Wells had given me my first taste of the visionary splendor a fictional voyage into the far future could provide. Lovecraft had shown me how a time travel story could unfold an infinity of possibilities in all directions. Taine had allowed me to think I was actually visiting the Mesozoic of my childhood dreams. And Heinlein had revealed the dizzying paradoxes inherent in the assumption that time travel could be achieved at all. As I continued my youthful reading of the science fiction magazines and anthologies, I came upon many other remarkable stories that provided further variations on the time travel concept: Murray Leinster’s “Sidewise in Time,” pioneering the alternative world idea; P. Schuyler Miller’s “As Never Was,” posing a nasty little circular reality paradox; Ross Rocklynne’s “Time Wants a Skeleton,” a time travel murder mystery; and Henry Kuttner’s “Line to Tomorrow,” in which a telephone is mysteriously connected to the future, among many others. Then, by 1954, I began to sell stories to the science fiction magazines myself, and, year in, year out, I chose frequently to deal with the narrative challenges of time travel, beginning with such works as 1954’s “Hopper” and 1955’s “Absolutely Inflexible” and continuing on, decade after decade as I was making my own long journey through time. Here, now, is the full spectrum of them, my adventures in time travel brought together in one book from first to last.
—Robert Silverberg
ABSOLUTELY INFLEXIBLE
Here is a story from the dawn of my career as a professional writer that shows I was concerned with the time travel concept right from the outset.
I was just beginning to sell my stories to the science fiction magazines from 1954 on, but progress was slow and often discouraging. Despite that, and the rigors of college work—I was still an undergraduate, in my junior year at Columbia—I wrote short stories steadily all year—one in April, two in May, three in June, two in October after the summer break. And I eventually sold them all, too. But it wasn’t until the summer of 1955 that there was any pattern of consistent sales.
By then I was beginning to believe that I might actually be able to earn a modest living of some sort as a professional science fiction writer after I graduated in June of 1956. But the evidence in favor of that, so far, was pretty slim: a handful of sales to a couple of minor SF magazines. My total income from all of that was $352.60 spread over a year and a half—not a great deal even in those days. But I was finding it easier and easier to construct short stories that—to me—seemed at least as good as most of those that the innumerable SF magazines of the day were publishing. With hope in my heart, I stepped up my pace of production as the college year came to its close, and by June of 1955 I was writing a story a week.
“Absolutely Inflexible” was among them—one of my first successful tries at the time paradox theme. I suppose it’s more than a little indebted to Robert A. Heinlein’s classic “By His Bootstraps,” but what time paradox story isn’t? And it has some strength of its own, enough to have seen it through an assortment of anthology appearances over the years, and even, for a while, to be something of a best-seller for one of the pioneering online publishers of the 1990s. It was bought, after making the rounds of the various higher-paying magazines for about six months, by the veteran editor-publisher Leo Margulies, who ran it in the July 1956 issue of the underrated magazine he had founded and edited, Fantastic Universe.
THE DETECTOR OVER IN ONE corner of Mahler’s little office gleamed a soft red. He indicated it with a weary gesture of his hand to the sad-eyed time jumper who sat slouched glumly across the desk from him, looking cramped and uncomfortable in the bulky spacesuit he was compelled to wear.
“You see,” Mahler said, tapping his desk. “They’ve just found another one. We’re constantly bombarded with you people. When you get to the Moon, you’ll find a whole Dome full of them. I’ve sent over four thousand there myself since I took over the bureau. And that was eight years ago—in 2776. An average of five hundred a year. Hardly a day goes by without someone dropping in on us.”
“And not one has been set free,” the time jumper said. “Every time traveler who’s come here has been packed off to the Moon immediately. Every one.”
“Every one,” Mahler said. He peered through the thick shielding, trying to see what sort of man was hidden inside the spacesuit. Mahler often wondered about the men he condemned so easily to the Moon. This one was small of stature, with wispy locks of white hair pasted to his high forehead by perspiration. Evidently he had been a scientist, a respected man of his time, perhaps a happy father (although very few of the time jumpers were family men). Perhaps he possessed some bit of scientific knowledge that would be invaluable to the twenty-eighth century; perhaps not. It did not matter. Like all the rest, he would have to be sent to the Moon, to live out his remaining days under the grueling, primitive conditions of the Dome.
“Don’t you think that’s a little cruel?” the other asked. “I came here with no malice, no intent to harm whatsoever. I’m simply a scientific observer from the past. Driven by curiosity, I took the Jump. I never expected that I’d be walking into life imprisonment.”
“I’m sorry,” Mahler said, getting up. He decided to end the interview; he had to get rid of this jumper because there was another coming right up. Some days they came thick and fast, and this looked like one of them. But the efficient mechanical tracers never missed one.
“But can’t I live on Earth and stay in this spacesuit?” the time-jumper asked, panicky now that he saw his interview with Mahler was coming to an end. “That way I’d be sealed off from contact at all times.”
“Please don’t make this any harder for me,” Mahler said. “I’ve explained to you why we must be absolutely inflexible about this. There cannot—must not—be any exceptions. It’s two centuries since last there was any occurrence of disease on Earth. In all this time we’ve lost most of the resistance acquired over the previous countless generations of disease. I’m risking my life coming so close to you, even with the spacesuit sealing you off.”
Mahler signaled to the tall, powerful guards waiting in the corridor, grim in the casings that protected them from infection. This was always the worst moment.
“Look,” Mahler said, frowning with impatience. “You’re a walking death-trap. You probably carry enough disease germs to kill half the world. Even a cold, a common cold, would wipe out millions now. Resistance to disease has simply vanished over the past two centuries; it isn’t needed, with all diseases conquered. But you time travelers show up loaded with potentialities for all the diseases the world used to have. And we can’t risk having you stay here with them.”
“But I’d—”
“I know. You’d swear by all that’s holy to you or to me that you’d never leave the confines of the spacesuit. Sorry. The word of the most honorable man doesn’t carry any weight against the safety of the lives of Earth’s billions. We can’t take the slightest risk by letting you stay on Earth. It’s unfair, it’s cruel, it’s everything else. You had no idea you would walk into something like this. Well, it’s too bad for you. But you knew you were going on a one-way trip to the future, and you’re subject to whatever that future wants to do with you, since there’s no way of getting back.”
Mahler began to tidy up the papers on his desk in a way that signaled finality. “I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll just have to see our way of thinking about it. We’re frightened to death at your very presence here. We can’t allow you to roam Earth, even in a spacesuit. No; there’s nothing for you but the Moon. I have to be absolutely inflexible. Take him away,” he said, gesturing to the guards. They advanced on the little man and began gently to ease him out of Mahler’s office.
Mahler