Of All Possible Worlds
- Eloi Honorable Mention
- by William Tenn
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “Of All Possible Worlds” by William Tenn, Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1956.
—Michael Main
Now! Now to make a halfway decent world! Max Alben pulled the little red switch toward him.
flick!Now! Now to make a halfway interesting world! Mac Albin pulled the little red switch toward him.flick!
Tags
(11)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: The rocket remote-control center on 18 April 1976
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: starting time.
- Timeline Models
- Fragile Timeline: “Maybe the problems will be tough enough so that they’ll get the same idea we did and try to go back to the same point in time to change them.”
- Time Travel Methods
- Time Habitats: The machine has an entrance, and the traveler can walk around in it. Seemed like a medium-sized room.
- Themes
- Causal Loops: A multi-timeline causal loop
- Cross-Timeline Causal Loops: A strong example of a multi-timeline causal loop, that could have been stronger had we learned what happened to each traveler (Max and Mac) after then changed their rocket’s course.
- Differing Time Rates: “He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel, sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite the technicians’ reassurances that all this would be happening too fast to be visible.”
- Fix History!: “You will be in a superb position, a superb position, to deflect the missile in its downward course and alter human history for the better.”
- Making Things Worse: “He materialized the time machine around the green instrument panel, sweating a bit at the sight of the roomful of military figures, despite the technicians’ reassurances that all this would be happening too fast to be visible.”
- Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: “. . . extra-temporal blackout.”
- Groupings
Variants
(2)
- “Of All Possible Worlds” by William Tenn, Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1956.
- alternative title.“It Ends with a Flicker” by William Tenn, in The Wooden Star by William Tenn (Ballantine Books, June 1968).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . translated by unknown persons [uncredited]
Translations
(2)
- French.
“Le choix d'un monde” [The choice of a world] by William Tenn, in Galaxie, April 1957. - German.
“Die bessere Welt” [The better world] by William Tenn, in Null-P, by William Tenn (Heyne, July 1973).