Finalizing History
by Richard K. Lyon
In early 1960, Perry Mason author Earl (not Erle) Stanley Gardner and his wife host John
W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Edward Teller, Ronald Reagan, Douglas
MacArthur and Jackie Kennedy to discuss a shared dream in which a time-traveling alien
requires them to pick one person to eliminate from history as a prerequisite to a final
revision of mankind’s history.
— Michael Main
If one of these people dies young, that will pay your debt.
“Finalizing History” by Richard K. Lyon, in
Analog, June 2008.