The Spiral of Time: Reincarnation and the Still Point of Eternity

Rocketeer Podcast #82 — Now Live

This week, I’m talking about reincarnation as a kind of time travel — the way early pulp fans imagined it. In the science fiction circles of the 1920s through the ’40s, the boundaries between mind, time, and spirit were porous. To them, “travel” didn’t always require a machine… sometimes it just took a trance, a drug, or the power of love.

I’ll be discussing three stories that explore this strange threshold between lives and moments — from 1918 to 1947 — where time doesn’t just move forward or backward, it can also spiral.

Page from “Betty and Billy and Their Love Through the Ages” by Nell Brinkley (1922)

“The Escapes of Mr. Honey” by Bertram Atkey (1944)

“Draft of Eternity” featured in Argosy Magazine (June 1, 1918)

Here’s a list of the types of stories that pulp-era science fiction fans categorized as time travel:

• Time travel through the use of a machine

• Time travel through the projection of consciousness

• Time travel through the use of drugs

• Time travel through immortality

• “Time travel” through reincarnation

• Time travel through the use of magic

• Time travel through unexplained means (such as “timeslips)

• Also, loosely, anything multi-dimensional was considered part of time travel subgenre.

🎧 Listen now on The Rocketeer Podcast:

Featured stories and references:

• Man of Two Worlds by Bryce Walton → Podcast #2

• The Outlawed Centaur by Bertram Atkey → Podcast #11

• Draft of Eternity by Victor Rousseau → Steeger Books reprint

• More about Nell Brinkley → Podcast #26

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✴️ About Pulp Archaeology

Not just stories.
Not just pulp.
These pages are relics —
fragments of a restless century,
whispering of power, fear,
dreams deferred, and futures imagined.

I read pulp not as kitsch,
but as cultural fossils —
clues to who we were,
and who we might yet become.

Explore more:
🌐 lucinapress.com
🎨 flyingponystudios.com