tales of SILVER AGE TIME TRAVEL
travel back to AVENGERS #11 (DEC 1964)
—You see those two SPIDER-MEN up there from page 18 of Avengers #11? They look odd for three reasons. The main reason, of course, is that they’re the product of “dandy” DON HECK and “chic” CHIC STONE, rather than Spidey’s godfather, STEVE DITKO. That’ll never feel quite right, any more than a Ditko IRON MAN will ever feel kosher.
The second oddity is the stark white background: That’s my doing. I’m attempting to give you the look-and-feel of my personal memory of when I first saw the page. The day was in early October 1964, a comic-book-Wednesday of course, and the usual day of my weekly trip with MOM to the PX, where I always got to run over to the newsstand to see what comics IRVING had set aside for me. But on that particular Wednesday (as well as the previous two days), I’d been in bed with the bugaboo of all 1960s kids—strep throat—and Mom made it clear that I was to stay in bad while she and my kid sister, LINDA, went to the PX. No amount of pleading would change her mind.
So there I lay in bed already in my homemade Spider-Man Halloween costume, all dressed up, but no place to go. By the way, I still have the costume, including the homemade mask. Here are two pictures, although neither is from ’64 when Mom first made the costume:
Me, in 1966 with a store-bought plastic mask, and today with the original 1964 homemade mask. Somehow, the original mask seems more true-to-Spidey:
I’m not sure why I still have the original mask and the safety pin that held it together. The plastic mask from 1966 has long since crumbled to dust or at least disappeared. I wonder what would happen if I donned the costume now and went back to meet myself in 1964. It occurs to me that maybe the reason the handmade mask wasn’t available for me to wear in that 1966 photo is because I went back to 1965 and stole the mask, which explains why it’s in such good condition in the present-day photo. And you know, I don’t actually remember Mom sewing the mask back in 1964, so maybe I should head back there now and give it to my 1964 self. . . .
But that’s off the track of the October 1964 story in which Linda—yes, really!—was the heroine! Let me tell you about that for a bit, which (trust me!) will lead us to the third oddity in the Spidey v Spidey picture. You see, on the trip to the PX, Linda visited Irving and brought home three comics, two of which were explicitly for her sick brother! Really! Who woulda thunk? You can easily guess which two of the three were for me:
As an aside, you should know that DAREDEVIL’s yellow-and-black costume was a gazillion times cooler than the orange duds that he changed to in early 1965, but never mind. And you should also know that, after being in the clutches of Linda’s sticky little hands, the comics 
were hardly in mint condition. But none of that mattered to me because all I saw as she casually threw the comics on my bed and demanded a 24-cent bounty was the crumpled up page 18 of Avengers #4, showing not one, but TWO Spider-men! That’s why the title image for today’s blog has a washed out background: On that bed-ridden day in 1964, I simply couldn’t see anything beyond the two crumpled Spideys. Now you know!
And on to the third oddity of the image, which is simply this: TWO Spider-Men! Of course, to me they were more than merely two Spideys. One of them must have traveled through time to meet the other!
Finally! Marvel had risen to the challenge and presented one of the major time-traveling issues that my GRANDPA MAIN and I were always wrangling over. And a quick flip to the front of the crumpled issue confirmed the matter. Both the cover and the splash page told me that Marvel’s premier time traveler, KANG the CONQUEROR, was the hero of the issue. My mind raced through all the meet-yourself stories that Grandpa and I had read lately, and the think is, I just had to read them all again before tackling the Spidey-meets-Spidey story—trust me (again), I had to.
So, I sprang out of my sickbed, shouting for Linda to get out of my way. I’m fairly certain that Linda shouted back something about her 24 cents, but I had no time for that: I had to get to the card catalog that Grandpa Main had left with me before taking off for the far east. In the card catalog—all neatly stored on 3” by 5” index cards and cross-indexed by all kinds of criteria—was his so-called so-called International Time Travel Data Briefs (aka the ITTDB), and one of the things you could look up were the Meet-Yourself stories. In the history of time travel, these were all pre-1965, so they are the earliest of the meet-yourself-in-time stories, or at least the earliest ones that Grandpa knew about.
