After an accident at a temporal research facility in Idaho, a manlike monster known as John Delgano shows up for half a seoncd once a year at the same time and place.

As early as the 1930s, stories have addressed the issue of the Earth moving to a different position when a time traveler moves through time. This story addresses the issue by saying that the time traveler appears only once per year, but that doesn't really solve the problem for so many reasons, starting with the fact that a given position on the surface of the Earth will not be at “the same” position in the subsequent year.
Michael Main
Then that winter they came down for Christmas and John said they had something new. He was really excited. A temporal displacement, he called it; some kind of time effect.

Tags

(5)

Variants

(1)
  1. “The Man Who Walked Home” by James Tiptree, Jr., in Amazing, May 1972.
  2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by [Error: Missing ']]' tag for wikilink]