Time on Your Hands
Although I enjoyed the first Reggie Vliet story (“The Man Who Changed History’), this
second story didn’t grab me, even though Reggie does inherit the time-travel watch and
travels to see Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar, the sacking of Rome, and Columbus.
It does
make me reflective to know that this story was written shortly before O’Brien’s death
in a World War II bomber over Europe.
He, Reggie Vliet, was again actually living in the past. He could enjoy it, relish it,
admire it, and—change it. That was why he was here. To scramble the past, knock it off
its customary track, blast it out of its timeworn groove.