In all, there were eighteen entries, and it seemed likely that I’d be adding the nineteenth once I allowed myself the anticipated pleasure of reading the Spidey-meets-Spidey tale. So, I guess you want to know about those eighteen stories? Hold your breath—here we go . . .
(1) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843).
SCROOGE sees his past self, in fact several younger selves, such as this moment with his sister:
The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her “Dear, dear brother.”
“I have come to bring you home, dear brother!” said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. “To bring you home, home, home!”
CHARLES DICKENS also arranged for Scrooge to see his older self in future—a grey-haried rascal, nearly seventy years of age—but in all cases, Scrooge was unable to interact with the other time.
Conclusion: no actual time travel, particularly because the Christmas-to-come presumably was a possibility that never actually came.
(2) El Anacronópete by Enrique Gaspar (1887).
Grandpa read ENRIQUE GASPAR’s 1887 novel in the original Spanish. I remember him telling me that I would have to learn Spanish if I ever wanted to read the story of the time machine that pre-dated H.G. Wells. I also remember that back in ’64, I had no idea why Grandpa had put the story on the meeting-yourself list, and I had no easy way to find out back then. To make matters worse, I never did excel at foreign languages, not even Spanish, for which I had a large motivation to learn. But finally, after I retired from teaching, I did take two semesters of Spanish and set a goal of translating the 1887 novel. By that time, though, I’d forgotten about the story being on the meet-self list, and I only just thought of it again now. I do remember one short incident in the first chapter, which might be the meet-self incident that Grandpa was thinking of:
“One step at a time,” argued a sensible voice. “If the Anacronópete aims to undo history, it seems to me that we must be congratulated as it allows us to amend our
failures.”
“Quite right,” called a married man jammed into the front of the bus, thinking of his tiresome wife. “As soon as the ticket office opens to the public, I’m booking passage to the eve of my wedding.”
Certainly, THE MARRIED MAN might be thinking of warning his past self. You’d think that I’d remember whether there was some other meet-past-self incident in the book, but all that I remember is that there wasn’t any important incident. On the other hand, Gaspar’s novel did provide the first actual time machine in literature—and that was important! If you’d like to read my translation, it’s available at storypilot.com.
(3) “The Man Who Met Himself” by Donovan Bayley. In: The Thrill Book (1 March 1919).
Grandpa had just one comment on this story: No he doesn’t.
Presumably, Grandpa meant that the man in DONOVAN BAYLEY’s title doesn’t actually meet himself or maybe that he doesn’t travel through time. According to Bleiler, what does happen is that the man splits into two mini-me’s, who do meet each other, but without time travel. Another disappointment. Will a time traveler ever meet himself?!
(4) “The Man Who Met Himself” by Ralph Milne Farley. In: Top-Notch (August 1935).
Same title as the previous story, but this time—hooray—Grandpa noted in his ITTDB that this, indeed, was the first story he knew of in which a traveler met himself. The hero in RALPH MILNE FARLEY’s story is stock broker and time traveler DIRK WITHRICK who, while on a 1935 tiger hunt in Cambodia, runs into a strangely familiar (and somewhat older) man who warns him, “As you value your freedom, do not touch the machine—”. and yet, despite the warning, he does touch the machine, taking him back to 1925. From that point forward, he lives a decade at the end of which he warns himself “As you value your freedom, do not touch the machine—”
Grandpa liked the explanation from the BUDDHIST ABBOT in the story:
“It cannot be,” the Abbot asserted suavely. “The years from 1925 to 1935 happen only once in the whole course of eternity. You are not now living through a repetition of those ten years. Rather it is those same ten years. The events which you remember as having happened back in Boston, and the events which are happening here today, are happening simultaneously. Your ten years in Boston from 1925 to 1935, are one and the same ten years. It is only an illusion of your mind that they seem to be successive, rather than concurrent. And this illusion is not so different from the illusion of all mankind with respect to the flow of timel for Brahm, the Creator, sees all time and all space as once complete instantaneous event.”
