For those of you experiencing  Time Travel Week withdrawal, here’s a 1971 Keith Laumer SF novel about a Time agent marooned in the Jurassic Era. Ravel has just completed a mission in 1936 Buffalo, NY when he’a approached by a Karg–a robot from the Future. Ravel returns to his Time Base in the Jurassic when it is attacked by war machines from the Future and utterly destroyed. Ravel is stuck in the Jurassic. Of course, Keith Laumer’s plots are always twisty and Dinosaur Beach is no exception. If you’re looking for a Time Travel adventure novel with dinosaurs, this delivers. John O’Neill at BLACK GATE has some insightful comments about Dinosaur Beach here. GRADE: B+

I’m wrapping up Time Travel Week with this box set of Star Trek episodes voted on by fans. These are the most popular time travel Star Trek episodes across all the various series. I bought all the Star Trek fan collective box sets except for the one about Q. All your favorite Star Trek episodes are here. “The City on the Edge of Forever” is here. I’ve always like Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” And the 2-part “Year of Hell” of Star Trek Voyager reminds me why I enjoyed this series so many years ago. Hope you enjoyed Time Travel Week! GRADE: A

For those of you who want more Time Travel movies, check out this link that Art Scott discovered: http://io9.com/every-time-travel-movie-ever-ranked-1682363164
BOX SET CONTENTS:
“Star Trek” Episode 21, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” finds the “Enterprise” going back in time, courtesy of the gravitational pull of a black hole, to the 1960s. Kirk rescues an Air Force pilot, Captain John Christopher, he cannot let return with his knowledge of the future. But Christopher has to return to have a son who will be a famous space explorer (Warp 4).

“Star Trek” Episode 28, “The City on the Edge of Forever” is the most famous “Star Trek” episode. McCoy goes back in time through the Guardian of Forever and changes history. Kirk and Spock follow to set things right, ending up in the U.S. during the Great Depression. The focal point is Edith Keeler, a social worker. McCoy saved her life and Edith led a peace movement that delayed U.S. involvement in World War II, allowing Hitler to create atomic weapons first and win the war. Kirk is in love with Edith, but she must die (Warp 5).

“STNG” Episode 63, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is the “Enterprise-C,” which comes through a temporal rift and changes everything changes. The “Enterprise-D” is now a ship of war, fighting a losing war with the Klingon Empire, so Worf is gone and Tasha Yar is back. Guinan knows something is wrong and has to convince Picard that the correct timeline must be restored no matter what (Warp 5).

“STNG” Episode 118, “Cause and Effect” finds the “Enterprise” trapped in a time loop ending with the starship exploding. This pattern is repeated several times, but each progression changes, offering clues for avoiding the ship’s apparent fate. These changes are most notable in the poker game being played by several members of the bridge crew (Warp 5).

“STNG” Episodes 126 & 127, “Time’s Arrow, Parts 1 & 2” find the “Enterprise” has returned to Earth where Captain Picard is shown an archeological dig in San Francisco that has uncovered Data’s head among a bunch of late 19th-Century artifacts. Investigating a temporal distortion on Devidia Two, Data is caught in a rift and sent back to 19th-Century Earth. There he discovers Guinan in the company of Samuel Clemens. Back in the future, Guinan tells Picard it is very important that he go on this away mission. The funniest parts here are the attempts by Data to fit into the past. There is an explanation for why his head was buried for 500 years, but these episodes are only slightly above average (Warp 4).

“STNG” Episodes 177 & 178, “All Good Things, Parts 1 & 2” finds Captain Picard is shifting through time. One moment he is twenty-five years in the future, a retired ambassador tending his vineyard but suffering from a degenerative neurological disease. Then he finds himself seven years in the past when he first took over the “Enterprise.” In the present the ship is sent to the Neutral Zone to investigate an anomaly that has appeared. Picard finally realizes who is responsible for his time shifting and finds himself once again in the courtroom Q created to try humanity in “Encounter at Farpoint.” The trial never officially ended and the Continuum has finally reached a verdict. The human race should be destroyed, but the Q do not have to do anything for this to happen. The anomaly is going back in time, growing larger as it does, until it will arrive at Earth at the pivotal moment when life is created. Now there never be life on Earth and Picard will be the one who caused it. A very satisfying conclusion to the seven-year run of the series (Warp 5).

“Deep Space Nine” Episode 80, “Little Green Men” begins with Quark transporting Nog to Earth so the young Ferengi can be the first of his kind to enter Starfleet Academy. The next thing we know the shuttle has crashed near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The military takes the trio into custody. Quark immediately starts scheming to make a profit, but the government wants to torture Quark to find out about the alien invasion (Warp 4.5)

“Deep Space Nine” Episode 103, “Trials and Tribble-ations” has the Bajoran Orb of Time being used to send the “Defiant” and its crew back over a hundred years to Deep Space Station K-7 where the U.S.S. “Enterprise,” Captain James T. Kirk, commanding, is in orbit. Suddenly we find ourselves in the classic original “Star Trek” episode, “The Trouble With Tribbles” (Warp 5).

