Pangborn's Paradox by David Mason
"Pangborn's Paradox" is a comic science fiction short story set at Miskatonic University's Faculty Club, where a group of academics — the pompous physicist Pangborn, the eccentric Von Juntz, the poetry-writing Doctor Randall, and the whiskey-drinking narrator — debate temporal paradoxes over drinks. Pangborn, characteristically insufferable, declares that time-travel paradoxes are not true paradoxes and can be empirically resolved. He proposes to demonstrate this by using his department's "temporal transducer" to travel back to 1896 New Orleans and shoot his own grandfather before his father was born — reasoning that if he succeeds without vanishing from existence, the paradox is disproved. Randall and the narrator immediately place bets on whether Pangborn will disappear. At the Physics laboratory, Pangborn sets the machine for the Andrew Jackson Saloon Bar on Decatur Street, where his grandfather — a lawyer who apparently used the bar as his office — is reliably found. Armed with a large.45 revolver and motivated partly by a childhood memory of his grandfather poking him in the belly, Pangborn climbs into the machine. The remaining academics watch through the time viewer as Pangborn materializes in the darkened saloon. His grandfather, a lean, sharp-faced man unmistakably bearing the Pangborn features, is alone at the bar. He has been watching Pangborn's approach in the mirror the entire time. Before Pangborn can fire, the grandfather whirls, draws, and shoots Pangborn dead. "Whippersnapper," he mutters, then holsters his gun — and appears to look directly into the time viewer at the watching men before delivering his closing line: "Figure that one out!" The story's resolution is deliberately absurdist: Pangborn is killed, not erased. He died in the past at his grandfather's hand, which means his grandfather survived, his father was born, and Pangborn himself was born — so the timeline is self-consistent, but Pangborn is still dead. The narrator concludes that Pangborn "vanished, but not in the right way," leaving the bet between him and Randall comically unresolved. Randall refuses to return the three dollars and claims he won. The story operates as a brisk, witty puzzle using the Miskatonic University setting for comic effect, treating the grandfather paradox not as a philosophical crisis but as a pratfall — the universe resolves its own contradiction neatly by having the grandfather simply outshoot the grandson. Mason uses the deadpan narrator and the absurdly petty bet to keep the tone light, turning a classic thought experiment into a punchline about hubris and bad odds.
By David Mason · First published 1958 · Genre: Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Comic Science Fiction