Fifty Per Cent Prophet

"Fifty Per Cent Prophet" by Randall Garrett is a science fiction story from the early 1960s focusing on Dr. Peter Forsythe, a man who claims to foresee the future but may just be a con artist. The story explores what happens when you try to know the future and change it. Dr. Forsythe is hired by a mysterious group to use his powers to stop bad things from happening, where he correctly predicts the disasters, but sometimes fails, with his predictions often connected to what people do, not just luck. The story becomes intense when Forsythe predicts a big problem with Moonbase One, which gets the US government interested but also causes problems as their responses causes new disasters. The book examines the challenges of seeing the future and the strange results it can cause when someone tries to alter what will happen.