The Greatest Television Show on Earth

by J. G. Ballard

Release: 1972/1973
Format: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Wildly popular global TV stations are desperate for new material for their viewers, so the discovery of time travel in 2001 will be a fortuitous boon if it can live up to its hype.

These safaris into the past cost approximately a million dollars a minute. After a few brief journeys to verify the Crucifixion, the signing of Magna Carta and Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, the government-financed Einstein Memorial Time Centre at Princeton was forced to suspend operations.

Plainly, only one other group could finance further explorations into the past—the world’s television corporations.

DEBUT

“The Greatest Television Show on Earth,” in Ambit 53, 1972/1973.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Groupings

Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.