The Time Traveler's Almanac (141 page)

Like Sun Ra, Dzyan, and Coil before them, some current groups have found instrumental music to be the most efficient method of conveyance through time. The one-woman electronic project Motion Sickness of Time Travel – comprising Rachel Evans on tone generators, oscillators, and other supposedly archaic analog noisemakers – composes symphonic paeans to the temporal slipstream. Meanwhile the maestro known as Mickey Moonlight crafts uncategorizable albums such as 2011’s
The Time Axis Manipulation Corporation,
a kaleidoscopic blend of space-age kitsch lounge music and adrift-in-spacetime electronica. Even seasoned electronic artists like Thomas Dolby (of “She Blinded Me with Science” fame) have hitched their wagon to time travel – in Dolby’s case, literally. His 2012 Time Machine Tour was conducted in a chrome-plated trailer of his own design, a self-defined “time capsule” cobbled together from bits of technology from the past, the present, and presumably the future.

As the twenty-first century loses its new-car smell, musicians intrigued by time travel must find new ways to interpret the musty old notions of H.G. Wells – and the recording limitations of the past. Where the evolution of recording formats, from the seven-inch phonograph to the compact disc, once gave artists more conceptual spacetime to play with, the ascendancy of digital recording and streaming means the cloud is the limit. Neither music creators nor listeners are beholden to outmoded interpretations of the future.

The future, actually, doesn’t even have to be futuristic at all. The literary genre of steampunk has catalyzed a movement of music that acts as its unofficial soundtrack – a genre, not coincidentally, that counts Thomas Dolby as one of its godfathers. Thriving in the same anachronistic soup as the literature that spawned it, steampunk music draws from a variety of historical eras, past and future, both real and imaginary. Alternate history clashes with retro-futurism; Victorian and/or Edwardian values jostle with cybernetics and post-humanism. In most of twentieth-century time-travel lore, paradox is a thing to be avoided or explained away as logically as possible. With steampunk, chronological quirk is embraced, not buried. So when a prominent steampunk group like Abney Park constructs an overarching meta-narrative about the band’s tenure on a time-traveling dirigible, it all plays into the immersive listening experience of being both audience and scientific observer. And when steampunk troubadours Vernian Process fuse together a panoply of centuries-spanning styles – from rag-time to progressive rock to trip-hop – the polyglot sound represents the fractured linearity and immediate accessibility of music in the digital age. Vernian Process’ 2013 album is titled
The Consequences of Time Travel
– and for the first time in the history of recorded music, it feels as though the possibilities of time-travel music are finally, fully being embraced with a sense of adventure.

We are living, these old-fashioned, newfangled steampunks might say, in a post-chronological world. But this isn’t a new idea. As the brainy punk-pop band the Buzzcocks sang in their 1978 time-paradox anthem “Nostalgia,” “Sometimes there’s a song in my brain / And I feel that my heart knows the refrain / I guess it’s just the music that brings on nostalgia / For an age yet to come.”

Or, in other words: To travel through music is to listen to time.

A Time Travel Playlist

13th Floor Elevators, “She Lives (in a Time of Her Own)”

Abney Park,
The End of Days

Agoraphobic Nosebleed,
Agorapocalypse

The Apples in Stereo,
Travellers in Space and Time

Arsonists, “Rhyme Time Travel”

Ayrean,
Universal Migrator Parts 1 and 2

Barenaked Ladies, “It’s All Been Done”

Black Sabbath, “Time Machine”

Blouse, “Time Travel”

Blue Öyster Cult,
Imaginos

Brian Eno,
Before and After Science

Buzzcocks, “Nostalgia”

Coil,
Time Machines

Dead Prez, “Time Travel”

Dr. Octagon,
Dr. Octagonecologyst

Dzyan,
Time Machine

Electric Light Orchestra,
Time

Fates Warning, “Traveler in Time”

The Flaming Lips, “Time Travel … Yes!!”

