Customer Reviews

The Time Tunnel

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From the very birth of the conception of time travel, sci-fi authors and scientists alike have wrestled with the difficulties of time travel paradoxes most commonly expressed in the question of what would happen if you killed your grandfather during your trip to the past. In "Time Tunnel", Murray Leinster has treated his readers to what was probably the first (and quite possibly the best) instance of the infuriating mental tangles that one can encounter when the immutability of the progression of real time collides with the flexibility of time travel.

Leinster has crafted a positively ingenious combination of characters into a fascinating novel of high adventure that will both delight and fascinate his fans - a scientist who felt compelled to change the past in order to rescue the future from an impending atomic war between China and the US; young lovers who, fearing for their lives in a war-torn modern world, felt compelled to flee to a safer past; a 20th century burglar and con artist who realized the early 19th century was ripe for the plucking; and a playboy who was horrified to watch his grandfather die unmarried and childless.

The story begins in 1964 when Harrison, completing research for his PhD thesis in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, discovers long-buried correspondence showing that, in 1805, a gentleman named de Bassompierre had written to certain scientists handing out modern knowledge long before its acknowledged discovery. In one case, for example, "He wrote to Laplace, the astronomer, assuring him that Mars had two moons, very small and very close to its surface. He also said that there were three planets beyond Saturn, and that the one next out had a period of eighty-four years and two moons, one retrograde. He suggested that it should be called Uranus. He added that in the year 1808 there would be a nova in Persis, (which there was!) and he signed himself very respectfully, de Bassompierre." When Harrison and his friend, Pepe Ybarra, reach the conclusion that de Bassompierre was a time traveler who is attempting to change the future by handing out modern ideas before their time, the high jinks begin in earnest and the time travel conundrums drop into the readers' laps at a dizzying pace.

And the ending ... sigh! What a wonderfully clever simultaneous resolution of both the adventure plot-lines and the time travel paradoxes.

Recommended as a scintillating addition to the library of any reader who savours classic sci-fi from the pulp era.

Paul Weiss

Actually, the book pictured here is Leinster's 1967 "The Time Tunnel," a novelization of the Irwin Allen television series which ran on ABC from 1966-67. Mr. Weiss' review is of Leinster's 1964 "Time Tunnel," which may have served as the inspiration for the series but had a different plot and characters.
I read this book as a child, and although I don't recall enough of the details to give an accurate summation of the story line, I do recall it being an enjoyable read.

Well it certainly took you guys long enough to get me the right book three times and even after I gave you the code on the book. Well 1 out of 12 is still an excellent run.

Murray Leinster was quite the science fiction writer and was one of the Golden Age of Science Fiction's most prolific and imaginative one. He wrote a story in the 1940s that imagined the internet (A Logic Named Joe) and another that imagined parallel universes (Sideways in Time), as well as writing alternative histories, TV novelizations, etc., etc.

Murray used to knock together juvenile novels, too. One of which is by Pyramid Books, Time Tunnel. Unlike the TV series of the same name with scientific apparatus and two men lost through the time dimensions, Murray imagined a tunnel that was linked with two metal objects. One object was in the past and its same object occurred in the present. This created a "tunnel" where one could walk across and find he was in 1804 France.

Murray makes the same statement several times: is the universe an uncaring one where it does not matter if Man is here or not, or is the universe a purposeful one that has time tunnels as safety valves to prevent Man from totally extinguishing himself!

Despite these lofty ideas, the story rolls along in a quick fashion. The characters are not all that well developed and neither is the plot. In fact enough hints are dropped so that by the middle of the novel, you're pretty well assured how it will end. There were a few surprises though, despite its predictability, that made the story overall enjoyable.

Is it possible to go back in time and not accidentally kill your great great grandfather? Questions like this regarding logic and time paradox were peppered through a story of a pair of students who through a miraculous coincidence bump into each other in Paris as China prepares for nuclear war against Formosa and the West. Can this be undone?

Their former professor is willing to try. Being unhappily married and wanting change, he turns a time tunnel into a conduit for selling perfumes and old newspapers. Clearly not his purpose.

The story continues in a meandering sort of way but ends satisfactorily. A few more well developed characters could have made this a great tale. My main reason for reading this is to see the difference to the 1960s television program and there are many!

As it is, the book is good to stuff in ones' pocket and pass the time on the subway.

Remember reading this book LONG ago--and it took a VERY GOOD book to keep me interested enough to read cover to cover.

Just wish this the pilot episode of the series--but nooooo. The Government is going to close the project.."Tony and Doug" decided to prove the tunnel would work and traveled back to May 31, 1889, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. They tried to warn the townspeople of the impending flood--but were brushed off.

They save themselves and a little lost girl on a rooftop and while the flood is raging they tell the little girl to turn around and don't look back. The tunnel is repaired (have no idea what its problem was!) and they're going back to present day at the project.

They relay the story to the General (who is responsible for shutting the project down) and the General's jaw drops. He says his grandmother was a survivor of the flood and was saved by two men who took her to a rooftop. They told her to turn around and when she looked back, they were gone. She believed all her life that those two men were angels--but they were our little "time tunnel travelers".

I can even remember a couple of sentences from the book:

(General) "But if you hadn't been there and saved her, I would... I would..."
(Tony or Doug) "You wouldn't be."

The General changes his mind about the project and they live happily ever after somewhere in time. LOL

Not bad for a brain that survived the '60s and '70s.....