H. Beam Piper 1 hr 6 min read

Mid-lecture, Chalmers falters as his class stares: he has just spoken of an assassination in 1973, years before it will happen, for he remembers the future as others remember the past.

H. Beam Piper's 1957 story is a sharp alternate-history and psi-powers tale, once deemed 'too hot to handle.' Clever, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a history professor's uncontrollable glimpses of tomorrow mark him as dangerous, in a tense meditation on foreknowledge and its perils.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 6 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).