Another Point in Time

When it comes to moving around in time, a great deal of the fun and delight is that there are so many different variations on the theme. Sometimes a machine - be it a glorified sleigh or a souped-up DeLorean - delivers us to some point in the past or the future. Sometimes it's a weird, hazy phenomenon that descends up on us and scoops us up; sometimes we just get hit on the head and wake up somewhen else. And I've always been thrilled by that wonderful range.

I've done some time travel tales myself at this point, enough to fill a book. I hope I've managed to make each one different, each deploying some new take on time travel and what it does and what it means:

- a team of time-traveling researchers crash-lands 77,000 years in the past, and become gods to the natives they encounter;
- the apartment atop the Eiffel Tower become a way station for travelers from future centuries;
- an archaeological team unearths a Cro-Magnon skeleton, 30,000 years old, with a cybernetic brain implant and a bionic arm;
- a Manhattan antiques dealer's centuries-old shop was once a tavern, and after midnight he can hear voices emanating from the 1770s;
- a pizza delivery boy discovers that he can return to a point in recent past, allowing him to get rich quick;
- a quirky middle-aged retiree finds a hole to the past in Mammoth Cave, and finds he prefers cavorting with dinosaurs to being around his wife;
- a time-hopping wraith is condemned to roam an eternal stream of nights, jumping from one to the next, forced to take a life of his choosing in each...

...and more.

Three of these - "Skeleton 17", "Delivery Boy", and "Sisters" - are new, written for this collection.
The others appeared in previous collections, including Shadows of Shadows, Quantum Chronicles
and The Madman's Almanac. I hope the Gentle Reader enjoys them all!