Sunday, 28 February 2016

Short story involving time travel

Having just read through it, it does indeed seem to be “The Fort Moxie Branch” by Jack McDevitt. It was first published in 1988 in a short story collection called Full Spectrum and was nominated for a Hugo award in 1989.



The story is told from first person view, and starts with a man, Mr Wickham, who first notices a glow in the window of a house that had been empty for 3 years while he is putting boxes of his book, Independence Square on the curb for trash collection. He later sees the back of the house ballooning outwards and forming a whole new section. He goes to investigate and finds himself in the titular Fort Moxie Branch of the John of Singletary Memorial Library along with a librarian woman (not a man). On looking around he finds book by people he's never heard of and books he's never seen by famous authors. It's then that the librarian reveals the nature of this library branch, collecting lost masterpieces, book forgotten about or underappreciated.



After the spending some time looking through the books, Mr. Wickham realizes that reason he is the only one who can see the library at all is because the librarian is there to ask him to put his book in the library because, as she puts it,




"We think it unlikely that you will be recognized in your own
lifetime. We could be wrong. We were wrong about Faulkner.... But it
is my honor to invite you to contribute your work to the library."




Wickham refuses to add his book to the library and leaves. Later, he moves the boxes back into his home.




I pulled one of the copies out, and put it on the shelf, between Walt
Whitman and Thomas Wolfe. Where it belongs.




No time travel though.



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