I first read Time is the Traitor, by Alfred Bester, back in the late 1980s along with many other short stories, but this one has stuck with me over the years for a couple of important reasons. It appears in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 15 (1953), published by DAW Books in 1986. It is set in a distant future when humankind has settled more than 700 worlds and huge corporations dominate the interstellar economy. John Strapp has the gift of intuition that enables him to make Decisions with an 87% probability of being correct...for the companies this is a very valuable commodity and he makes a fortune selling them to his clients who span the stars. But Strapp has a couple of quirks to his personality: he goes into a murderous rage against anyone named Kruger and he aggressively, predatorily pursues women who line up with certain very specific physical specifications of his...what's going on here? His staff is concerned that these issues may bring down his (and consequently their) enterprise, so they get amiable ex-heavyweight fighter Frank Alceste to befriend him and get to the bottom of the problems. Alceste does and...well, here is that expected moment when I say you'll just have to read the rest for yourself...
Those two reasons that made Time is the Traitor memorable to me are the following: we live in an age when scientific research, by its nature highly technical and difficult to understand even by other scientists outside a particular specialty, nevertheless carries great importance from its conclusions about different issues. The world's climate is warming at an alarming rate due to man-made carbon emissions, we are told...and we must act now to counteract it. This is based on studies done by specialized scientists...to accept their conclusions requires a kind of faith in science without knowing the exact reasons. John Strapp's method of using his intuition had nothing scientific to back him up...just his own gut feelings and a record of 87% accuracy. So which of these best predicts the future and which would you follow...precise, empirical data leading to a conclusion by trained specialists or an individual with a consistent record of good hunches? I don't have the answer to this question. The second thing about this story that stuck with me was near the ending, which I'm not giving away. I'll just share this much: it's interesting how people's memories can play tricks on them to the point where something long missed and desired can come back and yet they themselves have changed so much that they are incapable of recognizing it as what they had been pursuing all along. Well, I guess you're now going to have to read Time is the Traitor to know what the heck I'm talking about...
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