Evelyn E. Smith 27 min read

No one is surprised when Martin's mother disappears and Ninian comes to raise him, though her story of coming from the future is surely just a gag. Isn't it?

Evelyn E. Smith's 1957 story is a clever, warm social-SF and time-travel tale. Sharp, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a slum boy is guarded by descendants not yet born, sent back through time to protect an ancestor whose life, it seems, matters enormously to the future.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Diane Dillon