Time has not been kind of science fiction. “Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon.“With Folded Hands…” by Jack Williamson.“Tiny and the Monster” by Theodore Sturgeon.I’m reading a best-of-1947 volume, which contains these stories: They’re good enough to get published, but most won’t make it into the best-of-last-year anthologies the following year. Reading science fiction magazines reveals that most stories aren’t that good. This gives me three levels of quality and from past and current perspectives. They can be new or old magazines, annuals, or anthologies. Sometimes I read retrospective anthologies that claim to culled the very best short stories of the genre.

Sometimes I read best-of-the-year annuals. I’ve discovered yet another way of classifying science fiction short stories. I’m taking a short break from reading 21st-century SF to jump back to 1940s science fiction. The story is also available at Project Gutenberg. I read just it in The Great SF Stories 9 (1947) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. In 1956 it was made into an episode of X-Minus One radio show. It was reprinted in the classic retrospective anthology, A Treasury of Science Fiction edited by Groff Conklin in 1948.

“Time and Time Again” originally appeared in the April 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Of course, in 1947, science fiction writers were ramping up for the 1950s, the SF Decade of Psi-Powers. The idea is not really science fiction, but a fantasy version of “if I knew then what I know now,” but Piper throws in some pseudo-science gobbledygook and tries to pass it off as science fiction. Beam Piper and it uses an idea I’ve already tried in several story attempts. Have you ever thought of an idea for a science fiction story, but before you could use it discovered the idea has already been used in another story? Last night I read “Time and Time Again” by H.

Time and time again novel