Time in Advance

by William Tenn

Originally published in the August 1956 issue of GALAXY, this novelette shows William Tenn (pseudonym for Phillip Klass) at the peak of his career in science fiction. Sardonic, profoundly disillusioned and fashioned in the form of a classic deductive mystery, the work was enormously influential and its central plot premise has been appropriated by others over many decades. Original to science fiction--perhaps to the entire body of literature--is the concept of penal terms served “in escrow”; a prospective felon is permitted to do the crime before committing the crime and for the service is granted on completion a get-out-of-jail free card. (Obviously those wishing to commit murder must serve more time in escrow than prospective thieves or embezzlers.) Tenn’s protagonist commits himself to a long term of penal servitude on a hellish planet in order that he may have the opportunity to wreak revenge upon the business partner who has betrayed him. As one of the relatively few who serve such a severe sentence in advance for a severe crime who survives, he emerges prepared to use his promissory note. What he learns however is that there are many levels of crime, many kinds of betrayal and much which is only apparently real. Written with deadpan, ungiving ferocity, TIME IN ADVANCE shows Tenn at a point where he had perfected his style toward apparent (but only apparent) effortlessness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“William Tenn” was the pseudonym for his science fiction used by Phillip Klass (1920-2010); he is regarded as the finest satirist in the history of the field with an ingenious command of narrative. Tenn’s blend of compassion and ferocity, dark comedy and satire merged with the work of three other writers (Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley) to create the characteristic voice of the magazine. After becoming a tenured Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University in the middle ’60s, Klass virtually abandoned fiction writing, publishing only three short stories in his last four and a half decades. To reflect his importance to GALAXY magazine, three other William Tenn works are included among the 23 which compose the initial issue of The Galaxy Project.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.

The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

153 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 1956

About the author

William Tenn is the pseudonym of Philip Klass. He was born in London on May 9, 1920, and emigrated to the United States with his parents before his second birthday. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After serving in the United States Army as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs.

He began writing in 1945 and wrote academic articles, essays, two novels, and more than 60 short stories.

His first story, 'Alexander the Bait' was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. Stories like 'Down Among the Dead Men', 'The Liberation of Earth', and 'The Custodian' quickly established him as a fine, funny, and thoughtful satirist.

Tenn is best-known as a satirist, and by works such as "On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi" and "Of Men and Monsters."

His stories and articles were widely anthologized, a number of them in best-of-the-year collections. From 1966, he was a Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at The Pennsylvania State University, where he taught, among other things, a popular course on science fiction.

In 1999, he was honored as Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at their annual Nebula Awards Banquet.



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Reviews

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Con intencionalidad más profunda de lo habitual en su tiempo.-

Género. Relatos.

Lo que nos cuenta. Cuatro relatos largos (casi novelas cortas, pero no) de Ciencia-Ficción escritos entre 1952 y 1957, y que tocan temas tan dispares como el hallazgo de una antigua civilización en Marte por parte de una expedición conjunta de la URSS y USA, las consecuencias de pagar una pena antes de cometer un delito para tener la libertad de perpetrarlo después, los intentos de un empresario para sacar ventaja de los extraterrestres que han llegado a la Tierra cambiando la psique y las habilidades de algunos contactados pero contra la voluntad de varias organizaciones y, por último, los problemas debidos a cuestiones personales para que un pequeño grupo de viajeros temporales pueda volver desde el siglo XXV al siglo XX.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Time In Advance" is a solid example of William Tenn's ironic approach in his science fiction. Don't be fooled by the title; this is not a time travel story. Rather it refers to a world in which a person can serve "time in advance" for a crime which s/ he intends to commit afterwards.

Well, suppose the crime is murder?!

This novelette has been in numerous anthologies but I would advise reading it in the Kindle edition of "The Galaxy Project", a series of science fiction stories associated wit the famous Galaxy science fiction magazine. This edition includes excellent additional material about the author, work, and the context of its publication.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicholas Crandall has made the ultimate deal with Law Enforcement: for seven years extraterrestrial servitude he will be classed as a pre-criminal and, on his return to Earth, he will be allowed to get away with murder.

