Time, the Mists Of

Time travel novelette. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine June 2007 Anthologized in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed., St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008.

Two time travelers with conflicting views observe an episode in one of the great epics of the sea—the Royal Navy’s fifty-year campaign against the African slave trade. In The Mists of Time, Tom Purdom gives readers a peek at a historical struggle that tends to be downplayed in most naval histories.

Includes a brief Afterword discussing the background and the author’s sources.

The Mists of Time runs about thirty hardcover book pages in length. The novelette has been a popular form since science fiction magazines first appeared on the stands, but it’s too short for conventional book publishing. Ereaders have opened up a new possibility—novelettes readers can buy as if they were small books you can read in less than an hour.