Pillar to Post

by John Wyndham

Release: December 1951
Format: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Terence Molton, a double amputee, falls into a dope trance and wakens in the body of a Hymorell, a man in a flawed utopian future that to Molton’s mind is immoral in many ways. As for his part, Hymorell is back in Terence’s body, building a machine to reverse the swap. Quite naturally, Terence feels some resistance to swapping back, a resistance that’s driving enough to give him some questionable morals himself.

One of the pleasures of reading old magazines is seeing the innocence of the ads, such as a 1.5-inch ad for Frank A. Schmid’s bookstore on Columbus Circle in New York. i’ve got them all! every one!, proclaims the ad, referring to sf books of the day. And perhaps they did!

I sat up suddenly, feeling my legs, both of them. There wasn’t any pain. But there were two legs and two feet!

Then I did something I hadn’t let myself do in years—I burst into tears.

DEBUT

“Pillar to Post,” in Galaxy, December 1951.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

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TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.