The Seeds of Time

First edition
Cover artist Richard Barton

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

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.
• "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 Nicholas Courtney. It was released as an Audiobook in 2007 with the 1981 version of The Chrysalids.
• "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 road accident. 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.^[1]
• "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.

References