Gregory Benford (www.gregorybenford.com) lives in Irvine, California. He is a CEO of several biotech companies devoted to extending longevity using genetic methods. He retains his appointment at UC Irvine as a professor emeritus of physics. He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Jupiter Project, Artifact, Against Infinity, Eater, and the famous SF classic, Timescape (1980). Many of his (typically hard) SF stories are collected in In Alien Flesh, Matters End, and Worlds Vast and Various. Benford says, “I have just reissued in a new edition my cryonics novel Chiller, have out a new short story collection, Anomalies. In Fall 2012, I have A Big Smart Object novel out with Larry Niven, The Bowl of Heaven.”
“Mercies” was published in the original anthology Enginering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, the first of two selections from that excellent book we choose to reprint here. This story explores the real meaning of the science fiction cliché of going back in time to kill someone in order to change history. Never mind what you would do to history. If you took it up as a hobby, what would this say about you?