With our lives firmly controlled by the steady pace of time, humans have yearned for ways to escape its constraints, and authors have responded with narratives about traveling far into the past or future, reversing the flow of time, or creating alternate universes where Napoleon was triumphant at Waterloo or the South won the Civil War. Writers ranging from Dante and Lewis Carroll to Philip K. Dick and Martin Amis have probed into the workings of time, and an overwhelming desire to master time reverberates throughout popular culture. This book considers how imaginative works involving time and time travel reflect ongoing scientific concerns and examine the human condition.The scope of the volume is unusually wide, covering such topics as Dante, the major novels of the 19th century, and stories and films of the 1990s. The book concludes with a lengthy bibliography of short stories and novels, films and television programs, and nonfiction works that feature time travel or speculations about time. With a roster of contributors that includes several of the field's major scholars, this book offers many new insights into this fascinating subject.

Introduction: The Quarries of Time by Gary WestfahlTime's ArrowArrows and Riddles of Time: Scientific Models of Time Travel by George Slusser and Robert HeathImpossible Times: Some Temporal Labyrinths in Science Fiction by Richard Saint-GelaisThe Jaws of the Intellect Grip the Flesh of Occurrence: Order in Time Travel by David Leiby"Backward, Turn Backward": Narratives of Reversed Time in Science Fiction by Andrew SawyerTimescapesBeyond the Endtime Terminus: Allegories of Coalescence in Far-Future Science Fiction by Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKayTime and Some Mysteries of Mind by Susan StrattonJews in Times: Alternate Histories and Futures in Space.... And Who Was that Bearded, Yarmulkeh'd Old Man? by Susan KrayThe Desire to Control Time in Doraemon and Japanese Culture by Jefferson M. PetersTime CapsulesThe Conversion of Space-Time in Dante's Divine Comedy by Pekka KuusistoTemporal Compression, Fractious History: H. G. Wells, George Orwell, and the Mutiny of "Historical" Narrative by Larry CaldwellPlay It Again, Sam: Ken Grimwood's Replay and Time Travel as Reincarnation by Andrew GordonTime Travel at the Crossroads: The Search for New Paradigms in Science and Science Fiction by Bradford LyauTall, Dark, and a Long Time Dead; Epistemology, Time Travel, and the Bodice Ripper by Erica ObeyBibliography of Works Related to Time and Time TravelIndex