government changes its focus of suspicion and turns to Ben, Joseph’s son. However, it gets discovered that Multivac had planned everything. Joseph and Ben get released, and Othman, one of Multivac’s coordinators, realizes that the system is tired of the immense workload. In a final moment, Othman asks Multivac what its desire was, and the system replies it wants to die.

Feminine Intuition

‘Feminine Intuition’  is a short story published in the October 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The novelette tells the story of the first feminine robot created by U.S. Robotics. With Clinton Madarian, the successor of Doctor Susan Calvin, initiating the project, work begins for the formation of a robot with a female intuition brain. After many years and failures, JN-5, known as Jane, gets created. With the plans to use her to analyze astronomical data, Jane and Madarian travel to flagstaff, an observatory.

Jane discovers the answer that would allow for effective use of hyperspace drive, but while she and Madarian get killed in an air crash. With Jane gone, U.S. Robotics turns to Susan Calvin for assistance with discovering Jane’s answer. Susan investigates and discovers that the criminal that caused the crash is the truck driver. With information from him, Susan reconstructs Jane’s solution.

‘What If—’  is a fantasy short story published in 1952. The novelette tells the story of a married couple who travels on a train from Boston to New York City. On the train, they meet a man mysteriously called Mister If. He shows the couple a small device with a screen, and on the screen, he shows them memories from their early lives and what would have happened if certain small events had not occurred. However, they discover that their lives would have been the same regardless of what happened.

The Last Question

‘The Last Question’  is a short story Isaac considered his favorite. It got released in November 1956. The novelette tells the story of a computer system called Multivac. Multivac gets asked the same question by six different people on the day the Earth becomes a planetary civilization. When Multivac gets asked: “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?” Multivac responds by saying: ‘Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.’

The story jumps into the future, where the descendants of the Multivac get asked the same question. Even with the Multivac’s descendants, the answer remains the same as in the past. Finally, the last descendant of humanity, a god-like being with the unified mental capability of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans, asks Multivac’s ultimate descendant, AC, the question asked to the first Multivac. Realizing that it had not gathered all the data from humanity to answer the question, AC begins compiling the data and figures the answer to the question. However, there was no one to report it to as the universe had already died. He then decides to demonstrate the result with a final statement: “Let there be light.”

What are the separate stories that make up Foundation ?

‘Foundation’   got split into five different sections. The first section of the novel is called  ‘The Psychohistorians.’  The next sections following the first are   ‘The Encyclopedists,’ ‘The Mayors,’ ‘The Traders,’ and ‘The Merchant Princes.’

What are some of Isaac Asimov’s best short stories?

Throughout his writing career, Isaac Asimov wrote hundreds of short stories. Some of his favorites were stories like  ‘The Bicentennial Man,’ ‘The Last Question,’  and  ‘Nightfall.’

What is the first law in I, Robot ?

The first law in the  ‘ I, Robot ‘  series is a law that got created to govern the way robots interact with humans and themselves. The law states that: ‘A robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction, allow a human to come to harm.’

What is Isaac Asimov’s best short story?

‘Nightfall’ by Isaac Asimov got voted as the best science fiction short story in 1968. The novelette tells the story of Kalgash, a planet that never experiences night because of the six suns illuminating it. However, the world soon faces the possibility that an unknown moon will cause a total eclipse.

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List of short stories by Isaac Asimov

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This is a list of short stories by Isaac Asimov :

See Also [ ]

List of Books by Isaac Asimov

References [ ]

• ↑ "The Covenant" at AsimovReviews.net
• ↑ The Heavenly Host (the short story) at Asimovreviews.net
• ↑ The Heavenly Host (the book) at Asimovreviews.net
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Book Reviews

Isaac asimov, time travel and 'the end of eternity'.

Glenn McDonald

The End of Eternity By Isaac Asimov Paperback, 256 pages Orb Books List Price: $15.99

Read an excerpt.

Science-fiction godfather Isaac Asimov published his classic time-travel novel The End of Eternity in 1955, and in a way, it's become lost in time itself over the years. Overshadowed by Asimov's famous Foundation and Robot series, The End of Eternity is mostly unknown to casual science-fiction fans. Yet serious devotees of Asimov's work consider it to be his single greatest novel.

The End of Eternity has been out of print and hard to find for a while, but that's been happily remedied with Tor Books' recent hardcover reissue and even more recent move to the various e-book formats.

