I lifted my eyebrows: “You mean in his classes?”
He seemed annoyed: “No, for Heaven’s sake. His research students! His doctoral candidates!”
When I began putting together this Big List in 2005, I started with all the Asimov time travel stories that I could remember. Somehow I forgot about this story which I first read in 1973 in Nightfall and Other Stories. But then, while scouring the 1950s back issues of F&SF for more obscure stories, there it was: Sam Marten’s great, great grandfather brought from his deathbed to meet Sam, and there, also, was a moment of time travel for Sam himself.
Two new sentences were added at the end of the original story for the reprinting in Asimov’s collection, so I thought it would be appropriate to quote those new sentences here:
Asimov wrote this story in 1941, but it was lost until a fan found it in the Boston University archives in the early ’70s.
“Long ago.” Hornby smiled amiably and filled his glass again. “Better than the ones those amateurs at Stanford rigged up. I’ve destroyed it, though. Lost interest.”
I read this story as I was starting my graduate studies in Pullman in 1978. Sadly, there was no second issue of Asimov’s SF Adventure Magazine.
Thanks to Marc Richardson for sending this one to me.