William Tenn

Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother.

Bild-a-Man Set #3. This set is intended solely for the use of children, between the ages of eleven and thirteen. The equipment, much more advanced that Bild-a-Man Sets 1 and 2, will enable the child of this age-group to build and assemble complete adult humans in perfect working order.

I hand him an empty can and say I want it filled with green paint—it should have orange polka dots.

The traitorous Shayson and his illegal federation extended this hypothesis to include much more detailed and minor acts such as shifting a molecule of hydrogen that in our past really was never shifted.

Exactly. The Temporal Embassy. How can science live and breathe with such a modifier? It’s a thousand times worse than any of these ancient repressions like the Inquisition, military control, or university trusteeship. You can’t do this—it will be done first a century later; you can’t do that—the sociological impact of such an invention upon your period will be too great for its present capacity; you should do this—nothing may come of it now, but somebody in an allied field a flock of years from now will be able to integrate your errors into a useful theory.

So we indulged in the twentieth-century custon of shaking hands with him. First Morniel, then me—and both very gingerly. Mr. Glescu shook hands with a peculiar awkwardness that made me think of the way an Iowan farmer might eat with chopsticks for the first time.

Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.

flick!

Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.

flick!

“The point being,” said the Secretary of State, “that most social values are conditioned by the time, place and prevailing political climate. Is that what you mean by perspective?

That left the incest angle, and I asked him about that. He says that making it with your great-great-granddaughter from the twenty-first century is not much different from making it with your clothes-designer neighbor from across the hall.