Finalizing History
- by Richard K. Lyon
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyon, in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2008.
In early 1960, Perry Mason author Earl (not Erle) Stanley Gardner and his wife host John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, Douglas MacArthur and Jackie Kennedy to discuss a shared dream in which a time-traveling alien requires them to pick one person to eliminate from history as a prerequisite to a final revision of mankind’s history.
—Michael Main
If one of these people dies young, that will pay your debt.
Tags
(24)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1960 to 1969: when Kennedy was president-elect
- Timeline Models
- Hypertime: —As long as I remain slightly outside of your reality, a reverse causality cycle cannot occur.
- Time Travel Methods
- Alien Time Travel Technology: although no actual time travel occurs in the story
- Real-World Tags
- Adolf Hitler: on the list
- Bartolomé de las Casas: on the list
- Christopher Marlowe: on the list
- Clifford Simak: at the meeting
- Douglas MacArthur: at the meeting
- Edward Teller: at the meeting
- Erle Stanley Gardner: at the meeting
- Florence Nightingale: on the list
- Guy Fawkes: on the list
- Isaac Newton: on the list
- Jacqueline Kennedy: at the meeting
- Joan of Arc: on the list
- John W. Campbell, Jr.: at the meeting
- Leonidas I: on the list
- Robert A. Heinlein: at the meeting
- Ronald Reagan: at the meeting
- Thomas Crapper: on the list
- Thomas Edison: on the list
- Werner Heisenberg: on the list
- William the Silent: on the list
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyon, in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2008.