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Time Exposures
This is a short story by Wilson Tucker
- GenresScience Fiction
17 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1971
5 people want to read
About the author
Wilson Tucker
66 books33 followersArthur Wilson "Bob" Tucker was an American mystery, action adventure, and science fiction writer, who wrote as Wilson Tucker.
He was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker, a family nickname bestowed in childhood.
He was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker, a family nickname bestowed in childhood.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 2, 2025
I met this story in 2001. I was not very prepared for this one back then. You need a bit of tutelage before you jump into a time travel classic, albeit a short story.
For starters, this story is built not around the spectacle of temporal disruption but around the crooked, lingering ache of memory, perception, and the unreliable ways we archive our own existence.
Tucker makes time feel less like a cosmic dimension and more like a mischievous archivist, misfiling moments, redacting others, and leaving the protagonist flipping through an album that refuses to stay still.
From the jump, the story pulls you into this soft vortex where everything seems ordinary until the smallest detail shifts—like a shadow turning the wrong way or a face in a photograph that seems to be watching from an angle that shouldn’t be possible.
Tucker doesn’t go for the usual “paradox” theatrics; instead, he slips postmodern uncertainty into the very mechanism of remembering. The photographs in the story function like portals, but not in the sci-fi blockbuster sense. They’re portals into doubt, into the quantum fuzz of lived experience, into the disquieting truth that the past is less a fixed location and more a set of interpretations we keep touching up.
The protagonist—Tucker’s classic everyman with a touch of fatal curiosity—wanders through this mystery like a man half-aware he’s already been written into a loop.
He sees anomalies, coincidences, and impossible alignments, but each piece feels like part of a puzzle designed not to be solved but to expose the hubris of thinking the past can be captured at all.
He isn’t a hero; he’s a witness. A spectator in his own story.
And this is where Tucker’s quiet genius glows brightest: he builds a character who slowly realizes the act of observation is the trap.
The photographs become symbols of postmodern instability—the kind of objects that raise more questions the longer you stare at them. They mock the notion of evidence, suggesting instead that images are just as susceptible to the distortions of time as memories.
And then Tucker threads in that eerie suggestion that the act of observing the past is what alters it. The protagonist tries to interpret the photographs, but they keep slipping out of category, like reality refusing to be pinned under the neat labels of chronology.
There’s something exquisitely disorienting in how Tucker blends the mechanics of time travel with the fragility of identity. The story hints that the protagonist isn’t just seeing shifts in time—he’s seeing shifts in himself, in the continuity of his own existence, as if each photograph is a version of him that might not align with the next.
Tucker toys with solipsism, the idea that the self is not a stable entity traveling through time, but a series of loosely related snapshots, any of which could be revised, erased, or overwritten.
The writing lands with this subtle, noir-ish melancholy, the kind that makes you want to check old photos of yourself just to be sure the shadows match. Tucker’s sentences roll in like slow waves, deceptively calm on the surface but carrying undertows of existential dread.
There’s no frantic race to “fix the timeline”—that would be too tidy for Tucker. Instead, the story plays out like a dream you can’t quite remember upon waking, where the emotional residue sticks but the narrative slips like water through your fingers.
And then comes that creeping fear: the photographs aren’t passive records. They’re active participants. Observers. They look back. This flips the whole dynamic. The protagonist’s gaze becomes a liability.
The past becomes predatory.
And suddenly the story is no longer about discovering what happened—it’s about realizing that the act of discovery is what destabilizes everything. The more he inspects, the deeper he digs, the more the photographs change, bloom, and shift, like time itself reacting to scrutiny with a kind of defensive creativity.
In this sense, the story is deeply postmodern: a narrative about the impossibility of narrative coherence.
Tucker dismantles chronology with the delicacy of someone rearranging a house of cards—not to collapse it, but to show how precariously it stands. The protagonist keeps trying to reassemble a timeline that refuses to stay assembled, like he’s stuck in a cosmic editing room where the footage keeps rewriting itself. You can almost visualize the spool of film jittering under a projector, each frame wobbling slightly out of sync as if the universe has developed a tremor.
