"Time Is the Traitor" is a science fiction short story by American writer Alfred Bester, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in September, 1953.
John Strapp is a business consultant whose savant-like intuitive genius makes him so valuable that his support staff indulges all his eccentricities — including homicidal fugue states.
[2] Rich Horton described "Time Is the Traitor" as "glorious" and "madly odd".
[3] Fiona Kelleghan considered that John Strapp's name ""suggests both punishment and restraint", observing that Strapp was "tormented by flashbacks" and "compelled to repeat the same actions over and over",[4] while Arthur D. Hlavaty of The New York Review of Science Fiction called Strapp an example of the "union of the artist and the criminal that is often considered Bester's defining theme.
"[6] Bester adapted the story for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, with the title "One Girl in a Million.