“Willie’s Blues”
- Eloi Bronze Medal
- by Robert J. Tilley
- Novelette
- Science Fiction, Music and Musicals
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “‘Willie’s Blues’” by Robert J. Tilley, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1972.
A music historian travels back to the 1930s to uncover the real story of how Willie Turnhill rose from an extra in the Curry Band to tenor sax virtuoso ever.
—Michael Main
He thinks of me now as the one person who’ll be able to say who’s the original and who’s the plagiarist when “the other guy” does eventually turn up!
Tags
(12)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1930 to 1939: 1936–1938
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: circa 2078
- Timeline Models
- Single Consistent Timeline: “Dear Jesus—every step that I take around this room, every movement that I’ve ever made, every syllable that I’m saying right now; all of it idelibly printed on the circuit, each inflection a response that it’s impossible to break or even bend, just a little.”
- Time Travel Methods
- Wearable Time Object: “a black, skintight suit, with a control-box of some kind strapped to his chest”
- Themes
- Artist Paradox: When Palmer plays the future recording for Turnhill.
- Chronology Protection Conjecture: “[A]nd if some lunatic, in a misguided attempt to benefit humanity long before it‘s due, is going to bring back the formula for curing cancer a hundred years before it’s found, then it’s simply not going to work. It couldn't. Something would be bound to stop it, [. . .]”
- Ex Nihilo Obects and People
- Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: “In short, free will is just an expression, a myth founded on vanity and wishful thinking; [. . .]”
- Time Corps: “I’ve broken a cardinal rule laid down by the transfer people [. . .]”
- Groupings
Variants
(4)
- “‘Willie’s Blues’” by Robert J. Tilley, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1972.
- alternative punctuation.
“Willie’s Blues” by Robert J. Tilley, in Something Else by Robert J. Tilley (Wildside Press, September 2015). - “Willie’s blues,” as by R. J. Tilley, Fiction #257, May 1975.
- “Requiem für Willie” by Robert J. Tilley, in Der Zeitläufer, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (Pabel, February 1975).
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written by
Robert J. Tilley as by R. J. Tilley