The Seeds of Time

The Seeds of Time is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer John Wyndham, published in 1956 by Michael Joseph. The title is presumably from Macbeth, Act I Scene III.

For the Dave Holland album, see Seeds of Time.
First edition
Cover artist Richard Barton

Contents

The collection contains:

  • a foreword by John Wyndham
  • "Chronoclasm", a time-travelling romantic comedy.
  • "Time To Rest", depicting the life on Mars of a human survivor of the destruction of Earth. A sequel "No Place Like Earth"[1] appears in the collection No Place Like Earth (2003), which contains both; both also appeared dramatised together in 1965 as “No Place Like Earth”, the first episode of the BBC2 series, Out of the Unknown.[1]
  • "Meteor", in which alien visitors to Earth find themselves on a very different scale to humans.
  • "Survival", set on a spacecraft marooned in orbit around Mars. A BBC Radio 4 adaption was broadcast in 1989 with Stephen Garlick, Susan Sheridan, and Nicholas Courtney.[2] It was released as an Audiobook in 2007 with the 1981 version of The Chrysalids.[3]
  • "Pawley's Peepholes", another time travel story, this time playing it as comedy.
  • "Opposite Number", which plays with the concept of parallel universes.
  • "Pillar To Post" The central character is a paraplegic who was badly injured in a wartime attack. Frequently taking drugs to cope with the pain, he finds himself in a healthy body very far in the future. A complex plot of body-swapping and time travel ensues. It is considered by some people to be the best story in the collection.[4]
  • "Dumb Martian", a satire on racism, featuring an Earthman who buys a Martian wife.
  • "Compassion Circuit", a horror story on the subject of robotics.
  • "Wild Flower", which explores the tension between nature and technology.
gollark: I'm actually alternating between several.
gollark: You wouldn't know it.
gollark: Also calls would need some kind of primitive garbage collection.
gollark: That would make dialing fiddly, although I guess it could just make new calls unless you explicitly use an existing one.
gollark: Anyway, so, I would have to make the dialing interface more complicated to support multiple options along the lines of "connect to existing call(s) in channel", "create new call", that sort of thing.

References
  1. Bould, Mark (January 18, 2015). "Out of the Unknown: 'No Place Like Earth' (BBC2 4 October 1965)". Retrieved January 14, 2018.
  2. "The Chrysalids & Survival, John Wyndham,". Blackstone Audiobooks/The Book Depository. 2014. Retrieved January 14, 2018., ISBN 978-1-48303-511-6
  3. "The Chrysalids & Survival: Classic Radio Sci-Fi (Dramatised)". BBC Audiobooks/Audible. 2007. Retrieved January 14, 2018.
  4. www.dooyoo.co.uk (2006-07-03). "The Seeds of Time - John Wyndham - Review - Chronological Seedlings". Dooyoo.co.uk. Archived from the original on December 19, 2007. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
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