Herb Williams 22 min read

A time traveler snatches a young 'witch' from the gallows of colonial America, grime, terror, and all.

Herb Williams's 1955 story opens with Nat Lyon recoiling at the filthy, weeping girl he's just plucked from a Puritan jail into his time machine, the romance of history colliding hard with its ugly reality. A wry, grounded time-travel tale that punctures the fantasy of visiting the past. Read it for clever magazine-era SF about the unglamorous truth behind historical adventure.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas