The Time Machine series of science fiction stories for young adults, published between 1959 and 1989 in ''
Boys' Life
''Scout Life'' (formerly ''Boys' Life'') is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Its target readers are boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 18. The magazine‘s headquarters are in Irving, Texas.
''Scout Life'' is pub ...
'' magazine, featured a group of
American Boy Scouts
The American Boy Scouts (ABS) (officially American Boy Scout), later the United States Boy Scouts (officially United States Boy Scout), was an early American Scouting organization formed by William Randolph Hearst in 1910, following on from the f ...
who acquire an abandoned
time machine
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...
. The Polaris Patrol visited the future and the past, sometimes recruiting new Scouts. The stories used the time machine as a framework for history lessons, but also explored the consequences of having a time machine (as well as the various technologies the boys who discovered it obtain from the future).
The author was given as
Donald Keith for most of the stories, a pseudonym for the father-and-son team of Donald and Keith Monroe. In later years, some stories were credited just to the son,
Keith Monroe
Keith Monroe (22 August 1915 – 30 August 2003) was an American author of children's science fiction and of books and magazine articles about Boy Scouting.
Monroe attended Stanford University and UCLA. He worked as a reporter for the ''New ...
.
The first story in the series was "The Day We Explored the Future", appearing in the December 1959 ''Boys' Life'' on page 18.
Some of the stories were collected in two books: ''Mutiny in the Time Machine'' and ''Time Machine to the Rescue'',
with Donald Keith listed as the author. All the ''Time Machine'' stories are available from
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
in its collection of ''Boys' Life'' issues.
Recurring characters
* Bob Tucker, patrol leader (often the story narrator)
* Ellsworth "Brains" Baynes, brilliant bookworm who operates the Machine
* Kai Beezee Tentroy, recruited from a city called Troy in 4000 A.D.
* Dion, recruited from ancient Sparta
* Rodney Carver, an impetuous tenderfoot
Stories in ''Boys' Life''
In the following table, "DK" indicates that the story's author is listed as
Donald Keith, while "KM" means attribution to
Keith Monroe
Keith Monroe (22 August 1915 – 30 August 2003) was an American author of children's science fiction and of books and magazine articles about Boy Scouting.
Monroe attended Stanford University and UCLA. He worked as a reporter for the ''New ...
. Links are to the copies available at
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
.
See also
*
The Time Machine
''The Time Machine'' is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively fo ...
*
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries
*
The Key Word and Other Mysteries
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Time Machine Series
Science fiction book series
Children's science fiction novels
Novels about time travel
Scouting in popular culture
Works originally published in Boys' Life