What I like, though, is the way everything locks together: It is what it was. What happened, happened. You can meet yourself, but your younger self will do what your older self remembers him or her doing, and your older self will also do what your older self remembers doing. There are no branching timelines, and quite likely there is no free will.
Unfortunately, the story is hard to track down these days, but your best bet is a library copy of Farley’s Omnibus of Time. The story is still the earliest meet-self story that I know of, but I have hope of finding something earlier as I read through early issues of Astounding and Amazing.
(5) “Atom Blake, the Boy Wizard, in the Worlds of Time”. In: Wow Comics #2 (Summer 1941) to #4 (Winter 1941).
On HIS note card, Grandpa wrote “another red herring”. I didn’t know why it was a red herring until today when I tracked down the story at the Digital Comic Museum. At the start of the story (attributed to PIERCE RICE) the teen-whiz ATOM BLAKE sure seemed like a promising meet-yourselfer-via-time-traveler:
But, alas, if you turn to the next page, you find that the second Blake is just a duplicate, kind of like the 1919 version of “The Man Who Met Himself”. In short, no possible paradoxes, nothing to say about free will, no fun.
(6) “By His Bootstraps” by Anson MacDonald. In: Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1941).
Grandpa noted in his ITTDB that Anson MacDonald was really ROBERT HEINLEIN, a fact that was known to everyone in 1964—everyone, that is except me! My heart raced when I read that news about MacDonald being Heinlein, because I already knew about one great Heinlein meet-yourself time travel story (see below). Now here was even earlier one! There was nothing else written on the ITTDB card, so I really had no choice other than to race to the attic and dig out Grandpa’s box of Astounding issues from the early 1940s. Yep, I found the issue, I found the story, and I promptly fell asleep on the second page, not because it was boring, but because, as you might remember, I was still feverish with strep throat.
I woke up even hotter, zipped downstairs with the magazine, filled a pitcher of water, and went straight to bed. To read the story, of course, and it was worth it. I’m sure you all know that Heinlein’s later story, “—All You Zombies—”, simply cannot be topped. But this story provides the roots to Zombies through physics grad student BOB WILSON’s own self-referential trek through time, where he not only meets himself, but also provides to himself the means to meet himself. Highly recommended, unless you are wed to free will. Here’s a short excerpt and a chart that Heinlein made for himself to track Wilson’s path through time. The chart is reproduced from JAMES GLEICK‘s Time Travel: A History.
Wait a minute now—he was under no compulsion. He was sure of that. Everything he did and said was the result of his own free will. Even if he didn’t remember the script, there were some things that he knew “Joe” hadn’t said. “Mary had a little lamb,” for example. He would recite a nursery rhyme and get off this damned repetitive treadmill. He opened his mouth—
Your best bet at finding this story is a second-hand copy of Heinlein’s The Menace from Earth (well worth the price for the title story alone), or the more obscure collection Off the Main Sequence, which among other things, also has two other Heinlein time travel stories (“Elsewhen” and the aforementioned “—All You Zombies—”).
(7) “My Name Is Legion” by Lester del Rey. In: Astounding Science-Fiction (June 1942).
“My Name Is Legion” is an important story—if nothing else, it’s compelling to examine it in the context of war propaganda—but in 1964 I couldn’t understand the story’s time travel angle, and Grandpa’s note card had nothing to say about that either. And honestly, I still don’t understand it. Oh, I understand that the hero of LESTER DEL REY’s story, KARL MEYERS, brings back thousands upon thousands of Hitlers from the future, but I seem to need a diagram like Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” chart to show how all those Hitlers connect.
Perhaps you could read the story and tell me what you think. I recommend finding a second-hand copy of Early del Rey, which contains the story and makes a nice companion to The Early Asimov, The Early Pohl, The Early Williamson, and The Early Long. If you end up as confused as I am, you can consult my friend JAMIE TODD RUBIN’s blog, Vacation in the Golden Age, where he discusses the story. And if you’re still confused, then perhaps you’ll still be able to enjoy this excerpt where some time traveler seems to be meeting himself:
“What,” the Leader wanted to know, “Is a plenum?”
