John Barnes

The current president was a Nazi; his opponent in the 1960 election had been Strom Thurmond, and the paper seemed to be in hysterics about Thurmond the “sore loser” having the termerity to criticize the government that had won the election. Their reference to him as an “ultra-liberal crazy” came very close to making me laugh out loud. . . I suppose context is everything.

She might have said more except that at that moment the sky darkened above us; a passenger dirigible was coming in. I wondered how Chrys was reacting to all this; I knew her home civilization was spacefaring,but after some roaming around in the timelines you realize that’s a bit like knowing that a civilization uses counterpoint in music or the arch a lot in architecture—it isn&rsquyo;t the fact that they use it, but what they do with it, that really matters.

The bicylce had wooden spoked wheels, but the tires were pretty obviously rubber. The “chain” was a knotted rope, which ran through large wooden pin gears, and it didn’t look like they’d developed the coaster brake yet, which may have explained why the helmet had a number of prominent dents.