Con artist pretends to be a time traveler trying to get the Beatles back together

Question

I'm trying to remember the title of an SF novel that had a sub-plot involving a con artist who was pretending to be a time traveler going back in time to reunite the Beatles.

He targeted a couple who were Secret Masters of Fandom - the financial officers for a Vancouver science fiction convention.

He appeared in a globe of light outside their home, Halloween night.

He claimed that he came from a future ruled by a religious theocracy dedicated to the worship of Elvis, and that he was a member of a persecuted minority that worshipped the Beatles.

According to his story, in 1979 or 1980, Lorne Michaels appeared on Saturday Night Live, offering the Beatles $3000 if they would perform one song on the show. Apparently Paul and Linda were visiting with John and Yoko, at his place at the Dakota, saw the show, and thought it would be a hoot if they just dropped in. They called for a cab, but it never showed up.

Our con artist was to steal a cab and show up, so that John and Paul would make it to SNL, and maybe the Beatles would get back together and defeat the forces of Elvis.

But he'd not gone far enough back, and needed money to bribe the keeper of the time machine to send him back further. And since the "big one" was going to happen before the con, they were free to give him the money that had been raised for the con.

Any ideas? This would have been late 80's, early 90's, or there about.

Answer 1

I'm thinking this is Spider Robinson's Lifehouse.

From a review linked here:

Robinson, Spider, Lifehouse

Wally Kemp and Moira Rogers who are running the next VanCon in Vancouver, B.C. in mid-November 1995 (sponsored by the Lower Mainland Science Fiction Society) are approached in a dramatic manner (flash of light/explosion) by a time traveler. He claims to have come back to prevent the murder of John Lennon but has missed his mark. He needs a significant amount of money to get to the current time base in Halifax and bribe the people there. Wally and Moira liquidate their assets and also lend him the VanCon treasury for a total of C$98,000. Unfortunately, the time traveler is a conman with a new scam (he got the idea from C. M. Kornbluth's story "Time Bum", Fantastic January/February 1953). Unfortunately for the conman, his girlfriend has run afoul of real time travelers with some interesting powers.

Baen 0-671-87777-1, April 1997

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I'm coming back to this story later. Lifehouse was the correct answer, and it is the third book in the Lifehouse trilogy, preceded by Mindkiller and Time Pressure.

I'd never read the first two, and I've finally gotten around to reading them and rereading the third.

In the third, the con artist mentions that his con was inspired by a Cyril Kornbluth story. A big of digging revealed this to be "Time Bum". Which is available online: Time Bum