This post is part of a series on time travel and alternate history fiction — and why we reach for it when the present gets loud. Right now, these books are all available together in the Escape from 2026 Storybundle, through June 25, 2026.
What if the real reason to travel through time isn’t the science—but because you can’t let go?
Into the Time Slip collects four of Douglas Smith’s time travel stories. Four stories, four ways to bend physics, four universes: an ex-CIA agent and a remote viewer searching for lost paintings. A dinner conversation that takes three lifetimes to finish. Strange radio broadcasts haunting a man trying to change the past. Two young lovers hunted across dimensions and time.
Okay, my issue here is that these stories might break my theory that time travel and alternate history stories are great tools for writing escapist fiction, allowing for exploration and a little distance. Doug’s stories tend to head straight for the most painful emotions, and these stories come across as rehashing the same events you can’t accept, over and over again. The escape from the emotions is the end of the story.
Granted, these stories are good stories, very cathartic—but I can’t pretend they feel like escapism. “Can’t go under, can’t go around, guess we’ll just have to go through…again and again…until we learn how to stop.”
I’m currently thinking about these stories as the exception that proves the rule. At any rate, if you like science and catharsis, you’ll like these. Onward…for now.
Into the Time Slip is in the Escape from 2026 Storybundle—available through June 25, 2026, starting at pay-what-you-want.
Why are we all reading time travel and alternate history fiction right now? Read the hub post here.
About the Author
Douglas Smith is a five-time award-winning author described by Library Journal as “one of Canada’s most original writers of speculative fiction.”
His work includes the multi-award-winning urban fantasy trilogy, The Dream Rider Saga (The Hollow Boys, The Crystal Key, The Lost Expedition); the urban fantasy novel, The Wolf at the End of the World; the collections Chimerascope, Impossibilia, La Danse des Esprits (translated), and Borderlanz; and the writer’s guides, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction and Brick by Brick: How to Build a Story.
His short fiction has appeared in the top markets in the field, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, InterZone, Weird Tales, Baen’s Universe, Escape Pod, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & SF, On Spec, and Cicada.
Published in 28 languages, Doug has won Canada’s Aurora Award four times, as well as the juried IAP Award. He’s been a finalist for the Astounding Award, CBC’s Bookies Award, Canada’s juried Sunburst Award, the juried Alberta Magazine Award for Fiction, and France’s juried Prix Masterton and Prix Bob Morane.
