E for Effort

Sherred, T. L. "E for Effort." Astounding Science Fiction May 1947. Frequently reprinted, including The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two B (novellas). Ben Bova, editor. New York: Doubleday, 1973/ Cited and discussed in Stephen Baxter's "The Technology of Omniscience: Past Viewers in Science Fiction," our initial source for this citation.

"Edward Joseph Lefkowicz, known as Ed Lefko" is a "worldly-wise opportunist with a love for gadgets. Initially unscrupulous, he becomes more idealistic as a result of his contact with Mike" — i.e. "Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada," child "of Mexican immigrants" who was an "Army radar technician during World War II" and has a "time viewer and wants to use it to end war."

Mike uses his own invention that seemingly produces movies "of amateurish" technical "quality but startling authenticity." "'Mike's machine' is, of course, a past viewer, put together with Army surplus equipment" and looking, appropriately for 1947, "like 'one of those funny radio or motor testers found in a super-service station', and its working is Einsteinian" (Baxter p. 103).

After a couple of films on the fairly distance past, Through Mike's influence, Ed becomes less greedy and joins Mike in his plan to use the films against war. The next film, on the American Revolution, and the next, on the American Civil War, are banned in many places but still earn huge amounts of money.

The next film is about the First and Second World Wars. Ed and Mike admit the machine's existence to their associates and persuade them to join in their plan to expose the corruption of many famous people involved in the wars. The film causes riots in many countries and greatly increases international hostility.

The story ends with the protagonists dead and a nuclear attack, and/but having suggested that truly truthful visions of war would be highly effective anti-war films, however much our species may be on the road to self-destruction.

In Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding … (2018), we get the suggestion that the past viewer "device also makes it impossible for nation's to keep secrets, which is a crucial development 'if atomic war is not to sear the face and fate of the world'" (Nevala-Lee 248). So, accepting Nevala-Lee's reading, see for surveillance motif, with a much more positive view of the potential of surveillance — as in Sir Thomas More's 1516, Early Modern work, Utopia — than found in such Modern works as in the dystopian We through The Circle as novel or THE CIRCLE (film).

RDE, Initial Compiler, 19Mar19, 16Sep19