The story presents a fixed series of events, which includes a man disappearing at one point in the future and (from his point of view) reappearing at the start of the story to then interact with himself, his own wife, and the evil alien.

It’s nice that there’s no talk of the universe exploding when he meets himself, but even so, the story suffers from a murkiness that is often part of time-travel stories that are otherwise enjoyable. The murkiness stems from two points: (1) That somehow the events are repeating over and over again—but from whose viewpoint? (2) The events are deterministic and must be acted out exactly the same each time. I enjoy clever stories that espouse the viewpoint of the second item (“By His Bootstraps”). But this does not play well with the first item, and (as with many stories), Harness did not address that conflict nor the consequent issue of free will. Still, I enjoyed the story and wish I’d met Harness when I traveled to Penn State University in the spring of 1982.

Even though this story was reprinted as “Stalemate in Time” in the 1960s, it still was just a battle between two death stars. No time travel.

With a scope to rival A.E. Van Vogt, Harness tells the tale of Alar (aka The Thief), a swashbuckling amnesiac with amazing mental powers who’s bent on overthrowing the evil solar system empire while being pursued from the Earth to the Moon to the Sun and beyond by the Imperial Police. Oh yes, there’s also this mutant mind who claims he’s the only survivor of an accidental time-traveling space ship.

Colonel von Mainz travels back from the 21st century to 1865 Appomattox with weapons that can make the South win the war and thereby keep America divided, allowing Germany to win the wars of the 20th century.

This is one of the stories that I read in my dad’s Analogs at the end of my tricycle trip to Seattle.