Jesus

Tag Area: Real-World Character
Flash Fiction

Un brillant sujet


Now that we’re in the enlightened 21st century, every self-respecting reader is intimately familiar with all the early time travel classics. Anno 7603, Paris avant les hommes,[/em] “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Clock That Went Backward,” El Anacronópete, The Time Machine, blah blah blah. But let’s be honest and call a Morlock a Morlock: All those old tales are tales of vacuous travelers through time, none of them giving a thought to contorted paradoxes, none wondering which lover they would get back (or get revenge on) if given the chance, none fretting about what might happen should they kill their younger self, and none having impure thoughts about sleeping with their mothers or the consequences of doing so. Yep, I’d always proudly boasted that it was my generation who discovered such sauciness.

And then I stumbled upon Jacques Rigaut’s century-old gem that managed all that and more in under 1,000 words more than a century ago. —Michael Main
Divers incestes sont consommés. Palentête a quelques raisons de croire qu’il est son propre père.
translate Various incests are consummated. Skullhead has some reason to believe that he is his own father.
A yellowed title page from the 1922 publication of "Un brillant sujet."
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Comedy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Man Who Never Grew Young

  • by Fritz Leiber
  • in Night’s Black Agents as by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Arkham House, 1947)

Without knowing why, our narrator describes his life as a man who stays the same for millennia, even as others, one-by-one, are disinterred, slowly grow younger and younger.

The story is soft-spoken but moving, and for me, it was a good complement to T.H. White’s backward-time-traveler, Merlyn.
It is the same in all we do. Our houses grow new and we dismantle them and stow the materials inconspicuously away, in mine and quarry, forest and field. Our clothes grow new and we put them off. And we grow new and forget and blindly seek a mother.
A stylized pen-and-ink drawing of a cloaked man on a horse with a
                silhouette of Saturn in the background.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Fantasy
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time Travel Inc.


I found this in one of three old sf magazines that I traded for at Denver’s own West Side Books. (Thank you, Lois.) Both the title and the table-of-contents blurb (They wanted to witness the Crucifixion) foreshadow Moorcock’s “Behold the Man,” although the story is not as vivid. —Michael Main
Oh . . . The Crucifixion. You want to witness it, of course—
An angry man with tubes connected to his temples grasps two fistfuls of other
                tubes and wires.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Ripples in the Dirac Sea


A physics guy invents a time machine that can go only backward and must always return the traveler to the exact same present from which he left. —Michael Main
  1. Travel is possible only into the past.
  2. The object transported will return to exactly the time and place of departure.
  3. It is not possible to bring objects from the past to the present.
  4. Actions in the past cannot change the present.
Pen-and-ink drawing of a man holding a woman in front of him with a peace sign
                on her sleeve and a complex clockface behind.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • 1989 Nebula
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Moment Universe Stories 1

Some Like It Cold


Sure, others have pulled that 20th century actress forward to make modern films with spectacular failure, each attempt spawning a branch universe unconnected to the 21st century of time traveler Det Gruber, but none of the others took into account the psychological factors in the way that Det’s employers have done. —Michael Main
She may be a wreck, but she wants to be here. Not like Paramount’s version.
A naked child sits beside a robot dog with the moon in the background.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Hero of Your Own Story


A bad egg creates chaos by leaving time portals open between various times in various parts of the multiverse. —Michael Main
Your time portals are not big enough for any of the really exciting monsters.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for
                Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel