H. Beam Piper 18 min read

A history professor keeps a single dollar bill locked in his bank box, physical proof that the history we know may not be the only one.

H. Beam Piper's 1959 story frames its alternate-history tale around a man who cannot destroy, or explain, an impossible artifact of a world that never was. Sharp, ingenious social SF from a writer who made a specialty of parallel timelines. Read it for a tight golden-age tale built around one uncanny object and the reality it implies.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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