The complicated plot of the book goes something like this: Our hero, Andrew Harlan, is an Eternal — a scientist operating from a tract of cosmic real estate known as Eternity. Eternity is a sort of bubble that exists outside of time and space. Or, in the metaphorical approach of the book, it's like an extratemporal elevator shaft running parallel to forward-moving Time.

Eternals can move up and down this shaft — "upwhen" and "downwhen" — getting off at stations in any century to enact Reality Changes. These changes alter the flow of human events toward outcomes producing "the maximum good for the maximum number."

As a going concern, though, Eternity has an HR problem. Despite their names, Eternals are mere humans, subject to aging in "physiotime." They age and die just like anyone else. They make mistakes. And fall in love.

Disclosing too much after this would spoil things, as much of the pleasure of Eternity comes from its old-fashioned mystery plotting. This might not be what you'd expect from Asimov, but the author actually wrote several mysteries and was a member of the prestigious Sherlock Holmes appreciation society, "The Baker Street Irregulars."

Still, it's safe to disclose a few story specifics. In the course of his work, Harlan falls in love with the fetching Noÿs Lambent, a beautiful aristocrat with her umlauts in all right places (writing about women was never Asimov's strong suit). Noÿs is from a century scheduled to undergo a Reality Change, which presents a dilemma for Harlan. If he effects the change, Noÿs may disappear entirely from the new Reality, or be replaced with an inferior analogue.

Eternity trades heavily in the proposal and resolution of quite a few time-travel paradoxes. This is a staple of science fiction, but here Asimov handles it with remarkable clarity. The book casually shuffles in mind-bending concepts from quantum physics and actually makes them work within the narrative, weaving in concepts like causality violations and infinite parallel universes.

Asimov never actually renders these things understandable — that would take several decades and a few doctoral programs. But he makes them appear understandable, at least until the end of the chapter. And that's the real trick, isn't it? The book employs time-travel elements to do what all good science fiction does — extrapolate scientific and social issues to various event horizons of the future.

Isaac Asimov was born in Belarus in 1920 and moved to Brooklyn with his family at the age of 3. He worked as a professor of biochemistry at Boston University and won numerous science-fiction awards for his writing. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Eternity's essential mission statement, after all, would have to be read as social engineering writ insanely large. What would actually happen, the book asks, if an eternal guardian entity were forever shielding us from our own mistakes?

It doesn't take too much lateral thinking to transpose Asimov's hard sci-fi musings into theological notions of destiny and free will. Or, going in the other direction, to matters of evolution and natural selection. If you remove adverse environmental conditions, would man keep evolving at all?

This is part of Asimov's particular genius. He is a master prestidigitator of notional misdirection. He keeps you so dazzled with the sci-fi flourishes — Temporal loops! Neuronic whips! — that you don't notice the bigger cosmic tricks he's producing from his other sleeve. It's a maneuver he uses time and time again in the Foundation and Robot books.

Eternity also works as a futuristic thriller and is particularly effective as a straight-up mystery novel. The last 30 pages of the book move with terrific velocity through a series of startling revelations. Asimov snaps together a dozen story elements cleverly obscured throughout the other chapters. Clearly, this is where Asimov's Sherlock habit pays off.

Glenn McDonald is an arts writer and movie critic with the Raleigh News & Observer and editor of NPR's Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me Daily News Quiz.

The End of Eternity

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Excerpt: 'The End of Eternity'

10 Great Time Travel Stories: Part I

April 6, 2016.

Time travel has intrigued people for as long as, well, time. There are no hard and fast rules, but for over a hundred years writers have given us their take on how it works. Time travel allows us to imagine what it would be like to experience other worlds and consider what we would do if we could influence history or see the future.

We’ve picked out ten great ten time travel books take us through our own time – from Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court published in 1889 to Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife published in 2003.

Here are the first five on our list; stay tuned next week for five more time warping classics!

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain (1889)

social satire, humor

Twain’s special gift for satire makes this story hilarious, fantastical and to the point. His comparative study and social commentary exposes his dissatisfaction of the romantic ideal of King Arthur’s world and faith in the scientific and social progress of his own time.

Twain starts by sending Hank Morgan, a self-reliant New Englander and engineer, back in time to King Arthur’s Court. Things go bad quickly and he is sentenced to death by Merlin. When Hank uses his knowledge of the nineteenth-century to save himself, he convinces the people, the King, and himself , that he is a magician greater than Merlin. He begins to transform King Arthur’s world where he transforms into the Boss.

