I seem to remember reading something like that from Robert Silverberg, but I don’t remember the name of the story.
Excellent catch! I just Googled Robert Silverberg short stories thanks to that tip. It’s called “Born with the Dead”.
Thanks!
Which is a sequel to his “The Midas Curse”, where the idea of using robots for the necessary consumption (in addition to production) originated. “The Man who Ate the World” would make a lot less sense without that context.
Found and ordered, thanks.
This was a short story either from a book or an anthology TV show it’s been a while.
A history Professor who thinks JFK was the greatest President ever decides to invent (or steal) a time machine to go back in time and save JFK. After stopping Oswalt on his first time jump He realizes the man on the grassy knoll was the real killer so he time jumps again and buys his own scoped rifle to shoot the man before he shoots JFK, but is shocked to see himself on the grassy knoll about to shoot JFK upon which he realizes that he must have saved JFK the first time jump, got back to the future, and whatever future that version of himself saw was so horrible that version of himself had to go back in time to rectify things. He goes back into his own time sadder but wiser.
You may mean Profile in Silver in the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone, which featured Andrew Robinson (DS9’s Garak) as Kennedy Profile in Silver - Wikipedia - but the story isn’t quite like you remember, if I’m right.
It’s almost like he’s remembering two stories and this is one of them.
I’ve done that. It took me ages to find Del Rey’s “Step to the Stars” because I was combining it in my mind with Clarke’s “Islands in the Sky”
Every time traveller ends up shooting Kennedy sooner or later.
Except in Quantum Leap where the target to be saved was really Jackie
Does this seem at all familiar?
His description bears some similarity to the Red Dwarf episode Tikka to Ride, in that the gunman on the grassy knoll is a time traveler sent back to fix the dismal timeline created when the assassination was foiled. But like Peter_Morris says, the number of time traveler/Kennedy assassination stories is huge and there is ample opportunity to conflate multiple stories.
Yeah the main part of the story I remember most distinctly is the professor aiming a rifle at the grassy knoll only to see himself there with the same rifle pointing at the President.
The Twilight Zone episode makes the most sense considering the time frame where I would have watched it as a kid and not seen it since, but it doesn’t have the pivotal scene I most remember.
Is that before or after they kill Hitler?
Both.
Lincoln however is a Critical Time Juncture and CANNOT be saved.
Even Superboy couldn’t do that without adult Lex Luthor from stopping him.
As I recall the Twilight Zone episode, the time-traveling historian somehow replaced JFK as President and sacrificed himself in the Dallas motorcade that day so that JFK could live (and end up teaching at Harvard in the future). The historian did not himself become the assassin.
That’s the way I remember it - which may mean that the historian saw himself in motorcade, not at the window.
No, I don’t think it was that, either. He just wanted to spare JFK.