what is the best time machine joke in literature?

This is a good one.

You covered the Alan Moore Futureshocks with their time travel gags last week (although I have the collected Alan Moore Futureshocks book and I couldn't find the one about the third reich being entirely populated with time travelling historians).

last week two weeks ago

End of "All You Zombies"?

xxp, was that the one about the man throwing brickbats through a time portal and thinking nothing changed?

yeah, also one of the same guy on the cusp of inventing the time machine, and multiple versions of himself coming back from various futures to give him various dire warnings.

There's a good story in the New Yorker's March 24, 2008 issue that involves some time-travel paradoxes (not to give too much away): "The Region of Unlikeness" by Rivka Galchen.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/24/080324fi_fiction_galchen

any thoughts on "build up logically"?

pfff. some good yuks. time machine gag is indeed a corker. y'all teased out some interesting strands from it on the show but i'd never thought that hard about it before and doubt i will again. the "character becomes author" device must surely be well-worn; this classic tuomas thread reminded me of the story after i'd forgotten about it for ages.

that new yorker story really does live up to this thread.

this story was grebt, as was the reading; i have at least two isotopes of the brian aldiss SF anthology but i have no memory of this, which suggests that when i was wee it went right over my head.

text adventure diversion - there's a thriving indie cultues around them, which is, sort of maybe, worth investigating - there's been a bit of talk around them on ilx.

Ha, three weeks later, and searching on a friend: o. nate, any chance you've picked up Rivka's novel?

No, I haven't yet, but I've seen notices for it all over the place. I'm happy that it's getting a lot of positive reviews. I'd like to read it at some point. That story I mentioned above was the first time I'd heard of her.

that wikihistory was hilar. thanks.