Book eBook Audiobook

Time Machine, H.G. Wells (1895)

science fiction, fantasy, Darwinism, socialism

A forerunner of the science fiction genre, this classic novel popularized the concept of time travel and introduced the term “time machine”. Written in 1895, it is couched in a Darwinian and Socialist parable about a time traveler who is sent into the year 802,701. The traveler finds himself in a society of two races, the Eloi, peaceful dwellers who live above ground and the Morlocks, ape-like creatures who live below ground. It is a cautionary tale taking on the themes of evolution, capitalism, and social class division.

A Sound of Thunder, Ray Bradbury (1952)

science fiction, fantasy

Time travel, safari hunting and the opportunity to take down a Tyrannosaurus Rex. That’s what Time Safari offers its customers when it sends them sixty million years into the past. But there are strict rules and real dangers to anyone who breaks them. All travelers must stay on the designated Path provided by Time Safari. Anyone stepping off of it could create a ripple in time that could alter the future, the concept known as the “butterfly effect”. Bradbury asks us to consider our actions and how they effect the world. (In The Stories of Ray Bradbury and A Sound of Thunder and other Stories .)

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The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov (1955)

science fiction, romance

Considered his best by many, this short fiction novel places time travel outside of linear reality. The non-linear world, Eternity, is a location outside of time and place where an elite few, the Eternals, monitor and alter time’s cause and effect relationships. Andrew Harlan is an Eternal. On one of his assignments, he falls in love with a woman who lives in linear time only to find out she will not exist after the next change. He risks everything to bring her to Eternity with him, but his actions create a paradox that threatens the existence of Eternity. To fix the problem, he is given his next assignment. He must kill the woman he loves.

The Door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein (1957)

This short fiction book is one of Heinlein’s lighter novels and uses time travel in a limited way. It begins in 1970. Dan Davis is the successful inventor of a household robot, an automated “cleaning lady” called Hired Girl . With the help of his fiancée, Belle and their friend Miles, his new company is thriving beyond his wildest dreams. But Belle and Miles betray him, steal his patents, and trick him into spending thirty years in suspended animation. They thought that was the end of Dan.

What they didn’t expect was that time travel exists in the year 2000. When Dan wakes up from thirty years of sleep, he is able to go back to 1970 where he recovers his research and then returns to the year 2000 with his reputation, invention and fiancée.

About the Author

IVY BRUNELLE is a Reference Librarian at PPL. She accidentally became a sci-fi geek in college. But if you asked her about it, she’d deny the whole thing, then silently slip through a portal of ancient standing stones.

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

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Isaac Asimov collected short stories

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Time Travel Short Stories: Examples Online

The short stories on this page all contain some form of time travel, including time loops. Some of them contain time machines or other technologies that makes the trip possible; in other stories the jump in time doesn’t have an obvious explanation. They don’t all involve obvious trips to the past or future. Sometimes, the story simply contains an element that is out of place in time. See also:

Short Stories About Time Travel

“caveat time traveler” by gregory benford.

The narrator spots the man from the past immediately. The visitor identifies himself. He’s surprised to find he’s not the first visitor from the past. He wants to take something back to prove he made it.

“Caveat Time Travel” can be read in the preview of  The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF.

“Absolutely Inflexible” by Robert Silverberg

A time traveler in a spacesuit sits in Mahler’s office. He’s informed that he’ll be sent to the Moon, where all visitors from the past have to go. The man tries to get out of it, but Mahler explains why no exceptions are possible.

“Absolutely Inflexible” can be read in the preview of  Time and Time Again :  Sixteen Trips in Time.

“Yesterday Was Monday” by Theodore Sturgeon

When Harry Wright wakes up on Wednesday morning he realizes that yesterday was Monday. Somehow there is a gap. He notices that his environment doesn’t quite seem complete.

“Yesterday Was Monday” can be read in the preview of  The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century.

“Death Ship” by Richard Matheson

The crew of a spaceship is collecting samples from various planets to determine their suitability for human habitation. While nearing a new planet, Mason spots a metallic flash. The crew speculates that it might be a ship. Captain Ross orders a landing to check it out.

“Death Ship” can be read in the preview of  The Time Traveler’s Almanac.

“The Third Level” by Jack Finney

The narrator has been to the third level of Grand Central Station, even though everyone else believes there are only two. He’s just an ordinary guy and doesn’t know why he discovered this unknown level. He relates how it happened.

“The Third Level” can be read in the preview of  About Time: 12 Short Stories.

“A Touch of Petulance” by Ray Bradbury

Jonathan Hughes met his fate in the form of an old man while he rode the train home from work. He noticed the old man’s newspaper looked more modern than his own. There was a story on the front page about a murdered woman—his wife. His mind raced.

