Man Out of Time

[KebabMeister]

Back in 1979/1980 there was a sci-fi magazine called 'Now Voyager' and in this magazine there was a fantastic short story called 'Man Out of Time' (I think!). It was basically a time travel/romantic tale. I've tried searching for this and can't find it at all on the internet - there are other references to another 'Man Out of Time' but it's not the one I'm looking for.

Any ideas?

[LeMarchand]

It's possible that Richard Matheson's "Bid Time Return" (later filmed as "Somewhere in Time") was originally published in a magazine, though it would be more likely to be early 70's.

Any more details on the story?

[KebabMeister]

From what I can remember it's about a pilot of a sort of space train or plane and somehow he gets trapped in the past and away from the woman he loved. There's one part of the story where the young pilot and his wife visits the old pilot (they need somewhere to stay and it's an old wood house) but they don't recognise him and the old pilot just passes on some information (perhaps something about how they came across this house) but doesn't say who he is (and he passes away over night presumably because he's at rest now because he's seen his wife again). It was rather a complex short story and apologies if my memory is vague but it's from a long time ago! :)

It isn't the 'Somewhere In Time', if it's the one with Christopher Reeve that you're thinking of?

[LeMarchand]

Not "Somewhere in Time" then (it is the Christopher Reeve movie). I'll try to remember to look at home - I've got a few links that might be useful.

[LeMarchand]

I didn't have much luck, and it is for novels (but a lot of SF starts off as short stories in magazines) but you could try the search engins at http://www.allreaders.com/ and input as much as you can remember.

[KebabMeister]

Thanks for the link, I've been looking on there but still haven't found it yet. Oh well, it'll turn up someday! :)

[gregwithnail]

This answer might not be much help, but it might just help point you in a slightly better direction...

The magazine's pilot issue was called Space Voyager, but this changed to New Voyager (not "Now") on the second issue. (I can't for the life of me remember which of these two issues the story was in!)

The short story WAS called Man out of Time and was, indeed, excellent. I reached this page trying to track it down!

[gregwithnail]

A couple of corrections on the story too:

Early on in the story a couple of "facts" are presented to the reader: First, the time travel technology being used can only work within the span of time for which it has existed. (In other words, if the machine was invented on Christmas day 2006, you wouldn't be able to visit Halloween 2006 with it. The second "fact" is that the person who originally built the machine claimed that he hadn't really invented it. He told a story of an old man knocking on his door one night and thrusting sketches and notes into his hand before disppearing into the rain.
The hero of the story then has an accident and travels too far "downtime". An analogy of running past the buffers in a train is given.
Having been trapped in an unreachable past for ages, he hits upon the idea of kick-starting the development of time travel; so he scribbles down everything he knows about how the machine works, and goes and gives it to a scientist, thus confirming the story of the old man in the rain.
Hell, I've written so much, who needs the story, lol.

[KebabMeister]

Hi gregwithnail. I used to have the original Voyager magazine (with the huge model list within the mag) and I'm positive it was the first magazine, called Voyager. I did photocopy the story, probably in the late 90s and I just remembered that I may have given my sister a copy as she loved the story too. I'll give her a ring and she if she can remember. Additionally when I'm back in the UK in a few weeks I may have a hunt through the stuff I left there and see if I can locate it. If I find it I'll post it here ;)

[gregwithnail]

Extremely cool. I wait eagerly!