02371cam a22003613u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003704000110007804100170008905000070010610000290011324500130014226400510015530000470020633600260025333700260027933800360030549000670034150000310040850800280043952011890046753400720165665300200172865300180174865300220176670000280178883000670181685600830188385600430196677316UtSlPG20260610134806.0mcr n260607r20251956utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  aUtSlPG 7aen2iso639-1 4aPS1 aWells, Basil,d1912-200310aMemorium 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2025  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier1 aProduced from Fantastic Universe, March 1956 (Vol. 5, No. 2.).  aRelease date is 2025-11-24  aSean/IB and Tom Trussel  aMemorium by Basil Wells is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It imagines a future where every person’s thoughts and memories are recorded for posterity, probing how universal transparency reshapes intimacy, ethics, and history.

An aged Vance Norall, living in a comfortable Antarctic dome, reminisces with his great-great grandson, Ronnie, in a world where “memorium tapes” preserve a life’s inner truth. Through the posthumous playback of his three wives’ minds, he learns that Elsie’s public brilliance masked loneliness and infidelity born of hurt; Vivian’s dutiful propriety hid trauma, illness, and a recoil from affection; and Eldris, whom he long suspected of marrying for comfort, had in fact loved him deeply. Framed by a brief history of the memorium system—evolving from authoritarian screenings to a universal deterrent—Vance cautions Ronnie not to judge earlier generations, who lived without knowing their private selves would be laid bare. After the boy leaves, he turns again to Eldris’s tapes, choosing solace in the shared memories that correct his lifelong misreadings. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  pOriginally published:cNew York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1956  aScience fiction  aShort stories  aMemory -- Fiction1 aHunter, Mel,d1927-2004 0aProduced from Fantastic Universe, March 1956 (Vol. 5, No. 2.).4 uhttps://archive.org/details/Fantastic_Universe_v05n02_1956-03/page/n3/mode/2up40uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77316