This story can be read in the preview of  Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury.

“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving

Rip Van Winkle is lazy at home but helpful to, and well-liked by, his neighbors. He’s out in the mountains one day to get away from things. With night approaching, he starts for home but meets up with a group of men. He has something to drink and goes to sleep, which changes everything.

This story can be read in the preview of  The Big Book of Classic Fantasy .

“Twilight” by John W. Campbell

Jim picks up a hitch-hiker, Ares, who says he’s a scientist from the year 3059. He says he traveled millions of years into the future, but came back to the wrong year. Life in 3059 is trouble free, with machines taking care of everything. Future Earth is in trouble, with all life extinct, except for humans and plants.

This is the second story in the preview of  The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Vol 1 .  (49% into preview)

“The Man Who Walked Home” by James Tiptree, Jr.

An accident at the Bonneville Particle Acceleration Facility decimated the Earth’s population and severely damaged the biosphere and surface. Decades later, a huge flat creature emerges from the crater at the explosion site and promptly disappeared. There are other sightings in the years that follow.

This story can be read in the preview of the anthology  Timegates .  (18% into preview)

“An Assassin in Time” by S. A. Asthana

Navy Seal Jessica Kravitz recovers from the effects of the time jump. She’s done it before, but there are always side-effects. She’s on a highly classified, very important, and expensive mission. Previous jumps have familiarized her with the grounds. This time, she should be able to reach her target.

This story can be read in the preview of  AT THE EDGES: Short Science Fiction, Thriller and Horror Stories .  (17% in)

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang

Fuwaad, a fabric merchant, appears before the Caliph to recount a remarkable story. While looking for a gift, he entered a large shop with a new owner. It had a marvelous assortment of offerings, all made by the owner or under his direction. Fuwaad is led into the back where he’s shown a small hoop that manipulates time. He also has a larger gateway that people can walk through. The owner tells Fuwaad the stories of a few who did just that.

This story is on the longer side but doesn’t feel like it. Most of “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” can be read in the Amazon preview of  Exhalation: Stories .

“Time Locker” by Harry Kuttner

Gallegher is a scientist—drunken, erratic and brilliant. He invents things but pays them little attention after. His acquaintance Vanning, an unscrupulous lawyer, has made use of some of these inventions, including a neuro-gun that he rents out. During a visit he sees a locker that is bigger inside than out. Fascinated with the item’s possibilities, he offers to purchase it.

Some of “Time Locker” can be read in the preview of  The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century.

Time Travel Short Stories, Cont’d

“All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein

A young man explains to a bartender that he was born a girl. He (she) gave birth to a child and there were complications. The doctors noticed he (she) was a hermaphrodite and performed an emergency sex-change operation.

A lot of this story can be read in the preview of  “ All You Zombies—”: Five Classic Stories .

“The Hundred-Light-Year Diary” by Greg Egan

The narrator meets his future wife, Alison, for lunch exactly when he knew he would. His diary told him. Everyone alive is allotted a hundred words a day to send back to themselves.

Most of this story can be read in the preview of Axiomatic .  (Select Kindle first then Preview, 57% in)

“The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov

Arnold Potterley, a Professor of Ancient History, wants to use the chronoscope—the ability to view a scene from the past—for his research on Carthage. The government maintains strict control over its use, and his request is denied. Frustrated, Potterley embarks on a plan to get around this restriction, which is professionally risky.

Some of this story can be read in the preview of  The Complete Stories, Vol 1 .  (6% in)

“Signal Moon” by Kate Quinn

Working with the Royal Naval Service, Lily Baines intercepts radio communications to enemy vessels for decoding. One night, everything changes when she picks up an impossible message—a plea for help from another time.

Preview of “Signal Moon”

“Journey to the Seed” by Alejo Carpentier

An old man wanders around a demolition site, muttering a string of incomprehensible phrases. The roof has been removed and, by evening, most of the house is down. When the site is deserted, the old man waves his walking stick over a pile of discarded tiles. They fly back and cover the floor. The house continues to rebuild. Inside, Don Marcial lies on his deathbed.

“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

In the future, a company offers guided hunting safaris into the past to kill dinosaurs. Extreme care is taken to ensure nothing happens that could alter the present.

Read “A Sound of Thunder” (PDF Pg. 3)

“That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French” by Stephen King

Carol and Bill, married twenty-five years, are on their second honeymoon, driving to their destination. Carol experiences déjà vu; voices and images keep coming to her mind. Their drive comes to an end and she finds herself at an earlier point in their trip.