This is a great story from William Tenn, where readers are asked to weigh up the pros and cons of such a deal.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read many stories by William Tenn over the past 15 years or so. This collection contains four stories. Two of them are novellas.

#1. 'Firewater'. I can't say I enjoyed this very much. The ideas were good but there was something about the story that didn't work for me, and I can't specify what.
#2. 'Time in Advance'. Brilliant conceit, handled extremely well, but with a slightly dud ending. With a little adjustment to the climax, Tenn would have produced an almost perfect story.
#3. 'The Sickness'. Nothing original here. A virus that increases human mental capacity. The weakest story in the collection.
#4. 'Winthrop was Stubborn'. Absolutely wonderful tale! The best Tenn story I have ever read. Full of great ideas and a suitably apt ending. The book was worth reading for this story alone, which is surely one of the best SF stories of the 1950s. Genuinely funny too!

[Janne Wass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am seldom gobsmacked by an SF book these days, having during the past seven years read around 150 SF novels and double the amount of short stories. When I read a novel or short story published in the 50’s, I can usually tell pretty much where it is going after the first few pages, and halfway through I can mostly narrow down my prediction of the ending to two or three well-worn tropes. Not so William Tenn’s “Time in Advance” (1952–1958).

I was unaware of Mr. Tenn before I picked up this book, a collection of four novelettes dealing with the future. But almost from page 1 it was clear this was something new. Opening powerfully with a scene of a business tycoon having a meeting with a group of four telekinetic hippies speaking their own form of gibberish-English, “Firewater” deals with a world in which super-advanced aliens – small, flying “insects” – have invaded Earth. They have the power to wipe out humanity with a simple thought, but for some reason refrain from doing so, instead seeming to try to communicate with mankind. The smartest, most educated humans who seem to come close to communicating with the aliens all suddenly go “prime”, and descend into blind religious worship of the aliens, somehow also picking up some of their telekinetic powers, as their IQ’s suddenly shoot through the roof. And for some reason, the best bet for humanity seems to be our protagonist, a ruthless businessman who has made his career on (illegally) dealing with “primeys”, trading technology and knowledge between humans and aliens.

Then there’s the story of a future where you can “buy” yourself the right to an act or murder by serving your prison time in advance on the brutal off-world colonies – the two men who actually survive the ordeal and come back to Earth as celebrities – and licensed murderers. And the four time travellers stuck in the 26th century because their companion refuses to return home as planned, and they cannot leave without him. Even the “ancient virus on Mars” trope is made highly original in Tenn’s retelling.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mord nach Wahl Drei Männer haben ihre Strafen für Morde abgebüßt, die sie noch begehen dürfen. Wer sind ihre Opfer?
Feuerwasser Erdbewohner, die mit fremdartigen Intelligenzen Verbindung aufnehmen, wreden geisteskrank. was steckt dahinter?
Winthrop war stur Fünf Menschen unseres Jahrhunderts bekommen die Chance, im 25. jahrhundert zu leben. Einer will nicht zurück. Wie geht das aus? Orig: Time in Advance

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Small volume of short stories with time as the theme. Liked a couple of them. Last one was just odd.

[Hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Хороший короткий рассказ, если нас с вами ждет такое будущее, это будет как минимум забавно.

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled onto this old 1968 paperback edition and bought it entirely for the wrong reason, believing it was the work of James Tiptree, Jr. I had read about Tiptree some several weeks before—that she was an SF hellion during her ten-year heyday in the late 60’s and 70’s, that her identity had long been unknown and that from a male perspective she seemed to write some powerfully feminist statements—but I had forgotten the name “James Tiptree, Jr” and was willing to believe the pseudonym I’d read of was “William Tenn.”

I should’ve see that the stories were all originally published in various SF magazines in the 50’s (and didn't jibe with Tiptree's heyday), but I was too elated at my misguided enthusiasm to examine more closely. In any case, I ended up not with a scathing and mordant perspective on male/female relations, but instead with four interesting and well-wrought stories of their time—not quite a literary treat, but not a thorough wash either.

