H. F. Cente 26 min read

There are two things to know about a salesman, and Big Bill Bennett, back an hour late from a Moon selling trip, tells his boss he quits: he's inherited a time-machine and is off to the future.

H. F. Cente's 1953 story is a wry post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale built on a salesman's oversized ambition. Fun, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a smooth-talking pitchman's inheritance of a time machine leads somewhere he never sold himself on.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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