Trips in Time. edited by Robert Silverberg. 1977

TRIPS IN TIME

RATED 89% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE = 4.00 OUT OF 5

9 STORIES : 2 GREAT / 5 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

I do enjoy a short anthology, especially when that book is entirely focussed about one subgenera within Science Fiction. Trips in Time, edited by Robert Silverberg is one such anthology. The entire book is only 150 pages, which has shorter than some novellas in a Gardner Dozois anthology..

The theme is Time Travel, but Silverberg has chosen stories that are unconventional in the method of their operation. No time machines here!

He has also picked stories that were very enjoyable to read. Mugwump 4 , Manna, and The King’s Wishes all could be reasonably classified as comedy. There are few more serious stories, but never did we get bogged down in the bleak.

There are two truly great stories in the anthology.

• An Infinite Summer • (1976) • novelette by Christopher Priest. Bouncing gently between a quaint romantic interlude of 1903 and 1940s London during the Blitz, this explores the mysterious freezers and their affect on the lives of the people around them. This is story that plays on mood, setting, and mystery very well.

• Secret Rider • (1976) • novelette by Marta Randall. Tight and sharp story with great world building and propulsive energy. A woman travels across space and time, in increasingly complex ways, to give her ex-lover something embedded in her thigh. This would be a great movie.

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TRIPS IN TIME IS RATED 89% POSITIVE

9 STORIES : 2 GREAT / 5 GOOD / 2 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

How do I arrive at a rating?

1. An Infinite Summer • (1976) • novelette by Christopher Priest

   Great. Bouncing gently between a quaint romantic interlude of 1903 and 1940s London during the Blitz, this explores the mysterious freezers and their affect on the lives of the people around them.

2. The King's Wishes • (1953) • short story by Robert Sheckley

   Average. Shopkeepers interact with a demon who is stealing their household devices for an ancient King. Pleasant enough.

3. Manna • (1949) • novelette by Peter Phillips

   Good. Combining a superfood product, ghosts of ancient monks, refugees, and time travel, this is pleasant bit of SF fun.

4. The Long Remembering • (1957) • short story by Poul Anderson

   Good. The mind of a volunteer is sent into his past to a random time and has to rescue his love from neanderthals.

5. Try and Change the Past • (1958) • short story by Fritz Leiber

   Good. A man is pulled out of time to be a solider in the Time War, but carelessness allows him to go back in time to save his life.

6. Divine Madness • (1966) • short story by Roger Zelazny

   Good. Seizures are apparently making a man age backwards, possibly towards a crucial moment in his life.

7. Mugwump 4 • (1959) • novelette by Robert Silverberg (variant of Mugwump Four)

   Good. SF Comedy as a mistyped phone number thrusts a normal man into a world of mutants, war, banishment to the far future, and bureaucratic nonsense.

8. Secret Rider • (1976) • novelette by Marta Randall

   Great. Tight and sharp story but great world building and propulsive energy. A woman travels across space and time, in increasingly complex ways, to give her ex-lover something embedded in her thigh.

9. The Seesaw • (1941) • short story by A. E. van Vogt.

   Average. A man walks into a far future weapons shop - transplanted to the present - and find himself at the center of a ongoing conflict. Vogt is playing with ideas that he will do better in future stories.