Caveat Emptor Tempus Machina

"Galactic Consumer Reports No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines."

By John Brunner (1934-95; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Galaxy, December 1965.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Reprinted in:

  Time Jump, 1973

  The Best of John Brunner, 1988.

Non-fact article (8 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "Cut-price time machines are now being widely advertised and time travel is bidding fair to rival space travel as a popular vacation pastime."

. . . and, of course, nothing can go wrong with that. Nothing . . . No . . . thing . . .

References:

- Clearly our author is having fun with a well-known consumer advocacy organization (Wikipedia HERE).

- "This was of the type known as an 'Aunt Sally'" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a posthumous discussion with Einstein" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the University of Spica" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "weight-lifting in the last Jovian Olympics" (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "later identified as Mongols" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the Confucian Standard" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "landed twice in the Upper Pleistocene" (Wikipedia HERE) "and the other in the Triassic" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the wanderings of the Children of Israel" (Bible Hub HERE.)

- "Buddha under the bo-tree" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the Hegira" (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the Wesleyan list" (Wikipedia HERE.)

Resources:

- John Brunner was responsible for four "Galactic Consumer Reports" in Galaxy:

  (1) "Galactic Consumer Report No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines" (1965) (above)

  (2) "Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines" (1966) (online HERE)

  (3) "Galactic Consumer Report No. 3: A Survey of the Membership" (1967) (online HERE)

  (4) "Galactic Consumer Report No. 4: Thing-of-the-Month Clubs" (1988) (online HERE).

- As if to refute the subject at hand, you might find this article interesting, "Making Time Travel Work" by John Deakins in Absolute Magnitude, Summer 1999 (4 pages; HERE; go to text page 32). Don't forget: Time travel is also space travel.

- We've already encountered one example of John Brunner's short fiction, "Puzzle for Spacemen" (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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