All the Myriad Ways

by Larry Niven

Release: October 1968
Format: Short Story
Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery and Crime
Audience: Adults
Content: No Time Phenomena
Original Language: English

Detective-Lieutenant Gene Trimble suspects that the recent spate of suicides and violent crime is somehow connected to the discovery that the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is real and each of those worlds can be traveled to.

— Michael Main

There were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? Trimble didn’t understand the theory, though God knows he’d tried. The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision every made could go both ways. Every choice ever made by every man, woman and child on Earth was reversed in the universe next door.

DEBUT

“All the Myriad Ways,” in Galaxy, October 1968.

VARIANTS

2 English variants

TRANSLATIONS

Translations to Dutch, German

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Circa AD 1960 to 1969: Assumed

Themes

Alternate Histories: Many alternative histories are mentioned in passing.
Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics

Real-World Tags

JFK: Passing mention: “[T]hey’ve found a world line in which Kennedy the First was assassinated.”

Fictional Tags

Parallel Universes or Dimensions

Groupings

INDEXER NOTES (SPOILERS!)

Translation—We don’t know which of the two listed translators (<a href='Walter_Ernsting'>Walter Ernsting</a> or <a href='Thomas_Schl%C3%BCck'>Thomas Schlück</a>) translated “Selbstmord en gros.”