Time in Advance

Time in Advance

Front cover of the first Bantam Books edition of Time in Advance.
Author	William Tenn
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science Fiction
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	June 1958
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	153 pp
OCLC	314994320

Time in Advance (no ISBN) is a collection of four short stories by American science fiction writer William Tenn (a pseudonym of Philip Klass). The stories all originally appeared in a number of different publications between 1952 and 1957.

Time in Advance was first published by Bantam Books as a paperback in 1958 and also published as a hardcover in the United Kingdom by Victor Gollancz in 1963, followed a hardcover edition in 1964 published in the United Kingdom by the Science Fiction Book Club and by a Panther paperback edition in April 1966.

Dedication: "To Fruma: For being there during Winthrop at his worst and life at its best"

Fruma Klass was Philip Klass's (William Tenn's) wife, Winthrop being the name of the title character of the final story in the collection.

(Astounding Science Fiction, February 1952)

The Earth is visited by large, enigmatic alien spheres, who take up residence in colonies on several prairies and deserts across the world. They make visits to cities, factories and other areas of human activity, seemingly to merely float and observe. All attempts at communication are unsuccessful and despite the best efforts of mankind, no one is able to decipher their intentions. Some, however, have come in to close encounter with the aliens, and emerged dramatically altered beings. These people, called humanity-prime, and dubbed 'primeys', are highly intelligent, can bend matter to their will, but are also, by human standards, quite, quite mad. Algernon Hebster is a highly successful businessman, owing mostly to his dealings with primeys, who supply him with the knowledge for advanced technologies which he puts to use in commerce. The problem is that primeys are so dangerous that dealing with them is highly illegal and every attempt is made to confine them to the reservations around their perceived alien masters.

(Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1956)

In the far future a law is passed enabling citizens to serve out sentences for crimes they intend to commit, serving the full term, but with a 50% pre-criminal discount. Post-criminals and pre-criminals alike are sent to carry out hard-labour on hellishly perilous, far-flung Convict Planets. Few return. Those pre-criminals who are not killed, drop out before their terms are up, with nothing but scars and nightmares to show for their troubles. Two pre-criminals however, 'Blotto' Otto Henck and Nicholas Crandall, manage against all the odds to serve out two full terms for murder, and return to Earth as minor celebrities, with the right to kill one person each. Things, however, do not go quite as planned. Blotto Otto has his scheming wife in mind, only to find out she died the previous year in an unfortunate accident. For Crandall, whose life has been a perpetual series of failures, things go even worse. He intends to kill Frederick Stephenson, a man who stole his great invention. However, on his return, he receives a call from his terrified beloved ex-wife, who thinks she is his intended victim for her series of infidelities whilst they were married. Next he receives a call from his ex-business partner, pleading for his life because he thinks he is the intended victim for secretly cheating him out of vast sums of money. Crandall was previously unaware of either of these things. Still reeling, he meets his own brother, who thinks he is the intended victim, and reveals it was he with whom his wife was cheating. Finally, he calls his intended victim, Stephenson, ironically the only one who fails to twist and squirm, but instead offers Crandall fair settlement for his invention. Shattered by the day's events, Crandall succumbs to the fact that he is one of life's born losers, and sets out with Otto to have some fun.