Whew, this one was a tome! 72 short stories and nearly 950 pages, all on the theme of time travel. You'd think that after spending two weeks working my way through all of that, I'd be thoroughly tired of the subject, but somehow it never got old. Probably this is due to the fact that there's such a wide variety of different styles and different approaches to the subject here (including a few one could argue aren't really time travel stories at all, and yet still do feel as if they belong somehow). Some are pretty straightforward, as time travel stories go, and others are deeply, deeply strange. (And there are a pretty good percentage of the latter, as one might expect from any book with Jeff VanderMeer's name on the cover.) We've got tales that span billions of years and/or staggering numbers of alternate timelines; small, intimate stories about individual human lives; and a whole lot of stuff in-between.

The stories also span a pretty good stretch of ordinary linear time, from the 1880s through the early 2010s, when the anthology was published. Some are well-known, deeply influential works: Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is here, as is an excerpt from The Time Machine. But there are also stories I'd never read by authors I'd never heard of. I hesitate to call it a definitive collection. Several of the first stories that come to mind when I think of famous time travel tales are notably absent, although perhaps for good reasons, one of which is that there seems to be no room here for stories that only exist to go, "Oooh, look, a paradox!" In any case, there are a lot of time travel stories in the history of SF, and I suspect if you asked 100 people to compile 950-page anthologies of them, you'd get 100 very different books.

As for the one we got in this particular timeline, unsurprisingly not every single story is quite to my taste. I can't really say that any of them made me sit bolt upright and go "wow!", either. But taken as a whole, there is something fascinating and more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts satisfying about it. I do feel rather like I've just been on a big, weird, cool, kaleidoscopic timey-wimey journey. ( )

I am a huge time travel stories fan, but I was not able to finish this book. I really gave it a chance, read the first 9 stories, but none of them really engaged me. I feel like they are too far out there. I will probably try it a second time in the future. ( )

I'm not that fond of anthologies, and this one was *too big*, especially for a book group selection where part of the fun is to compare stories we particularly liked or disliked. I didn't care for the (very) vaguely thematic grouping: it would have been more interesting to have them arranged chronologically so we could see the subgenre developing over the last hundred years (that is not an exaggeration). There were a great number of New Wave stories -- a period of experimentation in SF that I particularly disliked. The short nonfiction pieces between sections varied greatly: I liked one of them.

There were a few of the stories that I liked, and one I disliked that I must reluctantly appreciate as art, but I didn't enjoy this collection.

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Excellent and diverse collection of some of the best time travel SF.
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Another artful anthology from the Vandermeers. The introductions and sections and organization of this anthology is just astounding. Such a good lesson in themes and taste and choice.

One of my favorite Anthologies from the past few years was The Weird. Originally, I was kind of hesitant to get this as I'm not a huge fan of scifi but the variety in this anthology convinced me to get it. I'm glad I did. I think it has something that'll appeal to pretty much everyone. Also, I really enjoyed the non-fiction pieces too including the intro by Rian Johnson.

There are too many gems in this collection to name them all here. One of my absolute favorite was "Traveler's Rest" about a soldier who fights a war in a place where time passes more slowly then when he travels back home. The story is a very interesting idea and the ending was fantastic.

Another one of my favorites though was a contemporary piece called "Hwang's Billion Brilliant Daughters" and it's about a man who is propelled into the future every time he sleeps where he meets his descendants. I also really enjoyed "Fire Watch", the story of a history student who is sent back to London during World War II where he serves on the fire watch for St Paul's Cathedral.

"Enoch Soames" was a dark yet humorous tale about a writer who makes a deal with the devil to go into the future to witness his notoriety. "Life Trap" was a short but dark tale about an occult that finds out what happens after death. Lastly, "The Threads of Time" was an interesting story about an agent for the qhal who are allowed to travel into the past to mend time.

I got both a hardcover copy and the kindle ebook. The dust jacket and artwork look great for the physical book. Also, the kindle version is well formatted. Sometimes anthologies on Amazon have formatting problems and problems in the ToC. This did not.

One downside is that the physical book is really big. It's a little too big to hold with one hand so that's why I got the kindle version too. I still go back and reread pieces from The Weird every now and then and I think I'll do the same with TTA ( )