Barney Hendrickson is a film-producer for ailing Climactic Studios. In a
last-ditch attempt to save the company he persuades the boss to finance his
new picture, Viking Columbus, the story of how the Vikings arrived in America
years before Columbus. The movie will be made on a low budget with no need to
build sets and long boats, or pay extras, because they will use Professor
Hewitt's prototype time machine to take the crew back in time to the actual
time and location when the Viking landing actually occurred.
Time Machine spoofs both time travel stories and the business of Hollywood
filmmaking.
The novel was dramatised for radio by the BBC.
Dedication: Dedicato al mio amico Francesco Biamonti
as: The Time-Machined Saga in: Analog, March, April and May 1967. Illustrated by John Schoenherr. The March issue also featured a cover for the story by John Schoenherr.
New York: Doubleday, 1967, 190pp., hbk. Jacket: Ellen Raskin
New York: Berkley, December 1968, 174pp., pbk. Cover: Rossut
as: De Technicolor Tijdmachine. Utrecht, Antwerp: Utigeverij 'Het Spectrum' / Prisma, 1969, 190pp., ill. Translated by J.P.D. Baas-van Dijk.. [Flemish]
Tokyo: Hayakawa, January 1969, 208pp. Slipcased paperback. Translated by Hisashi Asakuri. Cover: Keizou Iwabuchi. [Japanese]
London: New English Library, May 1970, 142pp., ISBN: 0-450-00503-8, pbk. Cover art uncredited.
Russia, 1970. [Russian]
as: Vikingas-Kolumbas. Vilnius: Vaga, 1972, 255pp. Translated by Laima Grigaliūniene and Virgilijus Čepliejus. [Lithuanian]
Tokyo: Hayakawa,15th June 1976, 301pp. Reprinted 1983. ISBN: 4-15-010193-0. Translated by Hisashi Asakura. [Japanese]
as: Zeitreise In Technicolor. Munich: Moewig, 1976, 142pp. Translated by Brigit Ress-Bohusch. Cover: Karl Stephan. [German]
London: Orbit, April 1976, 176pp., ISBN: 0-8600-7887-6, pbk. Reprinted 1980 (ISBN: 0-8600-7887-6, Cover: Chris Achilleos); September 1982; 1984; 1988.
as: Il Vichingo in Technicolor. Milan: Longanesi & C., 30th June 1978, pbk. Translated by Maria Luisa Cesa Bianchi. Cover: Di O. Berni. [Italian]
as: Zeitreise In Technicolor. Munich: Erich Pabel, 1979, 159pp. Translated by Brigit Ress-Bohusch. Cover: Eddie Jones [German]
New York: Tor, May 1981, 284pp., ISBN: 48506-9, pbk. Cover: Barclay Shaw. Reprinted May 1985 (ISBN: 0-8125-3970-2, Cover: Alan Gutierrez); Reprinted May 1991 (ISBN: 0-8125-1607-9)
as: Barney Tidfarares Saga. Bromma: Delta, 1982, 192pp., ISBN: 91-7228-288-6. Translated by Ingela Bergdahl. [Swedish]
in: Miesiecznik Fantastyka, 1985. Part 1: June 1985. Printed as pull-out pages which are folded in two to make a small booklet. [Polish]
Amazing , October 1967, p.103. Review by Brian W.
Aldiss.
"It is now recognised that Harry Harrison is one of the best story tellers
of modern science fiction. Since Deathworld, ten years ago, he has
never given us a dull book ... One of the most engaging features of
Harrison's novel is the cheerful cynicism running through it. Harrison is
an anti-romantic, and his carefully-prepared ending - which wild trilobites
couldn't make me reveal - is a landmine set off under the Norse epic .. A
splendid romp, all the better for serious intentions lurking in the
background."
Analog, April 1968. Review by P. Schuyler Miller.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1968. Review
by Poul Anderson.
New Worlds #186, January 1969. Review by James Cawthorn.
The Times Literary Supplement, 30th May 1968. Review
"Genreflecting."
"[A] satisfactory, if limited approach to the genre problem is to send it
all up. This Harry Harrison did a couple of years ago with Bill, the
Galactic Hero, when he mopped up just about all the old
Heinlein-Asimov-Clarke universe; of space / time, only the latter component
was spared. He savages it now in the rumbustious if rather spasmodic
Technicolor Time Machine ... Hollywood and Vinland backgrounds are
unobtrusively well-researched. All good straight-forward fun, and one
enjoys at least every other word of it. A sort of hairy-chested instant
camp SF."
