Stephen Marlowe 17 min read

'We've known each other too long for lies,' Jason Wall tells his doctor, who then tells him the truth: eighteen months to live, no cure, no chance.

Stephen Marlowe's 1957 story opens on a hard man receiving a death sentence, launching a time-travel tale born of the will to escape it. Sharp, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story of a doomed man who refuses to accept the one disaster no one revisits.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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