The vidiot by Ib Melchior
The vidiot by Ib Melchior is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It focuses on a television technician who stumbles onto a revolutionary “see-through” camera effect and confronts the moral peril of total surveillance. A young video tech, Don Hartley, experiments with camera and matting circuits during a rehearsal for a live space show and, through an accident, discovers a way to view scenes through walls wherever two
camera sightlines intersect. Dreaming of fame and fortune, he also envisions a nightmare of power abuse and a society stripped of privacy. Shaken by this vision, he decides to bury the discovery, confesses only to damaging equipment, and accepts a quiet second chance from his boss—keeping the plans in his pocket but choosing not to unleash the device on the world. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Melchior, Ib, 1917-2015 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Hunter, Mel, 1927-2004 |
| Title | The vidiot |
| Original Publication | New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1956. |
| Series Title | Produced from Fantastic Universe, March 1956 (Vol. 5, No. 2.). |
| Credits | 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) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Inventions -- Fiction |
| Subject | Television programs -- Fiction |
| Subject | Cameras -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78057 |
| Release Date | Feb 27, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5032 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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