Breckenridge and the Continuum

by Robert Silverberg

Release: June 1973
Format: Novelette
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Undetermined Time Travel
Original Language: English

Wall Street investor Noel Breckenridge has been summoned to the far future, possibly to tell stories, but is there a larger purpose?

— Michael Main

Am I supposed to tell you a lot of diverting stories? Will I have to serve you six months out of the year, forevermore? Is there some precious object I’m obliged to bring you from the bottom of the sea? Maybe you have a riddle that I’m supposed to answer.

DEBUT

“Breckenridge and the Continuum,” in Showcase, edited by Roger Elwood (Harper and Row, June 1973).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TRANSLATIONS

4 translations

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Age of Reptiles (252 Ma to 66 Ma: Mesozoic/Triassic/Jurassic/Cretaceous): Breckenridge briefly views the Age of Reptiles in the hallway that leads him to the future.
Circa AD 1970 to 1999: Breckenridge thinks back on his 1972 salary.
Far Future: The pavilion lay only a short distance outside the walls of the great dead city that they would enter, at last, in the morning.

Time Travel Methods

Unexplained Time Travel Methods

Themes

Long Sleep, Cryogenics, Etc.: Some of the people in the future city appear to have been in a long sleep before Breckenridge arrives.

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From New York City, circa 1972 ⋙ to the far future. Round trip. Note: Noel Breckenridge comes to the far future in an undescribed manner, although hallway that took him there also seemed to have exits to other times such as the Age of Reptiles.