Time and Time Again is an anthology of sixteen time-travel short stories by Robert Silverberg. That is a completely true statement that fails to capture the vastness of this book at all. Silverberg is a prolific science-fiction writer known for his fascination with time travel, so a collection of his short stories makes perfect sense. He writes short introductions to the stories that put them in the context of his life and writing career, including his work with editors and publishers. The stories go forward and backward in time and do so with far more nerve and imagination than we could imagine.

After all, what if we could travel in time, not bodily, but by projecting our psyche, and we showed up in the body of a lobster? Or what if we figured out how to send incorrigible prisoners back so far in the past we don’t have to worry about them killing a butterfly? What if someone left the house one day on his usual commute and drove back in time without even trying? What would you do if your daily paper arrived a week early?

While I enjoy some science fiction, I am only familiar with a few authors and Silverberg was new to me. Now I feel like I have found a huge trove of what will surely be great books. I like his writing, it’s active and disciplined. He can create a scene quickly, situate you in time and place and create suspense and tension with such ease that he makes it all look easy. His imagination is wild and uninhibited. There’s a humanity that suffuses his writing and makes his characters real and credible, even ones that are completely out of our experience.

I enjoyed this book and savored it, reading just one story at a time so I could save their individual creativity. Each scenario was so new and fresh that I did not want them to run together. If you like science fiction at all, I am certain you will love Time and Time Again.

I received a copy of Time and Time Again from the publisher through LibraryThing.