The Dead Past

Infobox Short story
name = The Dead Past
title_orig =
translator =
author = Isaac Asimov
country = United States
language = English
series = Multivac
genre = Science fiction short story
publication_type = Periodical
published_in = "Astounding Science Fiction"
publisher = Street & Smith
media_type = Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
pub_date = April 1956
english_pub_date =
preceded_by = Franchise
followed_by = Someday "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 dystopian fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavour.

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 Carthage, wishes to gain access to the "chronoscope," a device which allows direct observation of past events. 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., unlicensed 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 one hundred and twenty 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. In particular, Potterley, after observing the effect of the prospect of the chronoscope's availability on his wife's obsessive grief for their baby (killed many years before in a house fire), 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 mere sadistic pleasure, 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 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.

tory notes

* In his autobiography "In Memory Yet Green", Asimov writes, "The story, one of my favorites, is most memorable to me for what I put in it accidentally. What I was planning was a story that inverted the usual assumption that government planning is tyrannical and that freedom of scientific inquiry is good. In the course of the story, however, I threw in, almost at random, a reference to Carthage that somehow took on a life of its own and quite unexpectedly introduced a subplot that provided the whole course of the story with excellent motivation. Any critic reading the story is bound to conclude I planned that subplot from the beginning, though I swear I didn't."
* The name Araman is similar to the character in the story "The Last Trump", "R.E. Mann" (a pun on "Ahriman", a Persian name for Satan).
* Asimov injects a small note of humor in this otherwise grim story. When Araman threatens Foster with summary imprisonment, Foster responds "Oh no, you're bluffing. This is not the twentieth century, you know." When Nimmo appears and is similarly threatened there is the following exchange::Nimmo: Nuts! This isn't the twentieth cent—:Foster: I tried that. It doesn't bother him.
* The Asimov festschrift "Foundation's Friends" includes a sequel to "The Dead Past" by Barry N. Malzberg called "The Present Eternal".

See also

* E for Effort, a 1947 novella by T. L. Sherred in which an inventor attempts to use a similar apparatus to reveal the secret machinations of the war-makers. [cite web|url=http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/E_for_Effort|title=E for Effort]
* The Light of Other Days, in which wormhole technology is shown to have much the same consequences as the chronoscope

* Paycheck, a short story by Philip K. Dick first published in 1953 (three years before "The Dead Past"), about a machine which views the future.

References