Crosstime Traffic by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult, Short Stories
Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Content: Mild language

 

Twenty stories by Hugo-winning author Lawrence Watt-Evans, exploring the infinite possibilities of traveling not just forward or backward in time, but sideways into the multiverse. Includes the award-winning "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers."

 

I really liked the story Why I left Harry's All Night Hamburgers by Lawrence Watt-Evens, so when I needed to find a short story for an upcoming book club I decided to try his other stories. I have to say that initially I was a little disappointed. None of them were as good as the Harry's Hamburgers one, not even the sequel story that he wrote for it, A Flying Saucer with Minnesota Plates, though it was amusing. However, after I've thought about these for a while and even reread a few of them, I do think some of them are quite good. I think, for me at least, to enjoy short stories I have to be in the right frame of mind, and they can't be read with the same mindset or expectations that a full length book or even a novella is read with. They're little snippets of stories that, if done well make you think, or leave you wondering. I'm putting my ratings and comments for each of them down below.

Paranoid Fantasy #1 (1975)  3 stars  

An amusing story about a man who is very paranoid and takes all sorts of precautions to be safe from everything. 

 

 Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers (1987) 4 stars

About a diner that's a stopping point for unusual travelers from alternate realities of earth. A grass isn't always greener on the other side kind of story.

 

A Flying Saucer with Minnesota Plates (1991) 3 stars

A cute follow up to Harry's all night Hamburgers where a flying saucer gets stuck at the diner.

 

An Infinity of Karen (1988) 3.5 stars

About a man looking for his true love across different realities.

The Drifter (1991) 3 stars

A man volunteers in an experiment involving parallel worlds.

 

Storm Trooper (1992) 3.5 stars

About characters from different realities becoming stuck in the wrong one.

 

One Shot (1991) 3 stars

Someones goes back in time to prevent JFK from being assassinated in an alternate reality.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way (1992) 3 stars

Imagines a world where Herbert Hoover was elected for a second term.

Real Time (1989) 3.5 stars

A time traveler goes to murderous lengths to change the past, but did he really change the past or is he just crazy?

New Worlds (1991) 3 stars

A story where crosstime travel and interstellar travel meet.

One Night at a Local Bar (1980) 3.5 stars

About an alien from another planet who stops into a bar and gets discriminated against because he's different, by a bunch of people who are misfits themselves. The author says that most people miss the point of this story. It seemed rather obvious to me, so I'm wondering if I missed something, but I don't think so.

Science Fiction (1991) 3.5 stars

The whole time I was reading this I was thinking it was like if Phineas and Ferb lived on a space station but weren't quite as smart. I mean no one notices that these kids build a space ship in their backyard. 

Watching New York Melt (1991 with Julie Evans) 3 stars

Flying saucers are zapping things in New York City and melting them, like the World Trade Center. Knowing what happened later to the World Trade Center made reading this sentence weird. "I didn't mind when they got the World Trade Center, but I'm going to miss the Empire State." This one didn't age well at all.

Monster Kidnaps Girl at Mad Scientist's Command! (1992) 2 stars

A very pulpy story (that was the point) about a bug-eyed monster that tries to carry a girl off because of a misunderstanding. The story I liked the least in the whole collection.

 

Windwagon Smith and the Martians (1989) 3.5 stars

About a man who gets kidnapped by Martians in order to participate in a race with the windwagon he's invented.

The Rune and the Dragon (1984) 3 stars

The story of a mysterious rune that a dragon wants very badly for some mysterious reason.

The Palace of al-Tir al-Abtan (1989) 3 stars

About a man trying to break into a wizard's palace.

The Final Folly of Captain Dancy (1992) 3 stars

Amusing at times but too long in my opinion. In the beginning, it reminded me of Weekend at Bernie's. It's about what happens if the hero of the story gets killed before he can implement his plan. A plan he hasn't told anyone else about yet, and his crew have to try to figure it out without letting anyone know he's dead.

 

The Man Who Loved Dragons (2000) 3.5 stars

About a man with a dragon obsession. He collects dragon statues, pillows, coffee mugs, etc. and his niece is worried he's mentally ill because of it.

After the Dragon Is Dead (1990) 2.5 stars

What comes next after a fantasy hero defeats a tyrant and his dragon, from the point of view of his sidekick.