Grand Funk Railroad, “Time Machine”

Hawkwind, “Silver Machine”

High on Fire,
De Vermis Mysteriis

Huey Lewis and the News, “Back in Time”

The Human League, “Almost Medieval”

Inner City Unit, “Watching the Grass Grow”

Iron Maiden,
Somewhere in Time

Isis, “In Fiction”

Jonelle Monáe,
Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase)

Klaxons, “Gravity’s Rainbow”

Kraftwerk, “Computer World”

Led Zeppelin “Kashmir”

Mastodon,
Crack the Skye

MC Lars, “If I Had a Time Machine, That Would Be Fresh”

Mick Softley, “Time Machine”

Mickey Moonlight,
The Time Axis Manipulation Corporation

Motion Sickness of Time Travel,
Eclipse Studies

Muse, “Knights of Cydonia”

Nena, “Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann”

Never Shout Never, “Time Travel”

Queen, “’39”

Rick Wakeman,
Time Machine

Robyn, “Time Machine”

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Cast, “Time Warp”

Rush, “Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage” and

“Cygnus X-1 Book II:Hemispheres”

Steely Dan, “Pretzel Logic”

Sun Ra and His Myth Science Arkestra, “Music from the World Tomorrow”

T-Pain, “Time Machine”

Uriah Heep, “Traveller in Time”

Vernian Process,
The Consequences of Time Travel

“Weird Al” Yankovic, “Everything You Know is Wrong”

Wings, “Backward Traveler”

Zager and Evans, “In the Year 2525”

COMMUNIQUÉS

WHAT IF

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific and beloved science fiction writers of the twentieth century. In addition to his popular fiction, he wrote quite a lot of nonfiction. Some say he published over 500 books altogether. He had a knack for taking complex scientific ideas and presenting them so that the layman could understand these concepts. This story was first published in
Fantastic Story Magazine
in the summer of 1952.

Norman and Livvy were late, naturally, since catching a train is always a matter of last-minute delays, so they had to take the only available seat in the coach. It was the one toward the front, the one with nothing before it but the seat that faced the wrong way, with its back hard against the front partition. While Norman heaved the suitcase onto the rack, Livvy found herself chafing a little.

If a couple took the wrong-way seat before them, they would be staring self-consciously into each other’s faces all the hours it would take to reach New York; or else, which was scarcely better, they would have to erect synthetic barriers of newspaper. Still, there was no use in taking a chance on there being another unoccupied double seat elsewhere in the train.

Norman didn’t seem to mind, and that was a little disappointing to Livvy. Usually they held their moods in common. That, Norman claimed, was why he remained sure that he had married the right girl.

He would say, “We fit each other, Livvy, and that’s the key fact. When you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and one piece fits another, that’s it. There are no other possibilities, and of course there are no other girls.”

And she would laugh and say, “If you hadn’t been on the streetcar that day, you would probably never have met me. What would you have done then?”

“Stayed a bachelor. Naturally. Besides, I would have met you through Georgette another day.”

“It wouldn’t have been the same.”

“Sure it would.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Besides, Georgette would never have introduced me. She was interested in you herself, and she’s the type who knows better than to create a possible rival.”

“What nonsense.”

Livvy asked her favorite question: “Norman, what if you had been one minute later at the streetcar corner and had taken the next car? What do you suppose would have happened?”

“And what if fish had wings and all of them flew to the top of the mountains? What would we have to eat on Fridays then?”

But they had caught the streetcar, and fish didn’t have wings, so that now they had been married for five years and ate fish on Fridays. And because they had been married five years, they were going to celebrate by spending a week in New York.

Then she remembered the present problem. “I wish we could have found some other seat.”

Norman said, “Sure. So do I. But no one has taken it yet, so we’ll have relative privacy as far as Providence, anyway.”

Livvy was unconsoled, and felt herself justified when a plump little man walked down the central aisle of the coach. Now, where had he come from? The train was halfway between Boston and Providence, and if he had had a seat, why hadn’t he kept it? She took out her vanity and considered her reflection. She had a theory that if she ignored the little man, he would pass by. So she concentrated on her light-brown hair which, in the rush of catching the train, had become disarranged just a little; at her blue eyes, and at her little mouth with the plump lips which Norman said looked like a permanent kiss. Not bad, she thought.

