Has the riddle been solved?

In article <d5qmq198i6pcmg77aqfk6vf3h2d57ujr8s.TakeThisOut@4ax.com>,
The Dead Man <deadzone.TakeThisOut@grave.edu> wrote:
>
>In the introduction to 'The Great Divorce', Lewis mentions his debt to
>an author "whose name I have forgotten and whom I read several years
>ago in a highly coloured American magazine of what they call
>"Scientifiction." The unbendable and unbreakable quality of my
>heavenly matter was suggested to me by him, though he used the fancy
>for a different and most ingenious purpose. His hero travelled into
>the past: and there, very properly, found raindrops that would pierce
>him like bullets and sandwiches that no strength could bite-because,
>of course, nothing in the past can be altered. I, with less
>originality but (I hope) equal propriety, have transferred this to the
>eternal. If the writer of that story ever reads these lines I hope he
>will accept my grateful acknowledgment."
>
>Has this author yet been identified and the article named?

This comes up from time to time in rec.arts.sf.written. Here is
one reply:

From: Fred Galvin <gal....TakeThisOut@math.ukans.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Story ID
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 19:03:21 -0500
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0205011840290.9872-100000.TakeThisOut@titania.math.ukans.edu>
In-Reply-To: <3CCE04DE.9010807.TakeThisOut@erols.com>

- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, Brenda W. Clough wrote:
> This is from C.S. Lewis's preface to THE GREAT DIVORCE:

> '...I must acknowledge my debt to a writer whose name I have forgotten
> and whom I read several years ago in a highly coloured magazine of what
> they call "Scientifiction." The unbendable and unbreakable quality of
> my heavenly matter was suggested to me by him, although he used the
> fancy for a different and most ingenious purpose. His hero travelled
> into the _past:_ and there, very properly, found raindrops that would
> pierce him like bullets and sandwiches that no strength could bite --
> because, of course, nothing in the past can be altered. I, with less
> originality but (I hope) equal propriety, have transferred this to the
> eternal.'

> Now, my question is, what story was this? It must have come out before
> 1946, which is when THE GREAT DIVORCE was published. It evidently
> appeared in one of the pulp magazines of the time.

I think this may be it: Charles F. Hall, "The Man Who Lived
Backwards", Tales of Wonder [British], Summer, 1938. I haven't seen it
myself; I'm going by the review on p. 217 of Paul J. Nahin, Time
Machines, Second Edition, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0-387-98571-9. Quoting
from Nahin's book:

The tale tells of a young physics teacher who is "twisted into a
reversed Time Stream" by an electrical discharge. As he lives
backward in time, he observes everybody about him appearing to
run in reverse, but even more puzzling is that they have developed
a "dreadful, granite-like hardness." We soon learn why:

For a while he could not understand the inpenetrable hardness
of external objects which he had experienced; it seemed
they ought rather to be of intangible transience, much as a
dream, since he was re-viewing the Past. But a moment's
thought gave him the logical answer. The Past is definite,
shaped, unalterable, as nothing else in Creation is. Therefore,
to argue that he could move or alter any object here [the
past] was to argue that he could change the whole history of
the world or cosmos. Everything he saw about him had happened,
and could not be changed in any way. On the other hand he was
fluid, movable, alterable, since _his_ future still lay before
him, even if it had been reversed; he was the intruder, the
anomaly. In any clash between himself and the Past, the Past
would prove irresistible every time.

This is, I believe, a unique presentation of the unchangeability
of the past. Why Hall's young teacher could displace the molecules
of the Past's air, however, is left unanswered.


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