“Voyager” Episodes 76 & 77, “Year of Hell, Parts 1 and 2” begins when the starship is attacked by the Krenim with the Chronoton-based torpedoes. Seven of Nine works out shielding against the torpedoes, and the next time they are attacked the space-time continuum is changed. The Krenim commander, Annorax, tries to erase “Voyager” from history, but the badly damaged ship escapes. Keeping the command crew aboard, Janeway orders the rest to abandon ship. Meanwhile, Janeway must repair “Voyager” and put together a coalition to try and stop Annorax, who is changing the present to correct a past mistake (Warp 5).

“Voyager” Episodes 171 & 172, “Endgame, Parts 1 & 2″ is the series finale. Admiral Janeway, ten years after getting her crew back, travels back in time to convince her younger self to take a desperate shortcut through a wormhole controlled by the Borg. Janeway and her crew, still committed to the idea of putting the needs of others before themselves that got them stuck in the Delta quadrant in the first place, refuse. But then the Admiral reveals the high cost that her younger self will have to pay, and suggests a new plan that will allow “Voyager” to accomplish both tasks (Warp 5).
Thanks to Lawrance Bernabo for these summaries.

If I had to recommend one Time Travel anthology, Time Traveler’s Almanac would be my choice. This massive 948-page volume includes a wide range of Time Travel stories. The classics are well represented, but there are plenty of unfamiliar stories to discover. And the VanderMeers aren’t afraid to include multiple stories by a single writer (like Kage Baker for example)–a rarity in anthologies like this. If you check out the Table of Contents you’ll see some stories you instantly recognize, but plenty you don’t. That’s the fun of a huge collection like this: discovering new writers and new stories. If you’re a fan of Time Travel, you’ll love Time Traveler’s Almanac!
STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY AUTHOR:
“Young Zaphod Plays It Safe” by Douglas Adams
“Terminós” by Dean Francis Alfar
“What If?” by Isaac Asimov
“Noble Mold” by Kage Baker
“A Night on the Barbary Coast” by Kage Baker
“Life Trap” by Barrington J. Bayley
“This Tragic Glass” by Elizabeth Bear
“Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties” by Max Beerbohm
“The Most Important Thing in the World” by Steve Bein
“In The Tube” by E. F. Benson
“The Mask of the Rex” by Richard Bowes
“A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury
“Bad Timing” by Molly Brown
“The Gulf of the Years” by George-Olivier Châteaureynaud
“The Threads of Time” by C. J. Cherryh
“Thirty Seconds From Now” by John Chu
“Palindromic” by Peter Crowther
“Domine” by Rjurik Davidson
“The Lost Continent” by Greg Egan
“The Gernsback Continuum” by William Gibson
“3 RMS, Good View” by Karen Haber
“Message in a Bottle” by Nalo Hopkinson
“The Great Clock” by Langdon Jones
“Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters” by Alice Sola Kim
“On the Watchtower at Plataea” by Garry Kilworth
“Time Gypsies” by Ellen Klages
“Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore
“At Dorado” by Geoffrey A. Landis
“Ripples in the Dirac Sea” by Geoffrey Landis
“The Final Days” by David Langford
“Fish Night” by Joe Lansdale
“As Time Goes By” by Tanith Lee
“Another Story” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Loob” by Bob Leman
“Alexia and Graham Bell” by Rosaleen Love
“Traveller’s Rest” by David I. Masson
“Death Ship” by Richard Matheson
“Under Siege” by George R. R. Martin
“The Clock That Went Backwards” by Edward Page Mitchell
“Pale Rose” by Michael Moorcock
“The House that Made the Sixteen Loops of Time” by Tamsyn Muir
“Is There Anybody There?” by Kim Newman
“Come-From-Aways” by Tony Pi
“The Time Telephone” by Adam Roberts
“Red Letter Day” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“The Waitabits” by Eric Frank Russell
“If Ever I Should Leave You” by Pamela Sargent
“How the Future Got Better” by Eric Schaller
“Needle in a Timestack” by Robert Silverberg
“Delhi” by Vandana Singh
“Himself in Anachron” by Cordwainer Smith
“The Weed of Time” by Norman Spinrad
“Palimpsest” by Charlie Stross
“Yesterday Was Monday” by Theodore Sturgeon
“Triceratops Summer” by Michael Swanwick
“The Mouse Ran Down” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
“Augusta Prima” by Karin Tidbeck
“Twenty-One and Counting Up” by Harry Turtledove
“Forty, Counting Down” by Harry Turtledove
“Where or When” by Steven Utley
“Swing Time” by Carrie Vaughn
excerpt from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
“Fire Watch” by Connie Willis
“Against the Lafayette Escadrille” by Gene Wolfe
“The Lost Pilgrim” by Gene Wolfe
Non-Fiction[edit]
“Introduction” by Rian Johnson
“Music for Time Travelers” by Jason Heller
“Time Travel in Theory and Practice” by Stan Love
“Trousseau: Fashion for Time Travelers” by Genevieve Valentine
“Top Ten Tips for Time Travelers” by Charles Yu