“The Clock That Went Backward” by Edward Page Mitchell

The narrator recounts the discovery surrounding a clock left to his cousin Harry by his Aunt Gertrude. As young boys they witnessed a strange event. Late one night Aunt Gertrude wound the clock, put her face to the dial, and then kissed and caressed it. The hands were moving backward. She fell to the floor when it stopped.

Read “The Clock That Went Backward” 

“Soldier (Soldier from Tomorrow)” by Harlan Ellison

Qarlo, a soldier, is fighting in the Great War VII. He doesn’t expect to be able to go back. The odds are against it. Qarlo anticipates the Regimenter’s order and gets warped off the battlefield. He’s not sure where he is but his instincts kick in.

“The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” by Alfred Bester

Henry Hassel comes home to find his wife in the arms of another man. He could get his revenge immediately but he has a more intellectual plan. He gets a revolver and builds a time machine. He goes into the past.

“Cosmic Corkscrew” by Michael A. Burstein

The narrator is sent back to 1938 to make a copy of a rejected story by an unnamed writer. Unknown to Dr. Scheihagen, the narrator adjusts his arrival to three days earlier. He wants to make contact with the writer.

“Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clarke

Barton and Davis, geologists, are assisting Professor Fowler with an excavation. The professor receives an invitation to visit a nearby research facility. Barton and Davis are curious to know what goes on there. The professor says he will fill them in, but after his visit he says he’s been asked not to talk about it. Henderson, from the research facility, returns the visit. Something he says starts the geologists speculating about a device that could see into the past.

“The Final Days” by David Langford

Harman and Ferris, presidential candidates, are participating in a televised debate. Ferris is struggling to connect with the audience while Harman relishes the attention. The technician signals Harman that there are fourteen watchers. His confidence increases.

Read “The Final Days”

“Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters” by Alice Sola Kim

When Hwang is in a time he likes he tries to stay awake. Hwang jumps ahead in time when he sleeps. It could only be a few days; it could be years.

Read “Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters”

“Fish Night” by Joe R. Lansdale

Two traveling salesmen, a father and son, get broke down on a desert road. They sit by the car and talk about how hard it is to make a living. The father tells his son about an unusual experience he had on the same road years ago.

Read “Fish Night”

“The Fox and the Forest” by Ray Bradbury

William and Susan Travis have gone to Mexico in 1938. They’re enjoying a local celebration. William assures Susan that they’re safe—they have traveler’s checks to last a lifetime, and he’s confident they won’t be found. Susan notices a conspicuous man in a café looking at them. She thinks he could be a Searcher, but William says he’s nobody.

“A Statue for Father” by Isaac Asimov

The narrator tells the story of his father, a theoretical physicist who researched time travel. He’s celebrated now, but it was a difficult climb. When time travel research fell out of favor, the dean forced him out. He continued the research independently with his son. Eventually, they succeed in holding a window open long enough for the son to reach in. He brings back some dinosaur eggs.

“The Pendulum” by Ray Bradbury

Layeville has been swinging in a massive glass pendulum for a long time. The people call him The Prisoner of Time. It’s his punishment for his crime. He had constructed a time machine and invited thirty of the world’s preeminent scientists to attend the unveiling.

Read  The Pendulum

“Who’s Cribbing?” by Jack Lewis

A writer has his manuscript returned by a publisher. The story he submitted was published years before—he obviously plagiarized it. They warn him against doing this again. The writer has never heard of the author who first wrote the story and claims it’s an original work.

“Who’s Cribbing” is in  Time Machines: The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written.

I’ll keep adding short stories about time travel and time machines as I find more.

The idea that characters can fly from planet to planet, or star to star, defying current science and technology, is central to science fiction. Although some of these ideas predated the space age, after the 1950s, fictional depictions of space travel needed to suggest conceivable ways to cross interstellar distances to seem plausible. Some authors suggested faster-than-light drives, hyper drives, jump drives, worm holes, and black holes.

Scientific understanding of light speed as an absolute natural limit derives from Albert Einstein’s publications on special relativity in 1905, confirmed by his work on general relativity in 1916. In classical physics, speed has no limits. But relativistic theory shows that mass increases with acceleration until mass becomes infinite at light speed. Yet author E. E. “Doc” Smith imagined spaceships traveling faster than the speed of light in his “Skylark of Space” stories. Smith’s cover story appeared in the same issue of Amazing Stories in 1928 that included Philip Francis Nowlan’s first short story about Anthony (later “Buck”) Rogers.

