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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
 |
| Chronoscopy | ||
| Using a device to view different points in time. |
| "They’re not interested in chronoscopy. I've come to you, sir, because for two years I have been trying to obtain permission to do some time-viewing — chronoscopy, that is — in connection with my researches on ancient Carthage." |
| Technovelgy from The Dead Past,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Still a worthwhile concept to explore:
For the government to encourage chronoscopy would have meant that everyone’s past would be visible. The government officers would be subjected to blackmail and improper pressure, since who on earth has a past that is absolutely clean. Organized government might become impossible.”
Compare to the time dredge from Time Dredge (1942) by Robert Arthur.
You saw the way my wife reacted to the news of a chronoscope in the basement. I had envisioned a chronoscope used for research purposes. All she could see was the personal pleasure of returning neurotically to a personal past, a dead past. The pure researcher, Foster, is in the minority. People like my wife would outweigh us.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Dead Past
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and Technology by Isaac Asimov
Tech news articles related to The Dead Past
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
