The Unseen Blushers

This is Bester at his most mischievous: a short story that turns the mirror on the very people who write science fiction. At a cramped Manhattan lunch counter, a group of pulp hacks trade jokes and grievances when a strange new writer named Dugan arrives with a tale too strange to ignore. His time machine narrative, designed to find a "new Shakespeare", gets dismantled by his skeptical peers, each one certain they've spotted the borrowed gears and stolen parts. But something's off about Dugan. The device in his pocket. The way he deflects questions. The uncanny precision with which he knows things he shouldn't. What follows is a disorienting twist that collapses the wall between the story and the storyteller, between the writer and his creation. Bester asks an uncomfortable question: what if the fiction you're mocking is actually watching you back? A delicious bit of metafiction that still stings over seventy years later.