ID this time travel SciFi short story. Spoilers, of course.

Cafe Society
1

Help please. This one has been bugging me for years.

Guy goes back in time to kill the founder of a powerful religion. Founder guy had been killed and resurrected 3 days later. Had made some pretty speech before being killed, which turned into the basis of the religion. Main character had to kill him before the speech.

He goes back in time, gets the newspapers, asks around and determines place and time of the killing (Nearby, 3 days in the past, pom-pom-pom-poooom)

Goes back in time to the day, can’t find the guy, gets in trouble, gets surrounded by angry mob determined to linch him. Realizes that he is the founder of the religion he was supposed to exterminate and gives a pretty speech.
I think to remember the name being either “The Prophet” or “The Skull” (as there is a scene where he is holding the skull of the founder of the religion, his own skull). But searching for either is taking me nowhere.

Title and author, please?

2

It sounds like an Isaac Asimov story, but I can’t tell you more than that (sob!).

3

“Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock?

4

It’s not “Behold the Man” unless the description of the story in the OP is wildly inaccurate.

5

So you’re saying that I should go back in time, kill Sapo, and write the OP myself?

6

I’m pretty sure it’s a short story by William Tenn, but I can’t think of the name.

7

…Or possibly Phil Dick.

8

It doesn’t sound terribly familiar, and I’m pretty sure I’ve read most if not all of P K Dick’s short stories.

9

Might it be a Heinlein piece? He did quite a bit of time-travel stuff, and a big, evil religion was an important part of his “future history”. shrugs.

10

Not it, but similar theme and other similar but not quite right stories. Don’t have enough info to know if Jeremy Robinson’s “The Didymus Contingency” (2004) could be correct or not. Also Patrick Tilley’s “Mission”.

11

I will say that I’ve definitely read this short story, and I’m pretty sure the title includes either the full name or the last name of the prophet who the guy’s sent to kill.

I also remember it being fairly long for a short story, almost novella length.

12

I’m pretty sure it’s a Philip K. Dick story. I remember reading it as a High Schooler in a volume of his short stories.

-Kris

13

Got it. It’s entitled The Skull (as Sapo said), and can be found in Volume One of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. Pages 47-67 of my edition (shorter than I remember it being).

There ya go, Sapo!

14

I should have read that one, but I usually ended up picking and choosing from the short story collections.

15

Excellent. Thank you very much to all who responded, and of course, special thanks to Gadarene for the final answer. Off to buy the book.

16

Damn it! I was all set to suggest Kilgore Trout and you had to go and screw everything up.