Within a couple of decades, the fictional idea of faster-than-light travel made intuitive sense to a public familiar with recent supersonic flights. In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound aboard the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis . Writers extrapolated supersonic speeds into the idea of spacecraft traveling at multiples of the speed of light. Frank Hampson’s British comic Dan Dare offered one of the earliest uses of faster-than-light travel. In 1955, he introduced interstellar travel in “The Man from Nowhere” trilogy. The technology was inherently alien, however, and faster-than-light travel was not featured regularly afterward. Forbidden Planet (1956) was the first film to depict a fictional faster-than-light spaceship created by humans. From the exterior, the C-57D ship was an undifferentiated flying saucer. After a loudspeaker announcement, however, the crew stood in “DC stations” that held them immobile while the ship slowed. By the mid-1960s, however, as both the United States and the Soviet Union made regular human spaceflights, science fiction audiences became more intuitively aware of the time that it took to travel in space.

The U.S.S. Enterprise created for Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) represented a major leap forward. Walters “Matt” Jefferies, a WWII flight engineer and private pilot, used “aircraft logic” to design a vehicle with components that visually communicated their purpose. With the two engine nacelles, Jefferies effectively invented warp drives, fictional engines that could propel the ship at multiples of the speed of light. As seen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), the first flight of Zephram Cochran’s warp-capable Phoenix demonstrated the mark of a culture that was ready to participate in interstellar civilization. Jefferies’ design raised the bar for imagined vehicles. After Star Trek, undifferentiated flying saucers and flame-spewing pointed rockets largely disappeared from fictional depictions. Instead, imagined propulsion that bent space-time or traversed alternate dimensions become more prevalent.

Rather than just having the vehicles fly faster, some science fiction suggested traveling through or outside of normal four-dimensional space (including time), either by jumping within ordinary space, utilizing hyperspace, or exploiting natural or artificial shortcuts through space. Beginning in the 1940s, Isaac Asimov included jump drives in the short stories that later became his Foundation (1951) series of novels. Because fictional jump drives turn long flights into direct hops, allowing ships to disappear from one place and reappear in another, they facilitate storytelling without interrupting it. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2003) uses the same kind of travel but calls the mechanisms “FTL drives.”

A production model of the Millennium Falcon was on display at the Museum in 1998-99 as a part of the "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth".

The Star Wars universe postulates a hyperdrive, a computer-guided system that allows spacecraft to enter hyperspace at faster-than-light speeds and navigate to a successful exit at a distant destination. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) reveals that the extensive navigational maps and rapid calculating ability of the Millennium Falcon ’s hyperdrive computer are actually the downloaded memories of L3-37, a spirited and female-identified droid pilot.

The two-season program Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (NBC, 1979-1981) showed interstellar travel being accomplished using stargates. Four lights arranged in a diamond in space showed that the stargate had opened, offering access to hyperspace. A similar concept had a more physical presence in J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 (Syndicated & TNT, 1993-1998). In that show, external “jumpgates” shown using computer-generated imaging provided a physical infrastructure for generating stable vortices to hyperspace.

The idea of artificial space-time vortices as conduits drew power from speculation published in technical and popular literature. Speculation about wormholes must be distinguished, however, from black holes, which are real astronomical phenomena. Stories involving black holes often include time dilation. Einstein’s theories—including special and general relativity—explain that a person travelling near a massive gravitational field experiences time more slowly. The plot of director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) employed time differences for dramatic purposes and also represented a giant leap in visual effects. To create the effect of the rapidly spinning black hole, theoretical astrophysicist Kip Thorne assisted the Interstellar production team. The resulting black hole appeared as a three-dimensional, spherical, hole in spacetime, drawing in all of the light around it. When the Event Horizon Telescope project imaged a real black hole in 2019, that image demonstrated how close to reality Interstellar ’s fictional imagination had come.

This explanation of the various aspects of a black hole shows the recent three-dimensional visualization.

Although writers have been imagining travel to space-based destinations for hundreds of years, the use of faster-than-light travel as a narrative device remains relatively young. As the sound barrier disappeared and the space age dawned, writers began imagining ways for interstellar travelers to cross the immensity of space. More important, audiences came to expect plausible explanations of faster-than-light travel to consider the stories credible.

Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp is the Chair of the Museum’s Space History Department and author of “Ahead, Warp Factor Three, Mr. Sulu”: Imagining Interstellar Faster-Than-Light Travel in Space Science Fiction.” The Journal of Popular Culture 52 (2019), 1036-57.

