Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > The Phantom in the Maze

In which stealing ideas for technological inventions from the future turns out to have some problematic side effects.

In turn-of-the-century Europe, England and its allies are trying to find ways to combat the evil Mongolian Wizard. Since they can't (or won't) beat him at wizard-making, maybe technology will work. And someone has figured out a way to use psychically-gifted people to get ideas and blueprints from the future. Is the murder that Ritter and his wolf are investigating related to this?

The plot, which deals with both the murder investigation and time paradoxes, got a little muddled here. Possibly that was the point, though.

Part of Michael Swanwick's Mongolian Wizard series of short stories, all of which are free online at Tor.com. Definitely read the first story, The Mongolian Wizard, first, but the later stories are somewhat interchangeable.