I'm trying to find a SciFi short story I read as a kid - I read this story as a kid in the '70s or '80s. It was in a paperback collection of SF short stories I got from the school library, it could have been published anytime from the '50s to the late '70s. I have no idea of the title or the author, just my memory of the story. It involved someone who was walking backwards through time to get home. Some scientific accident had propelled him hundreds of years forward in time. On the wreckage of the lab, he appeared, briefly, once every year (or maybe every decade or century?). From an observer's point of view, someone flashed in and out of existence predictably on that spot. I think a holiday formed around the appearance. From the person's point of view, he was walking backwards through time, from the far future back towards the date of the accident. Each "flash" was a step in that walk. Anyone know what this story is called or who wrote it?
posted by Cranialtorque on Aug 4, 2011 - 14 answers

I'm looking for a science fiction short story, probably from a science fiction magazine from the mid-1990s, involving time travel; a female graduate student from the future visits a contemporary ladies' man to figure out why he, alone in a family of very successful people, never excelled at anything in life. [more inside]
posted by mistersix on Nov 22, 2010 - 2 answers

I need help finding this short story I read in 5th grade, around 1985. It was a sci-fi time travel story, possibly written for a middle grade/YA audience, and it was anthologized in a school textbook/reader. [more inside]
posted by suburbanbeatnik on Jun 11, 2010 - 2 answers

There was a post (I believe on Boing Boing) a few months ago about a sci-fi short story in the form of an internet message board. The message board was for a group of time travelers, and the new members were always being scolded for going back in time and killing Hitler (this was against the rules, as without Hitler we wouldn't have many technologies, etc etc). I have Google strings that I've tried inside... [more inside]
posted by pedmands on May 14, 2008 - 14 answers

Yet another Sci-Fi ID request: I once read a tongue-in-cheek short story involving a fidgety time travel portal, dinosaurs, and culinary adventures. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay on Apr 15, 2007 - 6 answers

Abstract Thinking Filter: So I created this creature that travels by temperature instead of time, so to speak. [more inside]
posted by vanoakenfold on Jul 18, 2006 - 29 answers