“A complete universe, stretching up and forward and sidewise–and durationally; the last being the difficulty. The plenum is–well, the composite whole of all that is and was and will be–it is everything and everywhen, all existing together as a unit, in which time does not move, but simply is, like length or thickness. As an example, years ago in one of those American magazines, there was a story of a man who saw himself. He came through a woods somewhere and stumbled on a machine, got in, and it took him three days back in time. Then, he lived forward again, saw himself get in the machine and go back. Therefore, the time machine was never made, since he always took it back, let it stay three day, and took it back again. It was a closed circle, uncreated but existent in the plenum.”
“Someone had to make it.” The Leader’s eyes clouded suspiciously.
(8) “Captain Marvel, Jr. Meets Himself in the Future!”. In: Captain Marvel, Jr. #17 (March 1944).
I’m still searching through storypilot’s big list of time travel comics to see if I can spot any earlier comic book where a character met himself in time, but Grandpa’s note cards indicated that this was the earliest he knew of. And the nine-page story is certainly worth a read at the Digital Comic Museum (where it’s attributed to MAC RABOY). In the story, you’ll find young FREDDY FREEMAN (aka CAPTAIN MARVEL, JR.) anxious to get to the future to help a disabled friend recover his lost fortune:
And indeed, in the future, Freddy meets a not-so-junior version of himself:
I am annoyed that the future Captain Marvel, Jr., remembers nothing of his younger self visiting the year 2044. I certainly remember if my teen self visited me! Because of that, the story was not a particularly interesting time travel story, and no paradoxes were touched upon, but who knows, this could well be the first comic-book time traveler meeting himself.
(9) “Me, Myself and I” by Kenneth Putnam. In: Planet Stories (Winter 1947).
Back in 1964, the title to this story on Grandpa’s note card led me to believe that it had to be the ultimate meet-yourself story. So you can imagine my frustration when the Winter 1947 issue of Planet Stories was missing from Grandpa’s late-1940s box of pulps. Happiliy, I did track down the story more than fifty years later in a copy of WILLIAM TENN’s Of All Possible Worlds at the University of Colorado Library. You see, both KENNETH PUTNAM and William Tenn were psuedonyms of the Englishman PHILIP KLASS, who was born within a year of that other time-travel pioneer, Isaac Asimov.
As for the story itself, there was a slightly mad scientist and a strongman who went back in time to test the scientist’s theory about something or other. The thing is, the strongman messes up the timeline, in a way that presages Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” but instead of accepting the messed up universe, Strongman returns to make things right, and in so doing, he meets himself. Oh, and here’s a quote from the story that gives me hope of meeting Grandpa again some day:
Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother.
(10) “Time Trap” by Charles L. Harness. In: Astounding Science-Fiction (August 1948).
Hooray! Grandpa’s magic boxes did have the August 1948 Astounding with CHARLES HARNESS’s “Time Trap”, and I gobbled it up right then in 1964. Years later, I visited Wichita, KS, near where Harness lived, but sadly, I didn’t realize he was there. I would have enjoyed saying hello and giving the Golden Age icon my Grandpa’s best wishes.
As you can see, “Time Trap” was the lead story of the issue, starting in page 7. Both the title and the blurb focus more on the time loop aspect of the story than the meet-yourself aspect, but of course, young Mike was interested in only the self-meeting, which is quite early in the story, although you wouldn’t realize it on the first time through. Once again, there’s no talk of the universe exploding when the elder meets the younger, but even so, the story suffers from a murkiness that is often part of time-travel stories that are otherwise enjoyable. The murkiness stems from two points: (1) That somehow the events are repeating over and over again—but from whose viewpoint? (2) The events are deterministic and must be acted out exactly the same each time. I enjoy clever stories that espouse the viewpoint of the second item (“By His Bootstraps”). But this does not play well with the first item, and (as with many stories), Harness did not address that conflict nor the consequent issue of free will.
