Alexander Jablokov

writer
Short Story

At the Cross-Time Jaunter’s Ball

Jacob Landstatter is an art critic, and his chosen objects d’art are the alternate realities that the Lords of Time commission from artists who go back in time to make specific changes that result in worlds of one sort or another. So who could want to kill someone with such an occupation as innocuous as Jacob’s?
Normal intestinal flora. Mutated and hybridized with amyotrophic lateral schlerosis. Infects via the GI tract and destroys the central nervous systems of higher primates. Neat. Grew it in the guts of an Australopithecine on the African veldt, two, three million years ago. Not easy, Jacob, not easy. When I woke up on that pallet at Centrum, I had bedsores, and a headache that lasted a month. Killed them all. Every last one of the buggers. Nothing left on this planet with more brains than an orangutan.
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Many Mansions

Working for an alien time cop, Mattias jumps through fixed wormholes in time, heading to medieval France, North America in the last ice age, ancient Egypt, 17th-century Persia, and probably a few other places that he and I are having trouble remembering. We both need a vacation.
It took most of Isaac Newton’s Principia to snap him out of it.
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Ring of Memory

Time travel agent Hugh Solomon chases through time after Andy Tarkin who blames Hugh for the death of their common crush in 1902 Chicago.

The story has a nice bootstrapping paradox.
Have you sold a ring recently, in the shape of a serpent with its own tail in its mouth?
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  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Since You Seem to Need a Certain Amount of Guidance

Alex Jablokov brought this funny story for the students to read at the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2014. The story, in the form of a letter from the future, tells us how much happier and better the future is. And don’t contact them again!

I loved meeting Alex. He is kind and mentoring to new writers!
We do not think the Marx Brothers are funny.
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  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel