The Dead Past
Potterley, an expert on ancient Carthage, wishes to gain access to the chronoscope, a device which allows direct observation of past events, to establish whether the Carthaginians really sacrificed children by fire.Two people assist his quest: a young physics researcher named Jonas Foster and the physicist's uncle, a professional (i.e., licensed by the government) science writer, Ralph Nimmo.His associate, Foster, now in the grip of intellectual pride and zeal for the cause of free inquiry, attempts to publish his breakthrough but is suddenly and unexpectedly apprehended by Thaddeus Araman, the bureaucrat who rejected Potterley's original research request.If the plans for a chronoscope, particularly Foster's new and improved version, ever reached the general public, the resulting plague of voyeurism would effectively eliminate the concept of privacy.The character of Thaddeus Araman is a recognizable dystopian spokesman in the mould of Beatty in Fahrenheit 451 and Mustapha Mond in Brave New World, both of whom also acknowledge the limitations of their societies' control mechanisms.[citation needed] However, reviewer Max Brown noted that "In the final scene, the government man admonishes the protagonists for creating 'a fishbowl world' in which privacy had ceased to exist.