Of Time and Eustace Weaver

by Fredric Brown

Release: June 1961
Format: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

When the eponymous hero invents a time machine, he’s quite happy to embark on a career of larceny, gambling, and playing the market to make his riches, knowing that if things go awry, he can always return to the start.

When the story was reprinted in Nightmares and Geezenstacks it was presented as three separate vignettes (“The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver,” Parts I to III), but the original EQMM publication had just one entry (Of Time and Eustace Weaver) in its table of contents.

He could become the richest man in the world, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. All he had to do was to take short trips into the future to learn what stocks had gone up and which horses had won races, then come back to the present and buy those stocks or bet on those horses.

DEBUT

“Of Time and Eustace Weaver,” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1961.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Groupings

Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

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