August Derleth 20 min read

A Madison Street barroom argument about the nature of time leads a reporter to a Dutchman obsessed with old New Amsterdam.

August Derleth's 1953 story frames its time-travel tale as a yarn traded over drinks, as Harrigan recalls the strange, old-fashioned Vanderkamp, who lived near the Bowery and seemed to know everything, including, perhaps, how to move through time. Atmospheric, conversational SF from the writer better known as Lovecraft's great champion and publisher. Read it for a well-told temporal mystery with a fine sense of old New York.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

20 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).