TY  - BOOK
AU  - Melchior,Ib
AU  - Hunter,Mel
TI  - The vidiot
T2  - Produced from Fantastic Universe, March 1956 (Vol. 5, No. 2.)
AV  - PS 
PY  - 2026///
CY  - Salt Lake City, UT
PB  - Project Gutenberg
KW  - Science fiction
KW  - Short stories
KW  - Inventions -- Fiction
KW  - Television programs -- Fiction
KW  - Cameras -- Fiction
N1  - Release date is 2026-02-27; Tom Trussel and Sean/IB@DP (This file was produced from images generously (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive); Originally published; New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1956
N2  - The vidiot by Ib Melchior is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It centers on a television technician who accidentally discovers a way to see through walls, raising questions about surveillance, power, and moral responsibility.

An ambitious TV “vidiot,” Don Hartley, is testing special-effects gear during a space-opera rehearsal when a shorted circuit turns a matte into a window that peers through the studio’s backdrop, walls, and out to the street. Mapping the effect, he realizes he can build a single camera—the “Hartleycam”—that could penetrate any barrier. Tempted by fame and fortune, he also envisions a nightmare world of total, inescapable observation and authoritarian control. After a troubled day, he chooses restraint: he visits his executive to confess only the equipment damage, accepts a second chance at work, and keeps his blueprints to himself, concluding that the world is not yet ready for his invention. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
UR  - https://archive.org/details/Fantastic_Universe_v05n02_1956-03/page/n3/mode/2up
UR  - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78057
ER  -