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dream recorder that picks up thoughts, which then can be distributed to consumers. The story proceeds as a day in the life of the manager of Dream, Inc. The manager tests a ten-year-old boy as a potential dreamer and tries to persuade the boy's parents to allow him to be trained. He talks to an agent of the Department of Arts and Sciences (a prevision of the National Endowment for the Arts?) about pornographic dreamies, discusses competition with another company, Luster-Think, that has opened up dream palaces for public dreaming, and deals with a dreamer who wants to quit. It is a quiet, well-modulated story that suggests many of the possibilities implicit in a world where dreams become a commodity. It is presented as a series of small human problems rather than a mystery or puzzle. |
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"The Dead Past" (Astounding, April 1956) deals with a new science, chronoscopy time-viewing by means of an invention called the chronoscope. T.L. Sherred's "E for Effort" (Astounding, May 1947) had been the definitive statement on the discovery of a method for viewing the past. In that story a couple of poor inventors first use their camera-like device to film documentaries, then historical spectaculars, and finally attempt to bring peace to the world. They are stopped by a sudden government attack when it becomes apparent that nothing can be kept secret now that not only any time but any place can be viewed; without secrets all government is endangered. |
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Asimov returned to that concept in "The Dead Past," in the best tradition of the science-fiction dialogue, suggesting that chronoscopy would be so expensive that only the government could afford it; use of the machines would be rationed. A history professor, who is refused the opportunity to view Carthage, urges a young colleague to invent his own chronoscope. The young man does, but there are problems. [The well-written science-fiction story never presents an invention without its associated problems, a dramatic principle that H.G. Wells popularized in The Invisible Man. As Heinlein frequently quoted in his fiction, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," abbreviated as "Tanstaafl."] In the first place, viewing becomes impossibly fuzzy after going back a century and a quarter because of loss of detail. In the second place, people such as the history professor's wife, whose baby was killed in a fire that the professor accidentally may have started, would spend their time reliving the past. In the third and final place, if chronoscopes became cheap enough for everyone to own one, people would be able to spy on their neighbors and anyone else they might choose to watch. Privacy would become a thing of the past. The story ends with a |
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