The Dead Past
Encyclopedia
"The Dead Past" is a science fiction
short story
by Isaac Asimov
, first published in the April 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was later collected in Earth Is Room Enough
(1957) and The Best of Isaac Asimov
(1973), and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series Out of the Unknown
. Its pattern is that of dystopia
n fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavour. It is considered by some people to be one of his best short stories.
, wishes to gain access to the chronoscope
, a device which allows direct observation of past events, to establish whether the Carthaginians really sacrificed children by fire. Pioneered by a neutrino
physicist named Sterbinski many years before, the chronoscope is now exclusively controlled by the government. When the government bureaucracy, in the person of bureaucrat Thaddeus Araman, denies Potterley's request that he be granted chronoscope access, Potterley sets in train a clandestine research project to build a chronoscope of his own. Two people assist his quest: a young physics researcher named Jonas Foster and the physicist's uncle, a professional (i.e., licensed by the government) science writer, Ralph Nimmo.
As a result of this work, the team makes a series of discoveries. First, they learn that the government has been suppressing research into chronoscopy; nevertheless, Foster invents a way to construct a chronoscope that is much more compact and energy-efficient than that of its pioneer inventor. Though this discovery delights Potterley, Foster soon proves that no chronoscope can see more than about 120 years into the past. In any attempt to observe an earlier time, the inevitable noise totally drowns out the signal. The government's reports of chronoscope observations of earlier years are thus clear fabrications.
Personality conflicts and clashes of motivation cause the team members to fall out with each other. Potterley and his wife both remain disturbed by the death of their baby daughter in a house fire many years earlier, and there is the suggestion that he is subconsciously trying to exonerate the Carthaginians of child sacrifice as a way of exonerating himself of the possibility that he accidentally started the fire which killed his daughter with a cigarette. When he sees his wife's reaction to the chronoscope, and realises that she would use it to watch their daughter's short life obsessively, he alerts the authorities and accepts the blame. His associate, Foster, now in the grip of intellectual pride and zeal for the cause of free inquiry, attempts to publish his breakthrough but is suddenly and unexpectedly apprehended by Thaddeus Araman, the bureaucrat who rejected Potterley's original research request.
As Araman attempts to secure an undertaking from Foster not to persist in publication, Foster's uncle, Nimmo, is brought in. Nimmo proves just as rebellious as the other two, and Araman, frustrated by the their unwillingness to cooperate, has no alternative but to declare the government's hand. He reveals that Foster has been apprehended through the government's own use of the chronoscope in snooping on the plotters.
Araman reveals that the government chronoscopy agency, far from suppressing scientific research out of control freakery, was trying to protect the people in the only way they knew how. As Foster and Potterley have learned, the chronoscope is inherently limited to recent times—but what if, instead of focusing it upon the past of a generation earlier, it were tuned to the past of one-hundredth of a second ago? The dead past, Araman says, is only a synonym for "the living present". If the plans for a chronoscope, particularly Foster's new and improved version, ever reached the general public the resulting plague of voyeurism would effectively eliminate the concept of privacy. Even the government workers now assigned to the chronoscope, Araman says, sometimes transgress regulations and use it to spy for personal purposes.
Nimmo then reveals that in an attempt to take the pressure off Foster, he sent the details of Foster's chronoscope to several of his regular publicity outlets. The details of how to build a chronoscope relatively easily and cheaply are now available to everyone.
Araman is resigned to the exposure of the chronoscope, and leaves the three academics with the insightful line: "Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever. Arrest rescinded."
The story's twist—that the man from the government really was there to help—qualifies the idea that a world of directed research really constitutes a dystopia. Asimov's thesis, revealed in the final scene, is that central control of scientific research is not necessarily immoral, but that in the long run, it may be impossible after all. The character of Thaddeus Araman is a recognisable dystopian spokesman in the mould of Beatty in Fahrenheit 451
and Mustapha Mond in Brave New World
, both of whom also acknowledge the limitations of their societies' control mechanisms.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, first published in the April 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was later collected in Earth Is Room Enough
Earth Is Room Enough
Earth Is Room Enough is a collection of fifteen short science fiction and fantasy stories and two pieces of comic verse published by Isaac Asimov in 1957. In his autobiography In Joy Still Felt, Asimov wrote, "I was still thinking of the remarks of reviewers such as George O. Smith . . ....
(1957) and The Best of Isaac Asimov
The Best of Isaac Asimov
The Best of Isaac Asimov is a collection of twelve science fiction short stories by Isaac Asimov. It begins with a short introduction giving various details on the stories, such as how they came to be written, or what significance merits their inclusion in a "best of" collection, as well as some...
(1973), and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was an independent dramatisation of a separate science fiction short story...
. Its pattern is that of dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavour. It is considered by some people to be one of his best short stories.
Plot summary
Asimov extrapolates the twin trends towards centralisation of academic research and scientific specialisation, to portray a world in which state control of scientific research is overseen by a vast bureaucracy, and scholars are effectively forbidden from working outside their narrow field of specialization. Working innocently under these constraints is Arnold Potterley, a professor of ancient history. Potterley, an expert on ancient CarthageCarthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
, wishes to gain access to the chronoscope
Time viewer
The Time viewer is a fictional device occasionally used in science fiction. It is usually a device which functions along the same lines as a television, except that the picture depicts events in another time, either the past or the future...
