Customer Reviews

Time Machines: The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written

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This is what a theme-based anthology should be! The title is slightly misleading since not all of the tales involve time "machines" although all are tales of traveling through time in one way or another.

Some fine authors are represented in the 22 stories here: Edgar Allen Poe and Rudyard Kipling, John W. Campbell and Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling, Connie Willis and Larry Niven, Jack Finney and Anthony Boucher. And more. When Adler picked these tales, he chose well. Earliest story is from 1850 (Poe), most recent from 1997.

There are tales of people visiting the dinosaur era, all sorts of people visiting Important Historical Events, a hilarious tale of an agent from the Marriage Prevention Bureau (they send people back to interfere with what would end up being bad marriages), a strange story about a test pilot ending up in the extreme far future, a story based on the "What if I had..." daydreams people tend to have, another strange tale about finding ways around "can't change the past," a story about time travelers who set out to find "missing" aliens they know MUST be somewhere, or somewhen.

My favorites: Jack Finney's charming classic "The Third Level" about a man taking a "wrong" turn in New York's Grand Central Station and ending up in the past, "The Twilight Zone" episode "The Odyssey of Flight 33" where a commercial airliner finds itself going into the past, even as far back as the dinosaur eras, and a charming buddy-story about two very intelligent, capable college professors who go back in time simply to drink, chat and be merry with historical figures. There is a (what should be frightening) tale about a three year old girl who figures out time travel and uses time travel for her hide-and-seek games.

My beef: Ray Bradbury is indeed in this anthology with "A Touch of Petulance," when I had expected "A Sound of Thunder," considered a classic of classics. Still nice to see a Bradbury tale, even if his characters didn't step on that butterfly.

Sources/bibliography are included, so the reader will know when and where the stories came from. That's something I expect, and appreciate, when an anthology provides them. Not just in the pre-index but at the beginning of each story when possible. Adler's paragraph size comments (at the beginning of each story) were nice as well.

Recommended for people who like time travel stories. These are fantasy-type science fiction stories where the people have fun moving about through time.

Highly recommended for fans of time travel stories. These stories are "fun" tales without much of the high-tech technobabble about physical realities and limitations.

An occasionally interesting collection of 22 short stories, written over a wider timescale than is normally seen in anthologies, albeit the inclusion of Edgar Allan Poe's 1850 contribution is one of several which invalidate the word 'machine' in the title! This claims the collection to be 'the best ever written', but apparently not from any poll, simply the opinion of editor Adler. It would have been nice to see genuine claimants such as Robert A Heinlein's 'All You Zombies' included, but apparently the editor considered his own rather insipid tale to have more merit. This self-indulgence comes to a head with the inclusion of an editorial spoiler at the beginning of each and every story. Unless you make a point of avoiding reading these, the whole effect of a professionally unfolded plot is destroyed. Left to their own devices, without the interference of intrusive editing, this collection of varying quality stories would deserve a 3.

A great diversion for a couple of days. There were about three stories I skipped through because they bored me, an a couple others that just weren't that great, but I also found a few favorites that I'd definitely call some of the "greatest time travel stories."

A collection of time travel stories are what make this genre the fantastic journey that it is. Other fine reads I've experienced if you love a time travel novel are Michael Crichton's "Timeline" and Nicholas Stember's "Twilight"... both fantastic time travel reads.