# Ask the guy who is pretty good at SF Story Identification **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 7, 2008, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417 "2008-09-07T00:08:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 90
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1781 "2025-06-20T11:44:21Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > travel back in time on the behest of clients to go back and fix issues caused by amateur time travelers Another (short) story I loved was about one of those amateur time travelers. What I always remember is two things: (1) what bothered him was that high rise buildings were all fractions of a degree off of vertical. (That was the introductory joke). (2) The government agency fixing up his damage was using simulacrums to replace people who had seen to much: they were desperately trying to get ahead of the story because they didn’t want the simulacrum replacement scheme to wind up “like California”. (Pretty good in the original. It’s all in the timing, right?) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1782 "2025-06-20T11:53:23Z")
Another novel about a time traveler messing up the time line is _Up the Line_ by Robert Silverberg. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1783 "2025-06-20T12:13:54Z")
Perhaps the most famous example of a time traveler finding out why he can’t change the time line is the episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” in _Star Trek_ on April 6, 1967. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1784 "2025-06-20T14:24:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > “A Sound of Thunder” was published in _Collier’s_ on June 28, 1952. _Mastodonia_ is adapted from his short story “Project Mastodon”, published in _Galaxy_ in March 1955. Wikipedia and Goodreads was what I checked for that. Sprague de Camp’s “A Gun for Dinosaur” wasn’t published until 1956. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Incidentally, a short story named “Time Patrol” by Poul Anderson, with apparently the same plot, first appeared in _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ in May 1955. Nothing to do with dinosaurs – are you referring to altering the past? ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1785 "2025-06-20T14:39:45Z")
So no guesses at the title/author of this one which featured time travel as diving into what seems like a literal stream, needing to surface, dive, and swim in the waters of time? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1786 "2025-06-20T15:11:24Z")
Isaac Asimov story, person has a time machine. The characters come out, thinking they are in some far future, and they ask a local what year it is. The local says in German the current year, with the narrator offering that “and adding ‘it’s been that way all year’ was not any funnier in German.” It seems they didn’t time travel, just traveled. I’m sure it is in one of my many many Asimov collections. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1787 "2025-06-20T16:51:04Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > Nothing to do with dinosaurs – are you referring to altering the past? Yes, I was referring to altering the past in general, not just stories that included dinosaurs. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1788 "2025-06-20T17:03:18Z")
Living Space > **[Living Space](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Space)** > > "Living Space" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the May 1956 issue of Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1957 collection Earth Is Room Enough. It concerns itself with a possible consequence of the existence of parallel universes, specifically the ones where life on Earth never developed. > Clarence Rimbro owns the entire planet Earth. This is no great accomplishment as, thousands of years in our future, anyone can do it. There ar... ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1789 "2025-06-20T17:23:43Z")
_The Brooklyn Project_ is an amusing short story by Philip Klass writing as William Tenn about a project to send a camera into the past to photograph ancient times. There is discussion about the possible danger of the mere existence of the camera causing changes to the timeline, but the project leaders dismiss such fears as unwarranted. The camera makes its first trip into the past, then returns to the present, where subtle changes to the present are described to the reader but naturally are unnoticed by the characters, since from their point of view that is how the world has always been. More trips are taken, each one producing larger and larger changes to the present, all unnoticeable by the characters. By the end of the story, the human characters are now purple amoeba-like creatures, one of whom cries triumphantly, “See, nothing has changed!” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1790 "2025-06-20T17:28:56Z")
That doesn’t sound like a great fit - the characters knew very well they were in the present (on an alternate world) not the future ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1791 "2025-06-20T17:31:39Z")
Available in many anthologies: > **[Title: Brooklyn Project](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41581)** ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1792 "2025-06-20T18:52:43Z")
There was a short story where a inventor bemoans that his time machine project is a failure: it will only go back in time a fixed interval, which at the time of the story goes back to the middle of the Great Depression. The inventor’s pragmatic wife obtains old currency and goes back to buy the household groceries at Great Depression prices. ---