The basis of these stories is a twist, whether or plot or perspective, so a too thorough description of the stories deflates their impact for the first-time reader. The premise of “Time in Advance” is that in the future a man may serve out a prison term before he’s committed a particular crime, thus upon release giving him carte blanche to freely commit his “crime”. In this instance the protagonist has served seven perilous years on a space chain gang for the crime of murder, and he returns to Earth ready to kill that man whom he believes had ruined his life. This particular twist on crime and punishment is further contorted when the protagonist confronts various people from his past before contacting the man whose death he seeks.

The twist in “Firewater” is that the typical human-alien encounter is thoroughly benign, but oddly unintelligible to both human and alien. The aliens are energy motes—dots—that have no material culture. Contact appears to make humans disoriented, making them dizzily ascetic and spiritual, while the aliens reaction is to devise variations on basic human machines and devices. The protagonist of this story is the CEO of a large multi-national conglomerate, and he secretly exploits the alien’s innovations to corner established markets and create new ones. Human society at large cannot tolerate its state of ignorance about the aliens, and paranoia spurs the growth of a movement to wipe out the aliens and the humans affected by them. The firewater analogy, an allusion to the effect of alcohol on American Indians perpetrated by Caucasian traders, is altered to include both alien and human: each is made “drunk” by contact with the other, and the protagonist has to figure out how to communicate with the aliens to protect them and his profits.

“The Sickness” extrapolates from the cold war tensions of the nuclear stand-off in the 50s, when escalating nuclear arsenals in the US and USSR had everyone sensing imminent annihilation. On an international space expedition to Mars, a team of Russians, Americans, and Indians discover an old city, then one of the Russians becomes ill from an alien virus. Tensions in the crew mount, as the balance of healthy Americans to Russians shift, then continues to shift daily as either an American or Russian also succumbs to the virus. The penultimate twist is that the illness makes everyone smarter and promises world peace; the ultimate twist, however, is bitterly personal for the story’s protagonist.

“Winthrop was Stubbon” is a time travel story that has a five-person party of random, late 20th century Americans stranded in the 25th century. All but one of the time travelers is eager to return to the 20th century. Each of the four individually tries to convince Winthrop to return, for they can return only as an intact group. No one in the 25th century will help to persuade or otherwise compel Winthrop to do other than what he wants; at this time social and moral imperatives dictate individuals act independently to fulfill any personal impulse, so long as it does not impinge on others. There is a tepid bit of satire in this extrapolation of rampant Millsian individualism, which ends with an ironic resolution to the time travelers’ dilemma. This is the least satisfying of the four tales, as the story's tone—comically bright and fey—contributes to make the conclusion merely a muddled implication.

While a mixed bag, this volume is largely entertaining. Even when any given story doesn’t quite cohere, there are enough balls being kept aloft in each to keep interest. Characterization is usually seen as SF’s Achilles hell, weak because the author invests more in the set-up. Tenn, however, gets good marks with “Time in Advance” and “The Sickness”, where his protagonists’ concerns appear real enough to care about.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains four intelligent, ambitious science fiction stories from the mid-1950's. They are also talky and overlong. The best is the title story, about a society that allows a person to serve a seven-year sentence in advance of a crime, after which the person is free to murder whomever he or she chooses. "The Sickness" is about a disease that astronauts pick up from a long-dead Martian city, though the story is really about the relationship between warring superpowers. Those are the shorter pieces. The other two are novellas, and I thought they dragged. "Winthrop Was Stubborn" is a time travel story to the distance future where five people from the 1950's try to convince a 25th century society with very different values to help them return. It suffers a bit from wandering point of view. "Firewater" focuses on an unscrupulous businessman trying to make a deal with elusive aliens. It makes a number of comments on how unscrupulous business harms the seller and the sold. William Tenn is largely forgotten today, but his work had more substance than most of his contemporary SF writers.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I probably originally read this
when I was 30 years old.

I think the plot is incredibly
creative and original.

I think this is absolutely one
of the best science fiction stories
I have ever read and I have read
a ton of them.

[Kakha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prison spacecraft lands at the New York spaceport; reporters are allowed on board... Then we turn on the imagination ... No, not like that. You don't have to create the plot yourself, in this excellent, not very short story, everything has already been thought up and put in its place ;-)

[Darthmitriy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but predictable.

[bluetyson]

Time in advance by William Tenn (1963)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to "Time in Advance".

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1983 grade C-

Short stories