[1] The term for this storytelling model originated in a long-running series of short science-fiction pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by Reginald Bretnor under the anagrammatic pseudonym of 'Grendel Briarton'.
The usual formula the stories followed was for the title character to solve a problem bedeviling some manner of being or extricate himself from a dangerous situation.
In his adventures, Feghoot worked for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History and traveled via a device that had no name, but was typographically represented as the ")(".
"Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot" was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1956 to 1973.
The stories have been collected in several editions, each an expanded version of the previous, the most recent Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot by From Beyond Press.