P.S. If you like courtroom drama, “Time Trap” will appeal to you. You can find the whole story on google books.
(11) “. . . and It Comes Out Here” by Lester del Rey. In Galaxy Science Fiction (February 1951).
Yep, Grandpa had this early issue of Galaxy in his boxes, too, and I was glad to give Lester del Rey a chance at redemption after he totally confused me with “My Name Is Legion”.
Once again, the story involves a self-visit, but the focus isn’t so much on old JEROME BOELL meeting Jerome Boell the younger as it is on the incorporated bootstrapping paradox. Just who did invent the Boell household atomic power unit anyway?
Among other places, you can find the story in ROBERT SILVERBERG’s collection, Voyagers in Time.
(12) The End Eternity by Isaac Asimov (1955).
You knew ISAAC ASIMOV was coming, didn’t you? I knew Asimov would pop up, because Grandpa had read The End of Eternity to me aloud the year before. Later, in 1966, he gave me the Lancer paperback edition to keep myself, and it’s still on my bookshelf. Indeed, it was ANDREW HARLAN’s watching himself from behind that first got Grandpa and me talking about the whole meet-yourself anxiety syndrome. It wasn’t a major part of the book, but it made a big enough impression on me that I can still turn right to the passage at the start of Chapter 10 in my well-worn Lancer paperback:
“What’s the big deal?” I asked Grandpa. “So what if he meets himself?”
“Well,” said Grandpa in his quiet way, “what if he meets himself, but he doesn’t remember meeting himself? Or maybe he does remember, but he decides to do things differently this time around.”
“That’d sure be interesting. Wouldn’t you want to know what happens then?”
“Sure, I would” said Grandpa. “But apparently Asimov doesn’t.”
I’m still disappointed that Asimov didn’t want to know the answers to those questions. Seems like a cool experiment to try. But regardless, I’ll give the good Dr. Asimov credit for being the first in my knowledge to bring up the thought that messing with Destiny might be unwise.
If you’d like to read more about Asimov’s Eternity, hop on over to last month’s Time Travel Peregrinations blog by my friend MARC BARHAM.
(13) “Sam, This Is You” by Murray Leinster. In: Galaxy Science Fiction (May 1955).
You’ve probably seen more than one story of wireless signals or telephone calls from the past or future. The first one that I know of was “Wireless” by the literary giant RUDYARD KIPLING back in 1902. But, MURRAY LEINSTER—a giant in his own right—provided the first audio connection to yourself that I know about.
Grandpa didn’t have the relevant Galaxy issue in his boxes, but the note card indicated something even better: a reel-to-reel tape recording of an October 1956 radio broadcast of “Sam, This Is You” (featuring none other than SAM YODER) on the most famous radio program of all time, X Minus One! Here’s a snippet for your listening pleasure:
Leinster’s entire story is just under half an hour, and you can read more about the edisode in this week’s Old Time Travel Radio post by my friend JANET RAYE STEVENS.
(14) “First Time Machine” by Fredric Brown. In: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (September 1955).
Grandpa had this one listed in his ITTDB, but the issue of Ellery Queen was missing. I finally read it IN 2001 when my friend JIM CURRY gave me a present of From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown. Thank you, Jim!
According to BARRY MALTZBERG in the introduction to Brown’s collection, FREDRIC BROWN offered to teach one of his own sons everything he knew about writing fiction. His son declined, perhaps worried that accepting would eventually lead to writing a story about killing grandfathers or some such. And indeed, “First Time Machine” is a piece of flash fiction centering around the Grandfather Paradox. And as a throwaway bonus, we get a self-meeting.
“What would have happened if you’d rushed to the door and kicked yourself in the seat of the pants?”
Dr. Grainger laughed. “Maybe I couldn’t have—because it would have changed the past. Thats the old paradox of time travel, you know. . . .”
(15) “—All You Zombies—” by Robert A. Heinlein. In: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (March 1949).