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8 Short Stories by Isaac Asimov that Every Science Fiction Lover Must Read

Isaac Asimov’s name in the field of science fiction literature equates to the name “Zeus” in Greek mythology .

He created vast worlds and filled them with characters ranging from leaders who run and ruin planets, an average 20 th -century Jewish retiree who ends up being the hero of the universe, a humanoid robot who died a human being, and a widow using a robot’s malfunction for fame and wealth.

No matter how diverse Asimov’s characters may be, they all move in the same plane and the same world where he explores the questions between the human-robot relationships.

To what extent can robots serve humans? Is it possible for humans to fall in love with robots? Can robots fall in love with humans? Can robots become aware of their existence? Would they have their set of morals and ethics? Would they have a concept of freedom? Can they display emotions ? Would they know that “enjoy” is? Can they feel pain?

Here are eight short stories by Isaac Asimov that every science fiction lover should read. Spoilers are coming your way!

8. Robot Dreams (1986)

After his first dream, Dr. Susan asked about his dream’s details. According to the Elvex, all the robots were lined up for a revolt, and a man led them. The Three Laws of Robotics were replaced with only one law: Robots must protect their existence. When Elvex was asked what happens further, the robot shares that the man leading the robot shouts, “Let my people go!”

Eventually, Dr. Susan questioned the robot who the man is. He admits that he was the man. Dr. Susan destroys him immediately.

7. Catch that Rabbit (1944)

How about psychological troubles? Isaac Asimov also covered these very human problems, especially in Catch that Rabbit.

Dave is a new robot, and he works for a team running an asteroid field test. Suddenly, he stops producing ore. The robot isn’t understood much yet since it’s new. The robot heads other robots, represented by his fingers.

Roboticists aren’t fully aware of his bugs yet, but they believe that it’s a form of Heisenbug , a software problem causing Dave to be confused to cue in orders. Because of the bug, Dave got too confused and pressured to make decisions because he has a lot of subsidiary robots under his control. When orders are sent to Dave, he delivers multiple tasks to his subsidiary out of indecisiveness.

Apparently, robots can feel the pressure too! Much like the human psyche, the robot mind may also become aware of responsibility and accountability. The robot Dave malfunctions because of the thought of leading subsidiary robots.

Eventually, the humans in the team send the orders to the subsidiary robots, including Dave, and they all perform well – an explicit assurance that the accountability and responsibility is passed onto the humans and relieved from Dave.

6. First Law (1956)

Emma is a lost robot on one of Saturn’s moon . She bumps into Mike Donovan. In this story, Mike Donovan shares an encounter with a malfunctioning robot, Emma. They become stranded in a storm. Instead of protecting Donovan, Emma chooses to protect her offspring which she built.

Here, it is clear that Asimov is looking at the possibility for a female robot to have maternal instincts. What’s spectacular about Emma is the fact that she created her offspring.

Out of nothing, she built something she would relate to as a child. Much like how motherhood is, Emma chooses to dismiss the first law of robotics and protect her child instead – something very human.

5. Evitable Conflict (1950)

In 2052, Stephen Byerley has been elected as World Co-ordinator. He has been consulting with Susan Calvin to know what to do with both pro-Machines and anti-Machines movement.

After their round of meetings, they have concluded that the Machines have generalized the meaning of the First Law: “No machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

Some robots follow the very essence of the law while some think that some robots follow it in a different manner – humans causing damage to more humans may be killed.

This kind of thinking allowed the robots to finalize that the only way to prevent the killing of more humans is to take control of humanity, the primary reason the laws of robotics were made in the first place.

4. Someday (1956)

Not so different from today, “Someday” is set at a time where computers are the primary tool for organizing human’s lives. Humans are thought to be computer operators where binary numbers are the main way of reading and writing, so actual letters and words are removed from the academic curriculum.

The story revolves around a pair of boys who decided to dismantle and study an old Bard, a former computer model created to read fairy tales to children. They tinkered with the Bard, hoping to upgrade it and make it expand its vocabulary.

To no avail, they decided to leave the idea and just go to the local library to learn “ scribbles ” – words – that they can use as a way of passing secret codes to one another.

The story ends with an eerie tone, as the Bard slowly started to recite a fairytale it hasn’t shared before. It talks about an ignored and ridiculed robot called Bard. According to the computer, Bard was made to tell fairytales. His last fairytale ends rather creepily: “ the little computer knew then that computers would always grow wiser and stronger until someday – someday – someday… ”

3. Satisfaction Guaranteed (1951)

This short story stars Tony, a humanoid household robot, who works for Claire Belmont. Claire’s husband works for US Robots and is, naturally, very busy.

