In these stories everybody smokes. The courtesy of offering a pack of cigarettes is common. The characters are classic 50s people, as are the social proprieties. The illustrations are highly representative of the 50s science/fiction dime novel, and the magazines of that time. Although he was not the first to deal with the principle of multiple time lines, I think he was the first to base a series of stories on the concept. These have not aged well, but the science behind these stories are still valid. I will have to admit I read these stories after Fuzzy Sapiens, his masterpiece, and one of the top books of all time, certainly in this genre. We lost a great storyteller prematurely when he left us.
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