Reception
Critic Don D'Ammassa rated the piece one of de Camp's "best stories", and placed it among those "of particular note" among de Camp's "many memorable short stories." Roland Green, writing for Booklist, called it of "outstanding merit" and one of the author's "vintage short pieces." To Tom Easton, it "is a classic explsition of the time-travel paradox," and de Camp "always one of my favorite SF&F writers." Harry Turtledove called the story "a fine specimen of the for-want-of-a-nail story: a small change in the past producing enormous ramifications as the centuries roll by," with "things so easy as the thought they would be ... a common theme in de Camp's work."
Read more about this topic: Aristotle And The Gun
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“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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