Blood Trail
- Eloi Bronze Medal
- by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Novelette
- Science Fiction, Mystery and Crime
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Blood Trail” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001).
Detective Wheldon, the top man in NYPD Homicide is approached by two FBI agents who offer to let him go back in time two weeks to observe the 4th killing by a serial killer.
This is the first story in Future Imperfect, a 2001 anthology of 12 original time-travel stories, co-edited by the prolific anthologist Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) who was also a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.
This is the first story in Future Imperfect, a 2001 anthology of 12 original time-travel stories, co-edited by the prolific anthologist Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) who was also a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.
—Michael Main
When it became clear that time travel was even a remote possibility, the government bought a lot of scientists. Those who didn’t play got discredited.
Tags
(7)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: “[. . .] would have been fashionable thirty years before in the affluent [19]90s.”
- Time Travel Methods
- Time Habitats: “The actual room was ice-cold, as if it were a poorly functioning refrigeration unit.”
- Themes
- Caution! Do Not Destroy Spacetime Continuum!: “It might even, one tech said in a hushed voice, cause a rupture in the space-time continuum that couldn’t be resolved.”
- Never Change the Past!: “Interference is strictly forbidden, of course.”
- Time Sherlocks: Wheldon and Kingsbury
- Time Travel Research Program: “You can’t speak of it to anyone. Ever. Is that clear?”
- Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: “He hadn’t been nauseous since he was a rookie, but this feeling was close.”
Variants
(1)
- “Blood Trail” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001).