Lester Del Rey 7 min read

Over drinks at the old men's club, a grandfather announces his boy has built a working time machine, and the paradoxes come knocking.

Lester Del Rey's 1951 story opens on the well-ordered veranda of the Arts and Science Club, where retired men sip fine liquor until the news of a successful time experiment shatters the calm and raises the old, thorny question of what happens when you meddle with the past. Witty, conversational golden-age SF that takes its title as a challenge. Read it for a clever, character-warm spin on the time-paradox puzzle from a genre stalwart.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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