"When Time Was New" (1964) by Robert F. Young

Robert F. Young (1915-1986) was a prolific science-fiction writer whose 200-odd stories were published in all of the leading s-f magazines of his day [1] as well as in Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post and Playboy. Although many of his stories were also published in book form, they are today almost all out of print [2] and are unfortunately very hard to find, even in second-hand bookstores, on the Internet or elsewhere.

This charming and very inventive tale first appeared as the cover story of the December 1964 issue of Worlds of IF magazine. It recounts with humour and brio the adventures of a time-travelling explorer, and had me hooked from the beginning, had me smiling and chuckling throughout, and left me with a most agreeable warm feeling about having so well spent my reading time.

(15,000 words)

As an added bonus the story solves a long-standing literary mystery as to the identity of the visitor who interrupted Cole­ridge in 1797 while the poet was writing down his masterpiece Kubla Khan, which he had just composed in his sleep. The visitor had hung around for an hour, and afterwards Coleridge hadn’t been able to remember the rest of the poem, which has thus remained unfinished. Now we know why!

It is I dare to say a fine example of the quality of the writing of an author of humble origins (science-fiction fans were astonished to learn, towards the end of his life, that he had been a full-time janitor in a Buffalo public school during most of his writing career) who is well worth discovering or rediscovering.

We have included here the excellent Worlds of IF illustrations of the story by Morrow, who also did the cover artwork.

An e-book version is available for downloading below.

When Time Was New (e-book)