William Tenn 22 min read

Changing the world is simple, the trick is to do it before you have a chance to undo it. Ragged Max Alben, thanks to his great-grandfather, has the job of operating a time machine.

William Tenn's 1956 story is a clever, ironic time-travel and social-SF tale of tinkering with history. Sharp, witty golden-age SF. Read it for a story where meddling with the past becomes a dizzying question of who gets to change what, and whether it will stick.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Jack Gaughan