And then there’s the loneliness. Time travel stories often chase spectacle, but Tucker leans into isolation—the terrifying realization that if time is fluid, identity is too. The protagonist’s attempt to anchor himself becomes more desperate, more touching, and more doomed.
He wants proof, stability, and a fixed narrative arc. But the photographs keep undermining him. They don’t reveal who he was—they reveal that there is no singular “was” to begin with. Only variations. Only edits.
The story carries that haunting flavor of being trapped in a feedback loop—not a dramatic, sci-fi time loop, but a psychological one. The protagonist’s obsession becomes its own temporal distortion.
Tucker almost whispers the idea that the very desire to document the past is the first step toward dismantling it. Memory as both scaffold and demolition tool. Time as a kaleidoscope.
The more the protagonist tries to stabilize what he sees, the more the photographs warp, as though time itself is allergic to certainty. The postmodern dread here isn’t that the past can change—it’s that the past never existed in the way we pretend it did.
The photographs don’t contradict reality; they reveal its inherent multiplicity. They become artifacts of a world where truth is not fixed but probabilistic, where identity is a collage rather than a portrait.
By the time the story reaches its final movement, the protagonist is less a man and more a shadow wandering through iterations of reality, trying to find the version where he belongs.
Tucker doesn’t give him closure—because closure would imply that time has a stable contour. Instead, Tucker gives him ambiguity, fracture, and the unsettling sense that he has become one of the photographs himself: a moment trapped between lenses, interpreted but never resolved.
The ending hits with a quiet, chilling resonance—no fireworks, no revelations, just the soft realization that time won’t reveal its secrets because time doesn’t ‘have’ secrets. It has layers.
And every attempt to peel one away only exposes another, until the act of questioning becomes indistinguishable from the act of erasing.
‘Time Exposures’ lingers like a ghost light in a darkroom. It’s a story about time travel that never once mentions flux capacitors or cosmic portals. It’s about the terror of observing too closely, of wanting certainty in a universe that offers only versions.
Tucker crafts a meditation masquerading as a mystery, a temporal riddle with no answer key, and a quiet masterpiece of postmodern dislocation.
One of the best sci-fi stories you’ll ever read. Most recommended.
For starters, this story is built not around the spectacle of temporal disruption but around the crooked, lingering ache of memory, perception, and the unreliable ways we archive our own existence.
Tucker makes time feel less like a cosmic dimension and more like a mischievous archivist, misfiling moments, redacting others, and leaving the protagonist flipping through an album that refuses to stay still.
From the jump, the story pulls you into this soft vortex where everything seems ordinary until the smallest detail shifts—like a shadow turning the wrong way or a face in a photograph that seems to be watching from an angle that shouldn’t be possible.
Tucker doesn’t go for the usual “paradox” theatrics; instead, he slips postmodern uncertainty into the very mechanism of remembering. The photographs in the story function like portals, but not in the sci-fi blockbuster sense. They’re portals into doubt, into the quantum fuzz of lived experience, into the disquieting truth that the past is less a fixed location and more a set of interpretations we keep touching up.
The protagonist—Tucker’s classic everyman with a touch of fatal curiosity—wanders through this mystery like a man half-aware he’s already been written into a loop.
He sees anomalies, coincidences, and impossible alignments, but each piece feels like part of a puzzle designed not to be solved but to expose the hubris of thinking the past can be captured at all.
He isn’t a hero; he’s a witness. A spectator in his own story.
And this is where Tucker’s quiet genius glows brightest: he builds a character who slowly realizes the act of observation is the trap.
The photographs become symbols of postmodern instability—the kind of objects that raise more questions the longer you stare at them. They mock the notion of evidence, suggesting instead that images are just as susceptible to the distortions of time as memories.
And then Tucker threads in that eerie suggestion that the act of observing the past is what alters it. The protagonist tries to interpret the photographs, but they keep slipping out of category, like reality refusing to be pinned under the neat labels of chronology.
