Private Eye

by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Release: January 1949
Format: Novelette
Genres: Science Fiction, Weird Fiction, Mystery and Crime
Audience: Adults
Content: Time Phenomena
Original Language: English

A jilted man plans murderous revenge while trying to avoid any behavior that would reveal his plans to the government’s all-seeing technology that can reconstruct the past from electromagnetic and sound waves.

— Michael Main

It was sensitive enough to pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter, descramble and screen them, and reproduce the image of what had happened.

DEBUT

“Private Eye,” Astounding Science Fiction, January 1949.

VARIANTS

3 English variants

TRANSLATIONS

Translations to French, German

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Unspecified Future Year

Time Travel Methods

Chronoscopes

Themes

Viewing the Past

Groupings

Astounding · Analog (periodical): January 1949
Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

INDEXER NOTES (SPOILERS!)

Credits—We are uncertain whether <a href='C._L._Moore'>C. L. Moore</a> contributed to this story. She was credited in <em>Science Fiction Inventions,</em> edited by Damon Knight (Lancer Books, <samp>1967</samp>), but not in later anthology reprints.