Then she looked up, and the little man was in the seat opposite. He caught her eye and frowned widely. A series of lines curled about the edges of his smile. He lifted his hat hastily and put it down beside him on top of the little black box he had been carrying. A circle of white hair instantly sprang up stiffly about the large bald spot that made the center of his skull a desert.

She could not help smiling back a little, but then she caught sight of the black box again and the smile faded. She yanked at Norman’s elbow.

Norman looked up from his newspaper. He had startlingly dark eyebrows that almost met above the bridge of his nose, giving him a formidable first appearance. But they and the dark eyes beneath bent upon her now with only the usual look of pleased and somewhat amused affection.

He said, “What’s up?” He did not look at the plump little man opposite.

Livvy did her best to indicate what she saw by a little unobtrusive gesture of her hand and head. But the little man was watching and she felt a fool, since Norman simply stared at her blankly.

Finally she pulled him closer and whispered, “Don’t you see what’s printed on his box?”

She looked again as she said it, and there was no mistake. It was not very prominent, but the light caught it slantingly and it was a slightly more glistening area on a black background. In flowing script it said, “What If.”

The little man was smiling again. He nodded his head rapidly and pointed to the words and then to himself several times over.

Norman put his paper aside. “I’ll show you.” He leaned over and said, “Mr. If?”

The little man looked at him eagerly.

“Do you have the time, Mr. If?”

The little man took out a large watch from his vest pocket and displayed the dial.

“Thank you, Mr. If,” said Norman. And again in a whisper, “See, Livvy.”

He would have returned to his paper, but the little man was opening his box and raising a finger periodically as he did so, to enforce their attention. It was just a slab of frosted glass that he removed – about six by nine inches in length and width and perhaps an inch thick. It had beveled edges, rounded corners, and was completely featureless. Then he took out a little wire stand on which the glass slab fitted comfortably. He rested the combination on his knees and looked proudly at them.

Livvy said, with sudden excitement, “Heavens, Norman, it’s a picture of some sort.”

Norman bent close. Then he looked at the little man. “What’s this? A new kind of television?”

The little man shook his head, and Livvy said, “No, Norman, it’s us.”

“What?”

“Don’t you see? That’s the streetcar we met on. There you are in the back seat wearing that old fedora I threw away three years ago. And that’s Georgette and myself getting on. The fat lady’s in the way. Now! Can’t you see us?”

He muttered, “It’s some sort of illusion.”

“But you see it too, don’t you? That’s why he calls this, ‘What If.’ It will
show
us what if. What if the streetcar hadn’t swerved…”

She was sure of it. She was very excited and very sure of it. As she looked at the picture in the glass slab, the late afternoon sunshine grew dimmer and the inchoate chatter of the passengers around and behind them began fading.

How she remembered that day. Norman knew Georgette and had been so embarrassed that he was forced into gallantry and then into conversation. An introduction from Georgette was not even necessary. By the time they got off the streetcar, he knew where she worked.

She could still remember Georgette glowering at her, sulkily forcing a smile when they themselves separated. Georgette said, “Norman seems to like you.”

Livvy replied, “Oh, don’t be silly! He was just being polite. But he is nice-looking isn’t he?”

It was only six months after that that they married.

And now here was that same streetcar again, with Norman and herself and Georgette. As she thought that, the smooth train noises, the rapid clack-clack of wheels, vanished completely. Instead, she was in the swaying confines of the streetcar. She had just boarded it with Georgette at the previous stop.

Livvy shifted weight with the swaying of the streetcar, as did forty others, sitting and standing, all to the same monotonous and rather ridiculous rhythm. She said, “Somebody’s motioning at you, Georgette. Do you know him?”

“At me?” Georgette directed a deliberately casual glance over her shoulder. Her artificially long eyelashes flickered. She said, “I know him a little. What do you suppose he wants?”

“Let’s find out,” said Livvy. She felt pleased and a little wicked.

Georgette had a well-known habit of hoarding her male acquaintances, and it was rather fun to annoy her this way. And besides, this one seemed quite … interesting.