Hindsight

by Jack Williamson

Release: May 1940
Format: Short Story
Genres: Science Fiction, War
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Years ago, engineer Bill Webster abandoned Earth for the employ of the piratical Astrarch far beyond the orbit of Mars; now the Astrarch is aiming the final blow at a defeated Earth, and Bill wonders whether the gun sights he invented can spot—and change!—events in the past.

— Michael Main

The tracer fields are following all the world lines that intersected at the battle, back across the months and years. The analyzers will isolate the smallest—hence most easily altered—essential factor.

DEBUT

“Hindsight,” Astounding, May 1940.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TRANSLATIONS

Translations to French, German, Russian

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Unspecified Future Year

Time Travel Methods

Chronoscopes: “As Brek watched the motionless image in the cube, his voice turned a little husky.”

Themes

Butterfly Effect: “If the high-frequency beam can search out the determiner factors,” Brek told him, “it might be possible to alter them, with a sufficiently powerful field. Remember that we deal with probabilities, not with absolutes. And that small factors can determine vast results.
Calculating the Future: “It analyzes the past to predit the future . . .”
Fix Your Own Past!: “I should have attended the lecture in Tony’s place, and my autosight would have been superior in the end.”
Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: “. . . [T]he defeat of the Astrarchy and the new freedom of Earth are fixed in time—forever.”
Reconstructing or Re-Emergence of the Past: “It ought to be possible to unravel the past for years . . .”
Viewing the Past

Fictional Tags

Future Wars: The Astrarchy against the Earth.

Groupings

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From the Warrior Queen, after a lost battle ⋙ to the Martian city of Toran, twenty years earlier. Note: Viewing and changing the past, without time travel.