There’s something exquisitely disorienting in how Tucker blends the mechanics of time travel with the fragility of identity. The story hints that the protagonist isn’t just seeing shifts in time—he’s seeing shifts in himself, in the continuity of his own existence, as if each photograph is a version of him that might not align with the next.
Tucker toys with solipsism, the idea that the self is not a stable entity traveling through time, but a series of loosely related snapshots, any of which could be revised, erased, or overwritten.
The writing lands with this subtle, noir-ish melancholy, the kind that makes you want to check old photos of yourself just to be sure the shadows match. Tucker’s sentences roll in like slow waves, deceptively calm on the surface but carrying undertows of existential dread.
There’s no frantic race to “fix the timeline”—that would be too tidy for Tucker. Instead, the story plays out like a dream you can’t quite remember upon waking, where the emotional residue sticks but the narrative slips like water through your fingers.
And then comes that creeping fear: the photographs aren’t passive records. They’re active participants. Observers. They look back. This flips the whole dynamic. The protagonist’s gaze becomes a liability.
The past becomes predatory.
And suddenly the story is no longer about discovering what happened—it’s about realizing that the act of discovery is what destabilizes everything. The more he inspects, the deeper he digs, the more the photographs change, bloom, and shift, like time itself reacting to scrutiny with a kind of defensive creativity.
In this sense, the story is deeply postmodern: a narrative about the impossibility of narrative coherence.
Tucker dismantles chronology with the delicacy of someone rearranging a house of cards—not to collapse it, but to show how precariously it stands. The protagonist keeps trying to reassemble a timeline that refuses to stay assembled, like he’s stuck in a cosmic editing room where the footage keeps rewriting itself. You can almost visualize the spool of film jittering under a projector, each frame wobbling slightly out of sync as if the universe has developed a tremor.
And then there’s the loneliness. Time travel stories often chase spectacle, but Tucker leans into isolation—the terrifying realization that if time is fluid, identity is too. The protagonist’s attempt to anchor himself becomes more desperate, more touching, and more doomed.
He wants proof, stability, and a fixed narrative arc. But the photographs keep undermining him. They don’t reveal who he was—they reveal that there is no singular “was” to begin with. Only variations. Only edits.
The story carries that haunting flavor of being trapped in a feedback loop—not a dramatic, sci-fi time loop, but a psychological one. The protagonist’s obsession becomes its own temporal distortion.
Tucker almost whispers the idea that the very desire to document the past is the first step toward dismantling it. Memory as both scaffold and demolition tool. Time as a kaleidoscope.
The more the protagonist tries to stabilize what he sees, the more the photographs warp, as though time itself is allergic to certainty. The postmodern dread here isn’t that the past can change—it’s that the past never existed in the way we pretend it did.
The photographs don’t contradict reality; they reveal its inherent multiplicity. They become artifacts of a world where truth is not fixed but probabilistic, where identity is a collage rather than a portrait.
By the time the story reaches its final movement, the protagonist is less a man and more a shadow wandering through iterations of reality, trying to find the version where he belongs.
Tucker doesn’t give him closure—because closure would imply that time has a stable contour. Instead, Tucker gives him ambiguity, fracture, and the unsettling sense that he has become one of the photographs himself: a moment trapped between lenses, interpreted but never resolved.
The ending hits with a quiet, chilling resonance—no fireworks, no revelations, just the soft realization that time won’t reveal its secrets because time doesn’t ‘have’ secrets. It has layers.
And every attempt to peel one away only exposes another, until the act of questioning becomes indistinguishable from the act of erasing.
‘Time Exposures’ lingers like a ghost light in a darkroom. It’s a story about time travel that never once mentions flux capacitors or cosmic portals. It’s about the terror of observing too closely, of wanting certainty in a universe that offers only versions.
Tucker crafts a meditation masquerading as a mystery, a temporal riddle with no answer key, and a quiet masterpiece of postmodern dislocation.
One of the best sci-fi stories you’ll ever read. Most recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review