Time and Time Again (DIMX)

Time and Time Again is a powerful little story about a soldier who is injured in WWIII, during a raid on Buffalo NY. As his failing body is discovered on the battlefield, his conscious mind is jolted into the past to inhabit his 13 year old self. Upon revealing his knowledge of the future to his father, they plot to change the course of future events and prevent the war.

Time and Time Again (1947) was H. Beam Piper's first published story. Piper is most famous, at least in science fiction circles, as the author of Little Fuzzy. In Little Fuzzy, a prospector on a planet being stripped of resources finds a species of mininscule, furry, intelligent humanoids.

Piper worked on the railroad as a night watchman and ended his career prematurely with suicide in 1964. He shut off all the utilities to his apartment, put painter's drop-cloths over the walls and floor, and took his own life with a handgun from his collection. In his suicide note, he gave an explanation that "I don't like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn't be going away."

Some of this horrible frustration is captured in the story itself.

Dimension X #39
Time and Time Again
12 July 1951
19510712(039)_DIMX_TimeAndTimeAgain.mp3
William Welch (producer), Edward King (director), Lionel Ricou (announcer), Peter Capell, Joe DeSantis, Fred Weihe (director, transcriber), Karl Weber, Norman Rose (host), H. Beam Piper (author), Ernest Kinoy (adaptor), David Anderson, Joseph Curtin