“Zip” was one of the last short stories Steven Utley published during his lifetime, appearing in the July 2012 issue of Asimov’s. It is a story of three time travelers who find themselves in the Pleistocene Era and come upon a situation they had not planned for. As they emerge from their time machine, they see the expected megafauna and humans, but within moments, a blurring occurs on the horizon and the world seem to be torn asunder, those creatures in the distance ceasing to exist.

Surmising that their arrival in the time machine is causing the destruction, the men return to their machine and travel further into the past, arguing about whether they caused the destruction and how to stop it, if they can, or whether they can return to their own time, if it still exists.

The three men include Plant and Chernikowski, the two scientists who created the machine, and the narrator, who is an anthropologist, whose opinion doesn’t matter much to the other two scientists. Much of the action of the short story is their debate about what can be done and is nearly all conjecture, without any evidence to base it upon. Utley’s decision to have the narrator relate the events in the present tense is an interesting choice given the time traveling aspect of the story, but it also has a tendency to distance the story from the reader and sometimes makes the story a bit awkward.

Part of the debate is whether they should ride back in time to the Big Bang in hopes of outrunning the destruction of the universe that is chasing them, although they have no indication that their actions won’t simply destroy the entire universe. Another option is to return to their original time, although Chernikowski posits, again without evidence, that their time may no longer exists and that they may, in fact, be in an anti-matter version of the universe. The narrator’s preferred choice is to stop running and see what happens if the wave of destruction has a chance to catch up with him, although the others fear that will mean their own annihilation.

Due to the amount of conjecture without evidence, “Zip” is something of an anti-science story. It uses many of the tropes of science fiction: time travel, Socratic debate, interaction (even if just viewing) strange creatures, but none of it is grounded in seeking out evidence, thereby offering a betrayal of the scientific method.

Utley published three more short stories before his death, as well as five posthumously published stories, so at least “Zip” wouldn’t be his swan song. The story is little more than an exercise in circular thinking and it would be sad if this had been Utley’s final published work.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference six times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.