Don’t Look!
- by an unknown writer and Jay Scott Pike
- Comic Book
- Weird Fiction
- YA and Up
- Debatable Time Travel
- English
- “Don’t Look!” by an unknown writer and Jay Scott Pike, Journey into Mystery #2 (Atlas Comics, August 1952).
Yep, the mirror that Harold Whitney got from an odd old man really does let you see what people will look like in the future—a situation that we’d normally mark as a mere time phenomenon and tag as a simple kind of chronoscope. But the story also has a twist at the end that makes me wonder whether the old man was also a time traveler.
—Michael Main
I have here a strange invention, a mirror that will let you see how anyone will look at anytime in the future.
Tags
(8)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1950 to 1959: presumed time
- Timeline Models
- Unexplained Timeline Model: We don’t know the timeline model: In particular, we don’t know whether the future seen in the mirror is inevitable.
- Viewing the Future
- Time Travel Methods
- Chronoscopes: The mirror to the future is an example of a simple kind of chronoscope: still images (I think) with only limited control by the user.
- Themes
- Ex Nihilo Obects and People: Might the mirror be an ex-nihilo object, traveling back from five years in the future into the hands of Whitney, who then takes the mirror to the future and becomes the very man who brings it back to himself?
- Self-Visitation: If the mirror is an ex-nihilo object, then the old man is Whitney himself.
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- “Don’t Look!” by an unknown writer and Jay Scott Pike, Journey into Mystery #2 (Atlas Comics, August 1952).
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written by
unknown persons