Gerda Rhoads 11 min read

'Is this seat free?' asks a voice at Eddie Tomlinson's elbow on the train, a simple question that opens onto something far stranger about his own past.

Gerda Rhoads's 1954 story, her first, is a deft social-SF and time-travel tale of memory and identity. Sharp, intriguing golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a chance encounter on a train unravels the question of who owns a man's own history.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Bert Lief