David C. Knight 29 min read

With a muffled rush and the acrid smell of ion electrodes, the Time Translator deposits rotund, gray-eyed Mrs. Mimms back into 1958, behind a supermarket, smile firmly in place.

David C. Knight's 1958 story is a genial first-contact and time-travel comedy. Warm, whimsical golden-age SF. Read it for a charming tale of an unflappable time-traveling little old lady, whose calm supermarket errand across the centuries proves anything but ordinary.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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