Monday, 3 August 2015

Sci-Fi short story that involved time travel and a couple who keep losing each other

"The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" by Robert A. Heinlein is a perfect match, except that it's a novella rather than a short story, and it doesn't involve time travel. Another thing, it's a married couple, which really dates the story. The protagonists are private investigators:




The firm of Randall & Craig, Confidential Investigation, maintained its night phone in a double apartment. This was convenient, as Randall had married Craig early in their association. The junior partner had just put the supper dishes to soak and was trying to find out whether or not she wanted to keep the book-of-the-month when the telephone rang.




The handcuffs are the clincher. The conclusion:




He wears a beard, but it is not so much a peculiarity as a necessity, for there is not a mirror in the entire house. They do have one peculiarity which would mark them as odd in any community, if anyone knew about it, but it is of such a nature that no one else would know. When they go to bed at night, before he turns out the light, he handcuffs one of his wrists to one of hers.




Here is the Wikipedia page for the story:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unpleasant_Profession_of_Jonathan_Hoag



However, if there is a collection that contains both "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" and "The Twonky", the ISFDB doesn't know about it. Here is the ISFDB page for "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag:



http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?67629



And here is the ISFDB page for "The Twonky":



http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?46579

No comments:

Post a Comment