Hindsight
- by Jack Williamson
- Short Story
- Science Fiction, War
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Hindsight” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, May 1940.
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.
Tags
(11)
- Time Periods
- Timeline Models
- 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 . . .”
- Fictional Tags
- Future Wars: The Astrarchy against the Earth.
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “Hindsight” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, May 1940.
- “Le renègat” [The renegade] by Jack Williamson, in L’âge d’or de la science-fiction, unknown editors (OPTA, December 1965).
- alternative title of “Le renègat.”
“Regard en arrière” [Looking back] by Jack Williamson, in Histoires de voyages dans le temps, edited by Jacques Goimard, Demètre Ioakimidis, and Gérard Klein (Le Livre de Poche, 1975). - “Späte Einsicht” [Belated insight] by Jack Williamson, in Die besten Stories von 1940, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (Moewig, December 1980).
- “Взгляд в прошлое” [A look into the past], as by Джек Уильямсон, in Саргассы в космосе, edited by Владимир Маркович [Vladimir Markovich] ( Общество книголюбов, 1992).
Translations
(4)
- “Hindsight” by Jack Williamson, Astounding, May 1940.
- French.
“Le renègat” [The renegade] by Jack Williamson, in L’âge d’or de la science-fiction, unknown editors (OPTA, December 1965). - French: alternative title of “Le renègat.”
“Regard en arrière” [Looking back] by Jack Williamson, in Histoires de voyages dans le temps, edited by Jacques Goimard, Demètre Ioakimidis, and Gérard Klein (Le Livre de Poche, 1975). - German.
“Späte Einsicht” [Belated insight] by Jack Williamson, in Die besten Stories von 1940, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg (Moewig, December 1980). - Russian.
“Взгляд в прошлое” [A look into the past], as by Джек Уильямсон, in Саргассы в космосе, edited by Владимир Маркович [Vladimir Markovich] ( Общество книголюбов, 1992).