I’m pretty sure The Time Traders by Andre Norton (aka, Alice Mary Norton) was the first time travel novel I ever read. And, of course, I’ve read it numerous times over the years. The main character is a criminal called Ross Murdock. Murdock is given a choice: undergo a new medical procedure called Rehabilitation or volunteer to join a secret government project. Hoping for a chance to escape, Murdock decides to join Operation Retrograde and is taken by Major John Kelgarries to a secret base under the ice near the North Pole. Here, Murdock is teamed with an archaeologist, Gordon Ashe, Murdock undergos training for the role of a trader of the Beaker culture in Bronze-Age Europe. Imagine Murdock’s surprise when he actually travels in time back to the Bronze Age! And, of course, a crashed alien starship enters into the plot. I loved this book as a kid, especially the memorable Virgil Finley cover. Do you remember your first time travel book?
THE TIME TRADER SERIES:
The Time Traders (1958)
Galactic Derelict (1959)
The Defiant Agents (1962)
Key Out of Time (1963)
Firehand (1994) (with Pauline M Griffin)
Echoes in Time (1999) (with Sherwood Smith)
Atlantis Endgame (2002) (with Sherwood Smith)

I loved A Wrinkle in Time when I was a kid. I must have read it a dozen times over the years. Madeleine L’Engle’s story of Meg Murry, a teenager who attempts to rescue her father who is being held prisoner on another planet, is pure magic. Meg has to travel in time and space on her quest. This is the first SF book I can remember reading where the main character is a young woman. A Wrinkle in Time brought a lot of readers into the science fiction genre. L’Engle wrote more books in the series but none of them is better than the first one. Do you remember reading A Wrinkle in Time as a kid?
TIME QUINTET:
A Wrinkle in Time (1962), (Newbery Award Winner), ISBN 0-374-38613-7
A Wind in the Door (1973), ISBN 0-374-38443-6
A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), ISBN 0-374-37362-0
Many Waters (1986), ISBN 0-374-34796-4
An Acceptable Time (1989), ISBN 0-312-36858-5

In the future, machines called Terminators seek to eliminate Humanity. But, the macines are defeated by humans led by John Connor. Yet the machines try another desperate strategy: they use Time Travel to send a Terminator back in time to kill John Connor’s mother (so Conner is never born). That was the plot of the first Terminator movie. But, that attempt on Sarah Conner creates a fractured timeline that threatens the future. Terminator Genisys is a “reboot” of the Terminator series. The threat of murderous machines from the Future has fascinated me from the beginning of this franchise. I’ll be seeing Terminator Genisys tonight. Do you have a favorite Terminator movie?

Welcome to Time Travel Week on this blog! For the next week I’ll be presenting Time Travel books and movies you might find engaging. I’m starting with a Robert Silverberg novel from 1968 where the Future comes to visit us. Vornan-19 appears in Rome on Christmas Day. He claims he’s from the year 2,999–a thousand years in the future. The U. S. Government assembles a team of scientists to study Vornan-19 to determine if he is truly from the future or if he’s just a brilliant con-man pulling off a hoax on the world. Particle physicist Leo Garfield–who has actually moved a particle two seconds into the past–joins the team in hopes of learning the secrets of time-travel from Vornan-19. But the man from the future is vague and enigmatic. The Masks of Time shows a world on the brink of the Millennium looking for direction. The Masks of Time was nominated for a Nebula Award. Time is very tricky in this book!

Blythe Danner plays a widow named Carol whose life changes when two men enter her life. Lloyd, the Pool Guy, is a typical Millennial living with his mother and working a dead-end job. Sam Elliott plays Bill, a member of a nearby retirement community who is smitten by Blythe (what guy wouldn’t be?). I also enjoyed Blythe’s friends: June Squibb, Rhea Perlman, and Mary Kay Place. This is a pleasant movie with a good cast. No surprises. GRADE: B

Helen Mirren plays the Queen…again. This play was offered as part of the Fathom Event series at our local Regal Theatre. On Tuesdays at 6:30 P.M. the Queen meets with the current Prime Minister to discuss the current political situation for 20 minutes. The Audience captures these meetings with the 12 Prime Ministers over the years. The play is not chronological so watching Helen Mirren transform from the Queen in her 80s to the young Queen in her 40s–and back again–is incredible! The meetings sometime take on the flavor of therapy sessions as the Prime Ministers and the Queen have to deal with crises. The meeting with Margaret Thatcher and the Queen is particularly prickly. I liked the interaction between the Queen and Harold Wilson the best. I’m sure tickets to The Audience go for $100 or more on Broadway. But a ticket to this version of The Audience only cost $20. A bargain! I recommend these Fathom Events. GRADE: A