Nelson S. Bond 1 hr 26 min read

A drab, commonplace stranger arrives at the narrator's door with a bulky folder and an unsettling message: what happened will have to be written down, because the narrator won't be here then.

Nelson S. Bond's 1940 story is a clever military-SF and time-travel tale. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a neatly-turned story where a mysterious visitor from another time confronts an ordinary man with foreknowledge of a war, in a thoughtful, well-plotted piece from a reliably inventive golden-age craftsman.

In its time

Published in 1940, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

1 hr 26 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Frank R. Paul