It’s difficult living in the intermediate era—the first to have an official Temporal Embassy from the future—because the embassy is always bossing people around and canceling promising research, but Thomas Alva Banderling won’ be stopped from sending his Martian archaeologist flirglefliper friend Terton to the past so that Banderling himself can get credit for inventing the time machine.
Exactly. The Temporal Embassy. How can science live and breathe with such a modifier? It’s a thousand times worse than any of these ancient repressions like the Inquisition, military control, or university trusteeship. You can’t do this—it will be done first a century later; you can’t do that—the sociological impact of such an invention upon your period will be too great for its present capacity; you should do this—nothing may come of it now, but somebody in an allied field a flock of years from now will be able to integrate your errors into a useful theory.

Variants

(1)
  1. “The Remarkable Flirgleflip” by William Tenn, in [Error: Missing ']]' tag for wikilink].
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by William Tenn