H. Beam Piper 31 min read

Yesterday a whole planet cheered 'Hail Hradzka, hail the Leader'; today they scream for his death. Hunted in two worlds, the fallen tyrant flees into the past with his knowledge of the future.

H. Beam Piper's 1950 story is a taut dystopian time-travel tale of a dictator stranded in an earlier age. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story about a monster loose in history, undone by a past he didn't understand well enough.

In its time

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

Reading it

31 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).