The Time Traveller’s Almanac: Mazes & Traps
ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Head of Zeus, 2014)
audiobook read by Jeff Harding, Andrew Wincott & Antonia Beamish (W F Howes, 2014)
Name authors are prioritised over quality of story (though all receive perfunctory, unpolished biographies). There are some nice ideas poorly executed, some truly tedious offerings, and only a few standouts: Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Mouse Ran Down’ and Eric Frank Russell’s ‘The Waitabits’.
A Symphony of Echoes
by Jodi Taylor (Accent, 2013); audiobook read by Zara Ramm (Headline, 2021)
St Mary’s babbles along happily, its collective personality submersed once again within Max’s narrative brook. The missions incorporate both genuine suspense and frivolous light relief (indistinguishable in advance). The upshot is quirky chaos and an overriding, flatpacked plot arc resistant of assembly.
Blake & Mortimer: The Time Trap
by Edgar P. Jacobs; trans. Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook, 2014)
[from Le piège diabolique, 1962]
![Graphic novel cover: “Blake & Mortimer: The Time Trap” by Edgar P. Jacobs; trans. Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook, 2014) [from Le piège diabolique, 1962]](https://www.derelictspacesheep.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Jacobs_Time-Trap.jpg)
Three Boy’s Own time travel adventures, unleavened by humour and heavy with in-story exposition—in addition to which, Jacobs keeps up a narrative voiceover that reads suspiciously like illustration notes-to-self inadvertently left pasted alongside each picture. Artistically accomplished but a real slog.
A Thief in Time
by Robert Sheckley, Galaxy Science Fiction (July, 1954); UK No. 21 (December, 1954), pp. 4-27.
A light-hearted romp but the time travel paradox isn’t explored so much as indulged in, ad hoc, until (it feels) Sheckley rollicked his word count up to novelette length and the editor had enough pages filled to put a stop to it.
Flux
by Jinwoo Chong (Melville House, 2023)
audiobook read by David Lee Huynh (Tantor, 2023)
Suitably twisty in its time travel motifs and displaced narrative perspectives. The human element and the TV show’s formative influence are well integrated. Still, there’s a sense of Chong writing himself artfully into a corner and passing it off as a dénouement.
Synchronic
dir. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (2019)
In addition to its main speculative premise (drug-fuelled time travel, history proving the grimmest of backdrops to the protagonists’ modern-day life situations), the story plays cleverly with narrative time, picking up interrupted scenes as memories. Morose as all get-out but gloriously non-Hollywood.
This Time Tomorrow
by Emma Straub (Riverhead, 2022); audiobook read by Marin Ireland (Penguin, 2022)
Literary novelists don’t always shine when dabbling in SF. Straub here proves herself an exception, drawing on a harrowing life experience (terminal illness of a parent) to craft a paean to timeless relationships, choices made, and living in the moment. Excellent characterisation.
Jughead’s Time Police
by Sina Grace; ill. Derek Charm (Archie Comic Publications, 2019)
A reboot that seems overly pleased with itself for doing something old in a chaotic, unoriginal, one-joke-food-obsessed way. Charm’s drawing style is a point of difference (though not a particularly inspiring one). Grace amuses himself but doesn’t tell much of a story.
Making History
by Stephen Fry (Hutchinson, 1996)
audiobook ready by Stephen Fry and Richard E. Grant (Penguin, 2021)
A cleverly conceived, assiduously researched but poorly paced take on the classic ‘Kill Hitler’ time alteration tale. Fry writes in a conversational style and displays an undoubted gift for off-the-cuff storytelling. As a novelist, however, his expressiveness manifests too often as waffle.
Spring Forward, Fall Back
ed. Todd Sanders (Air & Nothingness Press, 2022)
Two collections of time-travel short stories presented back-to-back in the style of the old Ace Double SF books. The tales in question are rich conceptually and soaked with atmosphere, bringing unique imaginative twists to a well-worn genre. A trove of all-new nostalgia.