Before the Beginning

"Before the Beginning" is a science fiction short story written in collaboration by Harry Turtledove and Mike Resnick, published in Futureshocks, edited by Lou Anders, Roc, 2006. Set in the future, the story focuses on the invention of the time-viewer, a device that can show events of the past, rather like a movie. The story quickly charts the uses the time-viewer was initially put to, including crime-scene investigation and the recording of more lurid moments of history (e.g. the assassination of JFK), before it is used for more scholarly purposes. Naturally, many of the presumptions held by humans are debunked or confirmed.

The main story itself focuses on the deaths of three cosmologists who attempt to go back and view what "existed" before the Big Bang. Each is found dead, for no clear cause. When the French police begin an investigation, one inspector also dies, and so it is left to Jacob Dreyfus (a descendent of Alfred Dreyfus and a Jew, so seen as somewhat expendible) to determine what these four men have seen that caused their deaths. What he discovers changes the course of human history.