# Major Fred Benson — Short Fiction character guide

> Major Fred Benson in Short Fiction by H. Beam Piper.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Fred Benson, Fred, Captain Benson

**First appearance:** 0010-rebel-raider

## Snapshot

A Union officer flung fifty years forward, he tests the future's earnest certainties with a joke about baseball and a stubborn grip on his own time.

## Who they are

Benson arrives in a future where competitive sports are banned as violent and where a Guide's followers explain history to him with patient condescension. He keeps the dollar bill that proves his displacement, unwilling to destroy it yet unable to show it to anyone who would believe him. His presence forces the future's inhabitants to justify their world, and his skepticism becomes the reader's anchor.

## In the story

### [Hunter Patrol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_24_se/chapters/hunter-patrol)

The protagonist, a U.N. soldier on his last patrol before rotation, who is transported fifty years into the future by a time machine.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_24_se/characters/benson
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_24_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_24_se/characters