Years before The Demolished Man, there was Bester’s probable man. I looked forward to reading it as the first story of my retirement, and I enjoyed the time-travel model that Bester set up: David Conn travels backward from 2941 to World War II, but then returns to a vastly changed future. For me, though, I found the naÏve attitude toward war unappealing.
She’d be Hilda Pietjen, daughter of the prime minister, just another chip in the Nazi poker game. And he’d be dead in a bunker, a thousand years before he’d been born.

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  1. “The Probable Man” by Alfred Bester, Astounding, July 1941.
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Alfred Bester