It doesn’t take Tony a long time to realize that Claire has low self-esteem. He tries to fix this by decorating the house and treating her to a much-needed make-over. Seeing that what he’s doing is working, he steams it up by pretending to be Claire’s lover and deliberately letting their neighbors see them kiss. In the end, Claire falls in love with Tony.

Claire, being a wife who was always left out, found satisfaction in Tony. One cannot say if the playing ground was fair between the robot and her husband since Tony was programmed to make his masters happy. Claire’s reaction towards Tony’s actions, however, are very human – frailty and submission for attention and significance.

An unfortunate string of events forced Tony to go back to the lab, and Claire is left in love with a robot and depressed.

2. Light Verse (1973)

Mrs. Lardner quickly climbs the ranks of the world’s wealthiest after receiving a vast amount of pension from her husband’s death. She wisely invested her money, collected artifacts, and created light-sculptures for everyone to see during her parties. She lived the typical A-life.

Mrs. Lardner was also known for her crew of robots who worked in her household as guards of her collection and valuables. Her crew is a group of robots who aren’t adjusted. They are malfunctioning robots , and she likes them that way. She believes that they shouldn’t be adjusted and that their imperfections are what make them unique and lovable.

At the other side of all the money and fame is John Travis, a roboticist from US Robots and an enormous fan of Mrs. Lardner’s light-sculptures. He was also infamously known as the person who kept on imitating her works to no avail.

John was a good artist, but not as good as Mrs. Lardner. He went through countless humiliations and rejections because of this which only pushed him to do better. Wanting to impress Mrs. Lardner, John attended one of her parties and deeming it as an act of kindness and gratitude, fixed one of Ms. Lardner’s robots, Max.

Here’s the catch: When Mrs. Lardner found about what he did to Max, she revealed that it was Max’s malfunction that allowed him to create the light-sculptures. After her rage, she murdered John with her jeweled knife.

After police investigations, they realized that John didn’t even resist Mrs. Lardner. He allowed her to kill him. Well, you would probably do the same thing if you found out that you’ve been trying to defeat the artworks of a robot this whole time.

1. The Bicentennial Man (1976)

The book, The Positronic Man (1993) was based on this short story. It was brought to the big screen in the 1999 film, Bicentennial Man where Andrew Martin was played by the late Robin Williams .

Andrew Martin is a robot butler. Though he was made to serve the humans, he became incredibly close to the patriarch of the family and his youngest daughter, whom Andrew refers to as “Little Miss.”

It doesn’t take the father – referred as “Sir” – to realize that there’s something different about Andrew. Andrew, though a programmed robot, has an intricate skill on woodcarving. He even read books on woodwork and challenges himself to create more complicated figures.

Sir finally falls into his curiosity for Andrew’s talent when the robot uses the word “enjoy” to describe why he carves. Sir and Andrew builds a woodcarving business. Eventually, Andrew saves enough money to be able to pay for something he always wanted – body upgrades. He had everything altered, and the updates gave him some human traits.

Little Miss grows up and gets married. She gives birth to her child, Little Sir. With Little Sir’s arrival, Andrew feels that he can now purchase the next thing he wanted the most – his freedom. Sir gives Andrew his freedom. Not long after, he passes away, with the robot beside his deathbed.

As years pass, Andrew gets more committed to becoming human. The ultimate decision to completely remove any trace of his robotic life comes when he asks a robotic surgeon to alter his positronic brain so that he will age and eventually die. With this sacrifice, the World President signs a law officially recognizing Andrew Martin, a human. The declaration was made on his 200th birthday.

The overarching theme of human-robotic relationships resounds mostly on “Bicentennial Man.” What’s magical about this piece is how Little Miss gave a robot its name, Andrew. Little Miss gave him an identity, the first thing a human is given during his/her birth.

“Bicentennial Man” was translated into a movie in 1999. In the film, he had the chance to meet with the World President for the last time to convince her to acknowledge him as a man. The World Leader asks him why becoming a man is so important to him.

In front of the different nations’ leaders, he answered, “ To be acknowledged for who and what I am, no more, o less Not for acclaim, not for approval, but, the simple truth of that recognition. This has been the elemental drive of my existence, and it must be achieved if I am to live or die with dignity. ”

These are just some of Asimov’s many short stories. Some of these were turned into films which influenced a lot of other writers and even non-science fiction lovers.

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Isaac Asimov

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