All the Myriad Ways

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All the Myriad Ways is a collection of 14 short stories and essays by science fiction author Larry Niven, originally published in 1971.

Contents

• "All the Myriad Ways"
• "Passerby"
• "For a Foggy Night"
• "Wait it Out"
• "The Jigsaw Man"
• "Not Long Before the End"
• "Unfinished Story #1"
• "Unfinished Story #2"
• "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex"
• "Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation"
• "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel"
• "Inconstant Moon" (Made into an Outer Limits episode)
• "What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?"
• "Becalmed in Hell"

Overview

In the eponymous story contained within, Niven attempted to craft a response to stories featuring the many-worlds interpretation as a key plot point, taking the social implications of infinite realities to a depressing conclusion. A police detective, pondering a rash of unexplained suicides and murder-suicides occurring since the discovery of travel to parallel universes, begins to realize that if all possible choices that might be made are actually made in parallel universes, people will see their freedom of choice as meaningless. The choice not to commit suicide, or not to commit a crime, seems meaningless if one knows that in some other universe, the choice went the other way. They therefore kill themselves or commit the crime, because they abandon the sense of choice.

The oft-discussed essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" is a humorous discussion of the difficulties Superman might encounter in trying to conceive a child with Lois Lane.

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