| "Hindsight" | |
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| Author | Harry Turtledove, as Eric G. Iverson |
| First Appearance | Analog |
| Collected |
Kaleidoscope 3xT |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication date | mid-December 1984 |
"Hindsight" is a short story by Harry Turtledove, first printed in the mid-December 1984 issue of Analog (under the Eric Iverson pseudonym) and then published in Kaleidoscope in 1990, which in turn was collected in 3xT in 2004.
The story, which takes place in Los Angeles in 1953, involves a science fiction author and a magazine editor who become suspicious of another author, Mark Gordian, who seems to be plagiarizing others work and writing eerily prescient fiction. Upon closer examination, it is revealed that Mark Gordian is actually Michelle Gordian, a time traveler from 1988 who has attempted to change her cynical future, dominated by the disappointments of Watergate and Vietnam.
Although the story lays a foundation for an alternate history arising from the changes to history that could result from Gordian's writings, it does not show any of the results.
Similar works by Turtledove
In "We Haven't Got There Yet", a newer literary work (in this case Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) is disseminated to audiences in an earlier period of history via time-travel, but without any particular agenda.
In The Guns of the South, time travelers set up headquarters in the past to change history to their liking. No attention is paid to the time-travel mechanism itself in any of these stories.
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