Justin Pope, a music major (like Paul Eisenbrey!), stumbles upon a time machine that he uses to kidnap Franz Schubert from his deathbed; Pope cures Franz and uses him as a source of compositions to create a magnificent career of his own (with the help of Angelica), until Franz turns the tables (with the help of Philipa).

Paul Eisenbrey introduced me to this author in college, but I found Mixed Doubles on my own some years later.
From time to time double checking with the manual, he began to punch in the commands that, he had calculated from ceaseless experimentation, would project him three thousand years into the past, plus of minus fifteen years. It was a vast improvement on his first efforts, which had been accurate only to within two centuries. The reentry program was more precise by orders of magnitude: it would bring him back to the moment of departure, plus zero to seventeen hours.

Variants

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  1. Mixed Doubles by Daniel da Cruz (Del Rey, August 1989).
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Daniel da Cruz