time and place

Yesterday, I finished reading Jack Finney’s 

wonderful book, THE THIRD LEVEL. 

Published in 1957, nearly every story has 

something to do with time travel. One of 

my favorite stories in it is “Such Interesting 

Neighbors.” A new couple moves into a 

TV-sort of 1950s neighborhood. 

While visiting the couple next door, 

the mysterious man explains where he’s from 

under the guise of a science fiction story. 

The people of the future live in an oppressive, 

overworked, fearful and warring society, 

when suddenly Time Travel machines are 

invented and it’s like when the television 

became available in stores and “it’s just about 

the only way to have any real fun. But it’s a 

wonderful way, all right. Within less than a 

week after the first sets reach the market, 

people everywhere are going swimming after 

work on an untouched beach in California, 

say in the year 1000. Or fishing or picnicking 

in the Maine woods before even the Norsemen 

had arrived.” It doesn’t take long before 

everyone has discovered their own personal 

favorite time and place in history and, “All over 

the world, within less than a month after TT is 

introduced, the same almost simultaneous 

thought seems to strike everyone: Why return?” 

And so the future is evacuated.

Finney’s story also appeared on television 

on a 1955 episode of Science Fiction Theatre, 

as “Time Is Just a Place.” Coincidentally, it stars 

the father from the early 1960s TV series “Hazel” 

which I used to watch every morning this spring 

before going to work, while writing my sequel 

to ROOSEVELT, which I set in 1962.