The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction characterizes Farley as “a rough-hewn,
traditional sense-of-wonder writer,” who “as a consequence became relatively inactive
with the greater sophistication of the genre after WWII.” But by the time of this story,
Farley’s rough-hewn edges of his 1920s Radio Man stories had been smoothed out, and
I find his writing to be engaging. I’ll grant that he never stepped away from the view of
women as mere objects of beauty, and his characters have too much purity or evil with no
examination of the morality of murdering a greedy man. Also, I have seen only stereotyped
presentations of other cultures, but his time-travel plots are still fun and worthy of study.
In this story, an immortal man serendipitously invents time travel which takes him from 1949
back to the time of his dastardly grandfather and a consistent resolution of the grandfather
paradox.
Framed in the front doorway stood a gloriously radiant girl of under twenty. Her
flaunting reddish-brown hair was the first feature that caught Whidden’s admiring gaze.
Then her eyes, yellow-green and feral, set wide and at just the least little slant,
beneath definitely slanted furry brows of the same tawny color as the hair. Lips, full
and inviting. Complexion, pink and cream. And a gingham clad figure, virginally
volupuous. A sunbonnet hung down her back from strings tied in a little bow beneath her
piquant chin.
DEBUT
“The Immortality of Alan Whidden,” in Amazing,February 1942.
VARIANTS
Debut. “The Immortality of Alan Whidden,” in Amazing,February 1942.