**Author:** ![Chelonaut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9a140/32.png) [@Chelonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chelonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1793 "2025-06-20T18:52:50Z")
But it fits on a small but rather unusual detail. It’s not in the wikipedia summary, but during this part > [@Wikipedia](#): > > It does not take him long to find the source of the sounds. When he does, he is accosted by a stranger who talks to him in a dead language—[German](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language). > > After a confusing conversation, Mishnoff realizes that the man is from a parallel Earth where [Nazi Germany](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany) [conquered the entire planet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_victory_in_World_War_II). this happens, complete with narration. > [@Andy\_L](#): > > The local says in German the current year, with the narrator offering that “and adding ‘it’s been that way all year’ was not any funnier in German.” Except its not the current year, it’s some other number, and while the main character ponders this, the stranger adds “nach Hitler”. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1794 "2025-06-20T19:04:30Z")
The Good Provider by Marion Gross [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #16, September 1952 | SF MAGAZINES](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=3148) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1795 "2025-06-20T19:18:19Z")
This reminds me (but isn’t the same novel as) of the Philip Jose Farmer novel _The Gate of Time_ (also published as _Two Hawks from Earth_) in which the hero finds himself in a alternate time line in which North and South America don’t exist (for some weird reason). He and a secondary character who also comes from a time line in which North and South America do exist. At the end of the novel, the two characters talk about their time lines, and they discover that Hitler never became Führer in one of their time lines. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1796 "2025-06-20T19:38:39Z")
That makes sense. I was thinking of “Thiotimoline to the Stars” (another Asimov story) in which a space ship returns to Earth, and due to a misunderstanding, one of the passengers thinks that they’ve traveled several hundred years into the past ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1797 "2025-06-20T20:02:10Z")
Related to that is a bit mentioned in Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. The inventor of the portals thought he had a time machine, and thought he was emerging in the Pleistocene era, when it was actually just a park in the Amazon basin. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1798 "2025-06-20T22:19:08Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > This one would have been published in the late 70’s in Asimov’s. A time travel agency where clients would pay for specific changes to the timeline. Which 12-year-old me should have thought WTF, why is that even _allowed_, but I just accepted it. The main plot involved accepting a job from a man who wanted to rewrite history to keep his son from being killed in Vietnam, and the agent was having a right hard time of it. The agent would dive into the timestream, and effect the changes by possessing people in that time and place. Walk around in their bodies for a time to influence later events. There aren’t that many Asimovs issues in the late 1970s, since the magazine started in the late 70s (and was initially quarterly). Any of the titles here look familiar? [Title: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine - 1977](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?137072) (1977) [Title: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine - 1978](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?137073) (1978) [Title: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine - 1979](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?137074) (1979) ---
**Author:** ![gre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d78d45/32.png) [@gre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gre)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1799 "2025-06-21T17:18:45Z")
The search ran for so long that it became reflexive for me to take an immediate interest whenever I saw any mention of a time travel story. I’ve had to try to recalibrate now to the new level of how much am I inherently interested in time travel stories? ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1800 "2025-06-21T19:57:51Z")
I have a terrible memory for titles and authors of things I read before I became well versed in the genre. Or reading literature of any type for that matter. I remember the plot of the story quite well, I remember where and when I was, I remember I’d just been gifted some relatively recent back issues of Asimov’s, starting my decent into madness. 🙂 I clicked through all these issues in the likely date range, and no titles leaped out at me as THE one. That site doesn’t have any story plot details, just raw bibliographic data, unfortunately. There are still a lot of potential candidates I couldn’t rule out based on a very mismatched title alone. I did rule out the 1977 issues, since I think I would have noticed at the time if any of those issues I’d been gifted were quarterly, which was uncommon in my experience then. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=89) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=91)