, a device which allows direct observation of past events, to establish whether the Carthaginians really sacrificed children by fire. Pioneered by a neutrino
Neutrino
A neutrino is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle with a half-integer spin, chirality and a disputed but small non-zero mass. It is able to pass through ordinary matter almost unaffected...
physicist named Sterbinski many years before, the chronoscope is now exclusively controlled by the government. When the government bureaucracy, in the person of bureaucrat Thaddeus Araman, denies Potterley's request that he be granted chronoscope access, Potterley sets in train a clandestine research project to build a chronoscope of his own. Two people assist his quest: a young physics researcher named Jonas Foster and the physicist's uncle, a professional (i.e., licensed by the government) science writer, Ralph Nimmo.
As a result of this work, the team makes a series of discoveries. First, they learn that the government has been suppressing research into chronoscopy; nevertheless, Foster invents a way to construct a chronoscope that is much more compact and energy-efficient than that of its pioneer inventor. Though this discovery delights Potterley, Foster soon proves that no chronoscope can see more than about 120 years into the past. In any attempt to observe an earlier time, the inevitable noise totally drowns out the signal. The government's reports of chronoscope observations of earlier years are thus clear fabrications.
Personality conflicts and clashes of motivation cause the team members to fall out with each other. Potterley and his wife both remain disturbed by the death of their baby daughter in a house fire many years earlier, and there is the suggestion that he is subconsciously trying to exonerate the Carthaginians of child sacrifice as a way of exonerating himself of the possibility that he accidentally started the fire which killed his daughter with a cigarette. When he sees his wife's reaction to the chronoscope, and realises that she would use it to watch their daughter's short life obsessively, he alerts the authorities and accepts the blame. His associate, Foster, now in the grip of intellectual pride and zeal for the cause of free inquiry, attempts to publish his breakthrough but is suddenly and unexpectedly apprehended by Thaddeus Araman, the bureaucrat who rejected Potterley's original research request.
As Araman attempts to secure an undertaking from Foster not to persist in publication, Foster's uncle, Nimmo, is brought in. Nimmo proves just as rebellious as the other two, and Araman, frustrated by the their unwillingness to cooperate, has no alternative but to declare the government's hand. He reveals that Foster has been apprehended through the government's own use of the chronoscope in snooping on the plotters.
Araman reveals that the government chronoscopy agency, far from suppressing scientific research out of control freakery, was trying to protect the people in the only way they knew how. As Foster and Potterley have learned, the chronoscope is inherently limited to recent times—but what if, instead of focusing it upon the past of a generation earlier, it were tuned to the past of one-hundredth of a second ago? The dead past, Araman says, is only a synonym for "the living present". If the plans for a chronoscope, particularly Foster's new and improved version, ever reached the general public the resulting plague of voyeurism would effectively eliminate the concept of privacy. Even the government workers now assigned to the chronoscope, Araman says, sometimes transgress regulations and use it to spy for personal purposes.
Nimmo then reveals that in an attempt to take the pressure off Foster, he sent the details of Foster's chronoscope to several of his regular publicity outlets. The details of how to build a chronoscope relatively easily and cheaply are now available to everyone.
Araman is resigned to the exposure of the chronoscope, and leaves the three academics with the insightful line: "Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever. Arrest rescinded."
The story's twist—that the man from the government really was there to help—qualifies the idea that a world of directed research really constitutes a dystopia. Asimov's thesis, revealed in the final scene, is that central control of scientific research is not necessarily immoral, but that in the long run, it may be impossible after all. The character of Thaddeus Araman is a recognisable dystopian spokesman in the mould of Beatty in Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a future American society where reading is outlawed and firemen start fires to burn books...
and Mustapha Mond in Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
, both of whom also acknowledge the limitations of their societies' control mechanisms.
See also
- E for EffortE for Effort"E for Effort" is a science-fiction novelette by T. L. Sherred, first published in 1947, about the consequences of a time viewer, a machine that projects images of the past...
, a 1947 novella by T. L. SherredT. L. SherredThomas L. Sherred was an American science fiction writer.Sherred was the author of a slim body of science fiction, consisting of a collection of stories, a novel, and the beginning of a novel that was completed by another author after Sherred's death in 1985...
in which an inventor attempts to use a similar apparatus to reveal the secret machinations of the war-makers. - The Light of Other DaysThe Light of Other DaysThe Light of Other Days is a 2000 science fiction novel written by Stephen Baxter based on a synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke, which explores the development of wormhole technology to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the space-time continuum.- Characters...
, in which wormhole technology is shown to have much the same consequences as the chronoscope - PaycheckPaycheck (short story)"Paycheck" is a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, written on July 31, 1952 and first published in the June, 1953 issue of Imagination...
, a short story by Philip K. DickPhilip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
first published in 1953 (three years before "The Dead Past") about a machine which views the future.