Richard Wilson 11 min read

Putting himself into reverse, the doom-intended John Arthur Benn leaves the twentieth century far ahead, watching the roaring twenties and gay nineties flow backward as he flees into the past.

Richard Wilson's 1956 story is a wry, inventive social-SF and time-travel tale. Clever, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a whimsical story of a doomed man fleeing his fate up the river of history, meeting namesakes across the centuries, in a genial meditation on escape and futility.

In its time

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

Reading it

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