Novelette
Many Mansions
- by Robert Silverberg
- in Universe 3, edited by Terry Carr (Random House, October 1973)
With eleven years of marriage behind them, Ted and Alice’s fantasies frequently start with a time machine and end with killing one or another of their spouse’s ancestors before they can procreate. So naturally, they each end up at Temponautics, Ltd. Oh, and Ted’s grandpa has some racy fantasies of his own.
In Silverberg’s Something Wild Is Loose (Vol. 3 of his collected stories), he posits that this story is “probably the most complex short story of temporal confusion” since Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941) or “—All You Zombues—” (1959), but I would respectfully disagree. In particular, I would describe Heinlein’s two stories as the most complex short stories of temporal consistency in that there is but a single, static timeline and (in hindsight) every scene locks neatly into place within this one timeline. By contrast, Silverberg story involves multiple time travel choices by the characters in what I would call parallel universes. The confusion, such as it is, stems more from what appears to be alternate scenes in disconnected universes rather than temporal confusion per se. —Michael Main
In Silverberg’s Something Wild Is Loose (Vol. 3 of his collected stories), he posits that this story is “probably the most complex short story of temporal confusion” since Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941) or “—All You Zombues—” (1959), but I would respectfully disagree. In particular, I would describe Heinlein’s two stories as the most complex short stories of temporal consistency in that there is but a single, static timeline and (in hindsight) every scene locks neatly into place within this one timeline. By contrast, Silverberg story involves multiple time travel choices by the characters in what I would call parallel universes. The confusion, such as it is, stems more from what appears to be alternate scenes in disconnected universes rather than temporal confusion per se. —Michael Main
On the fourth page Alice finds a clause warning the prospective renter that the company cannot be held liable for any consequences of actions by the renter which wantonly or wilfully interfere with the already determined course of history. She translates that for herself: If you kill your husband’s grandfather, don’t blame us if you get in trouble.
