Peter Wright

Hindsight Peter Wright

Everything we see is an image of the past. The more distant the object we are looking at, as a star in the night sky, the further back in the time is the image. Recovering images from the past, unlike time travel, is thus well within the laws of physics, but could civilization survive if it could be done at will?

Professor Philip Blackmore from Cambridge University, England, and Carol Dunning, a young graduate student from Cal. Tech. team up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their ambitious goal is to create an eye into the past; a machine that will let them see Leonardo da Vinci painting, Mozart composing, or Isaac Newton calculating the orbit of the planets. With funding from a secretive anonymous sponsor, the project advances rapidly. However, a series of unexplained accidents begin to plague them.

The scientists are unaware that a group dedicated to keeping the past hidden has knowledge of their project and is determined to stop it. Politicians begin to oppose them, fearing that unfettered access to the past could destabilize societies, institutions, and even presidents. Forced on the defensive, the scientists must fight to save the project, and even their lives.