Well that's got me interested then

That's exactly what I was going to say. His prose is breathtaking.

Ya know I have to say I feel nearly the same about Dune. I haven't gotten to the the later books but the first 2 have made me love the movies more. Not that I love the the books any less though. There is very little nuance lost in the movies and the changes that are made I can understand from a film making point of view. I guess what I mean to say is I appreciate the differences and it makes me like both more rather thank either any less.

It's also featured on a two-part episode of LeVar Burton Reads.

I read the story and found it very entertaining. I'm not sure what impact it had on me, but it made me marvel at the idea of the inevitability of fate and how often our suffering and regrets of the past are the reason we're regarded so highly by others.

How did it strike you?

Oh, I've read all of his stuff! It's a red letter day for me when a new story is published. None since 2019, though.

My odd choice of his would be Seventy-Two Letters. I find him most interesting when he follows through in the consequences of an old disproven scientific theory or theological explanation of the universe, and he manages to fit two of them in here.

He's written some "Notes" on the story when it was printed in his first short story collection and said that it has the same theme but that he wasn't inspired by it directly. The roots were Paul Linke's play "Time Flies When You’re Alive" and the principle of least time in optics -- if you treat light as a ray, it has to know its future destination in order to know the path with the shortest time it will take to get there (though not if it's a wave). Then there's a bunch of diagrams and discussions about the principle's implications for free will that will stretch your brain. It's pretty fun.