The Mists Of Time

Science fiction,time travel novelette. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine June 2009. Anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed., St. Martin's Griffin, 2008.
Two time travelers with conflicting views observe an episode in one of the great epics of the sea-- the Royal Navy's fifty-year campaign against the African slave trade. In The Mists of Time, Tom Purdom gives readers a peek at a historical struggle that tends to be downplayed in most naval histories and dekves into the mysteries of human motivatioin.
Includes a brief afterword on the background and sources.
The Mists of Time runs about thirty hardcover book pages in length. The novelette has been a popular form since science fiction magazines first appeared on the stands, but it's too short for conventional book publishing. Ereaders have opened up a new possibility, novelettes readers can buy as if they were small books you can read in less than an hour.