Weekly Short Story: Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw first published his short story Light of Other Days in 1966...it appeared the following year in the paperback anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1967 (edited by Donald Wollheim & Terry Carr, Ace Books).  Shaw, who lived in Northern Ireland and wrote at times for a Scottish sci-fi pulp magazine, chose northern Scotland in the future as the setting for this story...it's not quite clear at the start whether or not it is of an apocalyptic nature.  But no, something else is afoot as a young, quarreling couple are driving down the road, enjoying the beautiful scenery...and sizing up the plates of slow glass standing in different places that are taking it all in.  Yes, I said "slow glass"...

Slow glass is a fictional creation of the author...yet it has a very intriguing quality and the way he explains it makes it all seem feasible.  You see, the glass's peculiar molecular structure causes the passage of light though it to slow down drastically, rendering the glass capable of reproducing whatever it visually captures over a span of time: the thicker and higher quality the glass, the more faithful the picture and more lengthy the time.  The uses? People can transport whatever scenes they want back to their humdrum, ugly homes, workplaces, or just about anywhere and use the glass as a "window" into a more beautiful world...so the folks out there in Scotland are selling slow glass that captures their own beautiful countryside.  Our couple find a man who is selling some high-quality glass...a look inside his home window reveals a young woman (his wife?) and her baby.  But there's something not quite right about her as the story progresses...

In 1966, although computers were already well-established albeit much more primitive than today's which pervade our civilized world, Bob Shaw envisioned an analog way to copy super-real imagery in motion and transport it to distant locations...as well as making it an economic commodity that people at large could purchase according to their own preferences and purchasing ability.  I like the idea of using such "slow glass" as windows to give the impression of being in a different place, but nowadays digital technology could accomplish the same ends, couldn't it?  So then why am I not hearing of companies marketing the same product and getting rich off it?  Customers could have digitally-enabled windows installed around their homes, with each window creating the effect of viewing the outdoors at the appropriately different vantage point...but that view would be of a different location to the residents' liking.  Maybe today they'd select Times Square...tomorrow the foothills of Mount Everest.  Wouldn't you be interested in something like that?

I was pleasantly surprised at Shaw's well-crafted tale...it's only about eight pages long, too...quite an accomplishment to fit so much significant stuff in it while developing the characters and supplying the surprise ending...