Sunday, January 29, 2017

"It'll Be Like It Never Happened"

"Dark Interlude."
By Mack Reynolds (1917-83) and Fredric Brown (1906-72).
First appearance: Galaxy, January 1951.
Reprinted many times (HERE).
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Note: Possibly objectionable language in common use then.)
"Justifiable homicide is a solidly established point of law, but the justification for murder depends on where the killer lives . . . and when!"
Whether we like it or not, the future is coming. In the case of Lou Allenby and his sister Susan, when the future does arrive, bringing with it a truth they both find absolutely unacceptable, there's only one way Lou can think of to deal with it—murder . . .
Resources:
- We wonder if Reynolds and Brown were influenced by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi's Practical Idealism (1925; HERE); since then, however, the opposite has been proposed (HERE).
- Wikipedia has an article about Zeno's paradoxes of motion (HERE).
- We've previously encountered SFF maestro Mack Reynolds (HERE) and, in his capacity as a crime fiction writer, Fredric Brown (HERE).

The bottom line:
   I pray you, in your letters,
   When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
   Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
   Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak
   Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well . . .
   — The Moor

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