Time Travel Via One's Own Thread of Consciousness
This list includes stories about people who travel through time along their own thread of consciousness. Typically, this means their future self "possesses", if you will, their past self and relives a scene. One may or may not have the ability to act independently: typically not. (Or, even if the character can act independently, the point of the story turns out to be that nothing he does can make a difference anyway.) A close variant, examples of which are also included, is stories where the person experiences time out of order: the most famous story of this type might be the Busby. The column for TYPE tries to indicate in shorthand the general idea. I.e. "Backward" means reliving life backwards, "Revisit" means specifically visiting a past event, etc. (I include an asterisk in the COMMENT field if I've actually read the story.) For this latest update Andrew Breitenbach reminded me that stories about Merlin which emphasize his living his life backwards would also qualify. Frankly I don't want to open up a flood of Arthurian stories to this list -- and most of them have little to do with Merlin's backward living anyway -- so I'm just listing the story Andrew suggested, "Winter Solstice" by Mike Resnick. If I'm wrong, either about specific information, or even to include the story at all, or if you know of any other stories that might fit the category, please email me at richard.horton@sff.net.
| AUTHOR | TITLE | DATE | TYPE | COMMENTS |
| Martin Amis | Time's Arrow | 1991 | Backward | *A Nazi Doctor relives his life backward, such that the people he kills are seen as coming to life. May not really fit here, because the entity living backwards might be independent of the original consciousness. It's a tour de force, though. |
| F. M. Busby | "If This is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy" | 1976 | Out of Order | * |
| David Brin and Daniel Brin | "A Stage of Memory" | 1986 | . | * |
| S. N. Dyer | "The Nostalginauts" | 1997 | Revisit | * |
| Sumner Locke Elliott | The Man Who Got Away | 1972 | Backward | *In some ways reminiscent of Amis' Time's Arrow, except that I would call the Amis book SF, and this one mainstream using the backward travel as a literary device. |
| Ken Grimwood | Replay | 1987 | Do Over | . |
| Charles Harness | The Paradox Men | 1953 | Do Over | *A complicated plot, as with much Harness, that may not precisely fit my definitions, but resembles the basic idea. |
| Ben Jeapes | "Pages Out of Order" | 1997 | Out of Order | * |
| James Patrick Kelly | "Bierhorst, etc. 'Proof the Existence of God...'" | 1998 | Future | *The full title is "Bierhorst, R.G., Seera, B.L., and Jannifer, R.P. 'Proof of the Existence of God and an Afterlife.' Journal of Experimental Psychology. Volume 95, Spring, 2007, Pages 32-36" |
| Ian MacLeod | "Marnie" | 1991 | Revisit | * |
| Fritz Leiber | "The Man Who Never Grew Young" | 1947 | Backwards | . |
| George R. R. Martin | "... for a Single Yesterday" | 1975 | Revisit | * |
| J. T. McIntosh | "Playback" | 1954 | Revisit | * |
| J. B. Priestley | The Magicians | 1954 | Revisit | . |
| Mike Resnick | "Winter Solstice" | 1991 | Backward | * |
| Lewis Shiner | Deserted Cities of the Heart | 1989 | Revisit | . |
| Robert Silverberg | "Now + n, Now - n" | 1972 | Out of Order | * |
| Norman Spinrad | "The Weed of Time" | 1970 | All at Once | * |
| James Tiptree, Jr. | "Backward, Turn Backward" | 1988 | Do Over | * |
| James Tiptree, Jr. | "Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket" | 1972 | Revisit | * |
| Kurt Vonnegut | Slaughterhouse-5 | 1969 | Out of Order | * |
| Charles Williams | Many Dimensions | 1931 | . | . |
| Roger Zelazny | "Divine Madness" | 1966 | . | . |