Unprecedented Times Trivia Quiz

Answer: Isaac Asimov

"The End of Eternity" was published in 1955 and was much more than just a tale of time travel. There was a mystery to solve -- the earth in the far distant future was empty of humans, and the 'Eternals' operating outside of time did not know why.

Isaac Asimov (1920-92) was a very prolific author, best known for his "Foundation" series, which he later connected with his "Robot" and "Galactic Empire" series to make a more contiguous universe. "The End of Eternity" was one of the outlier stories that also became part of this greater, overarching story.

Answer: Kurt Vonnegut

"Slaughterhouse-Five" or "The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death" was published in 1969 and is known as a moralistic anti-war novel, based on some of Vonnegut's life experience as a POW (in Dresden, kept in a slaughterhouse). In the novel, a good chunk of the story revolves around Billy Pilgrim's capture by the Germans and time as their prisoner (in Dresden, held in an empty slaughterhouse), but a number of other, diverse experiences are also related (including being abducted by aliens).

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) published 14 novels during his career (along with some plays and other, shorter works). "Slaughterhouse-Five" was his sixth novel, and his most successful, peaking at Number 4 on the New York Times Bestseller's List.

Answer: Poul Anderson

"There Will be Time" was published in 1972 and features Jack Havig, born in 1933 with a natural ability to time travel. Travelling to the future, he finds out that a nuclear war will devastate the world in the next century. He also finds other people who have the same ability as himself, and that they have created an organization (called the "Eyrie") set on preventing the ascendency of the Maurai Federation. But after seeing the unscrupulous methods of the Eyrie, Jack decides to fight them, instead.

Poul Anderson (1926-2001) published his first short stories in 1947 while still a college student, and went on to become a dominant name in Science Fiction and Fantasy in the coming decades, winning seven Hugo Awards (his first in 1959, and his last in 1990), including one for "There Will be Time".

Answer: Stephen King

"11/22/63" was published in 2011 as Stephen King's 60th novel, even though he conceived of the story much earlier in his career (in 1971, according to an interview with NPR). In this story, Jake Epping learns of the portal - apparently a random anomaly - from the owner of a diner (Al Templeton), a friend in whose storeroom the portal manifests. When Al realizes that he is dying from cancer, he recruits Jake to carry on his mission of trying to change history by preventing JFK's assassination. Time, however, seems to resist being changed...

Stephen King (b. 1947) has become synonymous with the horror genre, with a large portion of his works fitting that niche. "11/22/63" is not one of his horror novels, but he does make a reference to Pennywise from his 1986 novel "It".

Answer: S.M. Stirling

"Island in the Sea of Time" was published in 1998 and is the first of three books in the series, along with "Against the Tide of Years" (1999) and "On the Oceans of Eternity" (2000). The mysterious 'Event' that sends Nantucket back in time is the only instance of time travel in the novel, but a whole community is transported back in time in this story, which is certainly a different take on the traditional time travel story.

S.M. Stirling (b. 1953) published his first novel "Snowbrother" in 1985, and has been writing and publishing steadily since then. His Nantucket series was followed by a related series chronicling what happened in the rest of the world after Nantucket disappeared (causing a change to the laws of physics, including no working electricity).

Answer: Robert A. Heinlein

"The Door Into Summer" was originally published serially in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" in 1956, then came out as a novel the following year. In the story, Daniel Boone Davis is betrayed by his business partners and finds himself destitute. He chooses to go into suspended animation in the hopes that life will be better when he wakes up, but finds that it isn't so. What he *does* find is evidence of himself having gone back in time... which he then proceeds to do, fulfilling the temporal causal loop.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-88) is perhaps better known for his novels "Starship Troopers" (1960) and "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1962), which won Hugo Awards (in addition to two others). He published 32 novels and 59 short stories during his career, with his first in 1947 ("Rocket Ship Galileo").

Answer: Gregory Benford

"Timescape" was published in 1980 and tells its ecological disaster story from two viewpoints: the Cambridge scientists in 1998 who are trying to change their history and the University of California scientists at the receiving end of the tachyon bursts. By sending the tachyons to the physical location of the earth in space (in 1962), the faster-than-light particles are received and interpreted by Gordon Bernstein. He, in turn, is able to determine from when the tachyons were sent, based on their physical direction of origin (showing when the earth will be in that position in the future). "Timescape" won both the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Gregory Benford (b. 1941) is not only a science fiction author, but is also an astrophysicist, which gives him the ability to write 'hard' science fiction (using accurate scientific principles from which to extrapolate a story) better than some. His first published work was a short story in 1965, and his first novel was "Deeper Than the Darkness (a.k.a. The Stars in Shroud)" in 1970.

Answer: H.G. Wells

"The Time Machine" was published in 1895 and is (for all intents and purposes) the first real time travel story using a 'time machine', a term which H.G. Wells is credited with coining. While the bulk of the story revolves around the 'Time Traveller' and his experiences with the altered humans of the future, when he effects his escape, he travels an additional 30 million years into the future and witnesses a dying planet.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) was a pioneer of the science fiction genre, and largely a futurist whose visions were more utopian than dystopian. "The Time Machine" was his first novel, although he had published short stories previously. In addition to many short stories and collections, Wells also published 51 novels during his career.

Answer: Michael Crichton

"Timeline" was published in 1999 and continued Michael Crichton's tradition of writing stories about technological advances getting out of control, or of having unintended consequences. In the case of "Timeline", it is the use of quantum mechanics and time travel that gets his attention. And it is not really the technology that causes the problem in this novel, but rather the unscrupulousness of the people who make use of it that causes the conflict in the story.

Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was not only an award-winning writer, but also a qualified medical doctor, which was reflected in a number of his earlier novels. He also became involved in television and film production, and is best known for "Westworld" and "ER", in addition to the films made from his novels, with the "Jurassic Park" franchise being the most successful.

Answer: Audrey Niffenegger

"The Time Traveler's Wife" was published in 2003 as Audrey Niffenegger's premier novel, debuting at Number Nine on the New York Times Bestseller's List. The story (a blend between romance and science fiction) is told from the perspective of both Henry and Clare as they have a relationship out of the normal order, with Henry disappearing and reappearing at different times and at different ages in her life.

Audrey Niffenegger published a number of visual books prior to writing "The Time Traveler's Wife" as her first novel. The book was such a success that it was soon made into an equally successful film, and led to great demand for her next novel, a ghost story which she published in 2009, entitled "Her Fearful Symmetry".