I know you’ve been holding your breath for this one. You may know from last March’s blog that Grandpa had me gnawing on this one (behind Mom’s back) at age six. I don’t have anything else to add to my thoughts on the story—how could I? It’s the ultimate travelin’ in time, meetin’ yerself, feel-good story. I’m surprised that anybody’s written any time travel story after “—All You Zombies—”. And it does make all the paradoxes neatly eat themselves.
Today, I find myself annoyed at the 2014 film version of the story, Predestination with ETHAN HAWKE. For me, the ending of the movie completely destroyed the whole point of the story. If you must watch it, please steel yourself and say a prayer for Heinlein who must be grumbling in his grave. Oh, and please check out Marc Barham’s take on solipsism and All You Zombies in his Time Travel Peregrinations from earlier this week.
(16) “Rainbird” by R. A. Lafferty. In: Galaxy Magazine (December 1961).
R. A. LAFFERTY came to writing fiction at a relatively late age and was already in his mid-forties when his first sf story was published, just one year before “Rainbird”. Grandpa did have a copy of the December 1961 Galaxy, so I read it in 1964. At the time, I thought that young HIGGSTON RAINBIRD needed to tell old Higgston to mind his own business. “Just let me make my own mistakes,” I woulda told the ancient meddler. That’s not too surprising, given that I was seven at the time.
The surprising part is that I still want to tell the old geezer to mind his own business.
As with several other stories on this list, “Rainbird” deals more with the Bootstrapping Paradox than free will and similar meet-yourself issues.
(17) ”The Unfortunate Mr. Morky” by Vance Aandahl. In: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1962).
You’ll have some difficulty tracking down this story by fellow Coloradan VANCE AANDAHL. Apart from the October 1962 F&SF (which Grandpa had, yay!), it’s appeared in only a few 1960s collections. So let me tell you what you need to know, all from Grandpa’s handy ITTDB note card.
(18) “Spur of the Moment” by Richard Matheson. On Twilight Zone (21 February 1964).
The final meet-yourself entry in Grandpa’s ITTDB was an episode of The Twilight Zone by none other than sf-writer RICHARD MATHESON, but it wasn’t an entry that Grandpa made. I made that entry back in February of 1964 after watching old ANNE HENDERSON warn herself about her upcoming marriage. What do you think this one says about free will? I’ll leave that answer to you, but I will point out the nice circle back to El Anacronópete and the married Spanish man who wished he could travel to the eve of his own wedding.
This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Mitchell, 43 years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake, a hope which is unfortunately doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past. Today may change tomorrow but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped “Not Accepted”—and stored away in the dead file, in the recording office . . . of the Twilight Zone.
That’s the end of Grandpa’s list as it stood in 1964. Eighteen stories in all. Of course there are still two other questions: First of all: Did Spidey travel through time and meet himself, so that Avengers #11 will become the nineteenth story? As you know, I sure thought he was going to, and I saved the issue just savor the anticipation of reading that darn story.
I don’t know how to break this to you other than coming right out with it: Spidey didn’t travel through time, not in Avengers #11, and more than that, never even once in Marvel’s Silver Age of Comics. I know you’re disappointed, though it’s unlikely you’re as disappointed as my seven-year-old self. If I could, I’d certainly travel back in time to console myself and perhaps bring along some ice cream for my strep throat.
You see, Kang was in the story, and he traveled through time, but Spidey never did. And the second Spidey? You’ll have to track down the story and read it yourself for the answer to that, but I will add that part of my young disappointment stemmed from the fact that the none of the story required time travel at all. Curse that STAN LEE! (Please pretend I never said that).
And the second unanswered question? That came from Linda, who to this day still wants to know where her 24 cents are.
As it turns out, the number of pre-1965 meet-yourself stories in the ITTDB still stands at eighteen, but I’ll soon be starting a more comprehensive search of Golden Age pulps and comics to see what else I can spot. If you know of any other such stories, please pass them on to me. And I also hope you’ll meet me again, right here, on the first Wednesday of November because . . .
Coming Soon!
the FANTASTIC FOUR —
Friend against friend!! Brother against Sister!! If you always thought it could never happen, you can’t afford to miss A House Divided!
Don’t miss it on the first Wednesday of November!