1950: "Den nya verkligheten" , en novelette av Charles L. Harness , först publicerad i Spännande Wonder Stories , december 1950 , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv .
Professor Luce, en galen ontolog, konstruerar en enhet som han avser att återställa verkligheten, och förväntar sig att endast ett fåtal (självklart inkluderat) kommer att överleva.
Prentiss drew deeply on his pipe.
"I saw it."
"Did you understand it?"
"No. It wasn't all there. At least, the apparatus on the table was incomplete. There's more to it than a Nicol prism and a goniometer."
"Ah, you are clever! Yes, I was wise in not permitting you to remain very long — no longer than necessary to whet your curiosity. Look, then! I offer you a partnership. Check my data and apparatus; in return you may be present when I run the experiment. We will attain enlightenment together. We will know all things. We will be gods!"
"And what about two billion other human beings?" said Prentiss, pressing softly at his shoulder holster.
The professor smiled faintly. "Their lunacy — assuming they continue to exist at all — may become slightly more pronounced, of course. But why worry about them?" The wolf-lip curled further. "Don’t expect me to believe this aura of altruism, Mr. Prentiss-Rogers. I think you're afraid to face what lies behind our so-called 'reality.'"
[. . . .]
He knew in a brief flash of insight, that for sentient, thinking beings, Time had suddenly become a barricade rather than an endless road.
The exploding bomb — the caving cottage walls — were hanging, somewhere, frozen fast in an immutable, eternal stasis.
Luce had separated this fleeting unseen dimension from the creatures and things that had flowed along it. There is no existence without change along a temporal continuum. And now the continuum had been shattered.
Was this, then the fate of all tangible things — of all humanity?
Were none of them — not even the two or three who understod advanced ontology, to — get through?
[. . . .]
She'd got through!
The whole world, and just the two of them!
His heart was pounding ecstatically as he began to run lithely upwind.
And they’d keep it this way, simple and sweet, forever, and their children after them. To hell with science and progress! (Well, within practical limits, of course.)
As he ran, there rippled about his quivering nostrils the seductive scent of apple blossoms.