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I first posted this info on LiveJournal in 2011, but I'm moving it over here.
There was a series of Time Machine short stories that ran in BOYS' LIFE magazine 1959-1989.
The stories involved a Boy Scout patrol that finds an abandoned time machine buried in a rockslide near their Scout camp. The stories ran for 30 years. So they were the oldest Boy Scouts ever. Or maybe having a time machine gave a work-around for that.
I only read a handful of the 1960s and 1970s ones when I was a kid, but now I've read all of them. They retain their charm. What stands out about them is, they aren't just using the time machine as a framework for history lessons; the stories think through the What If consequences of having a time machine (and the various technologies they obtain from the future).
Also, it's interesting to see the different styles of artwork in the illustrations for the stories, and how the kids and the time machine change in appearance.
A funny thing about the stories was the subtext that the kids were lying to the rest of the troop (other kids and the adults leaders), never revealing their find, certainly the most important find in history, and going on incredibly dangerous explorations of time and space. In a single short story, this would be no big deal, in 23 stories that spanned 30 years, it's a pretty un-Boy Scout-like pattern.
Time paradox and changing the timeline and such is never a part of the stories; it's assumed that if the time machine changes history, it's always changed history. And they never try too hard to set up a grandfather paradox or anything along those lines. Also, although they have a timeviewer that can view any point in time, they never try to get too controversial with it, like, oh for example, peeking in on Christ's doings, or anything like that.
The stories were written by the father-son team of Donald and Keith Monroe, under the pseudonym Donald Keith, and later the son wrote them under his own name, Keith Monroe.
There were two short story collections, MUTINY IN THE TIME MACHINE (1963) and THE TIME MACHINE TO THE RESCUE (1967). Seemingly the ones after that were never collected in book form.
Here are the stories in Google Books. Once again, with spoilers, so, if you don't want spoilers, go to beamjockey's list (and he's made a similar list here in wikipedia). The stories appeared in 30 different issues of BOYS' LIFE, but, due to a 4-part serial and 2 3-part serials, it works out to 23 separate stories.
( Read more... )
There was a series of Time Machine short stories that ran in BOYS' LIFE magazine 1959-1989.
The stories involved a Boy Scout patrol that finds an abandoned time machine buried in a rockslide near their Scout camp. The stories ran for 30 years. So they were the oldest Boy Scouts ever. Or maybe having a time machine gave a work-around for that.
I only read a handful of the 1960s and 1970s ones when I was a kid, but now I've read all of them. They retain their charm. What stands out about them is, they aren't just using the time machine as a framework for history lessons; the stories think through the What If consequences of having a time machine (and the various technologies they obtain from the future).
Also, it's interesting to see the different styles of artwork in the illustrations for the stories, and how the kids and the time machine change in appearance.
A funny thing about the stories was the subtext that the kids were lying to the rest of the troop (other kids and the adults leaders), never revealing their find, certainly the most important find in history, and going on incredibly dangerous explorations of time and space. In a single short story, this would be no big deal, in 23 stories that spanned 30 years, it's a pretty un-Boy Scout-like pattern.
Time paradox and changing the timeline and such is never a part of the stories; it's assumed that if the time machine changes history, it's always changed history. And they never try too hard to set up a grandfather paradox or anything along those lines. Also, although they have a timeviewer that can view any point in time, they never try to get too controversial with it, like, oh for example, peeking in on Christ's doings, or anything like that.
The stories were written by the father-son team of Donald and Keith Monroe, under the pseudonym Donald Keith, and later the son wrote them under his own name, Keith Monroe.
There were two short story collections, MUTINY IN THE TIME MACHINE (1963) and THE TIME MACHINE TO THE RESCUE (1967). Seemingly the ones after that were never collected in book form.
Here are the stories in Google Books. Once again, with spoilers, so, if you don't want spoilers, go to beamjockey's list (and he's made a similar list here in wikipedia). The stories appeared in 30 different issues of BOYS' LIFE, but, due to a 4-part serial and 2 3-part serials, it works out to 23 separate stories.
( Read more... )
