H. Beam Piper 27 min read

Dying of his wounds after an atomic blast in a future war, Captain Allan Hartley wakes, impossibly, back in his own thirteen-year-old body in 1945, with all his adult memories intact.

H. Beam Piper's 1947 story is a landmark time-travel tale, his celebrated debut. Sharp, poignant, superbly told. Read it for the classic story that launched Piper's career, a man given a second chance at life with foreknowledge of the future, exploring, with warmth and rigor, what one might do with the past, in one of the most beloved of all reincarnation-SF stories.

In its time

Published in 1947, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Vincent Napoli