Evelyn E. Smith 9 min read

'No one ever really makes a decision,' Professor Falabella declares, the self merely splits and continues on divergent planes, like a dividing cell. A man's idle wish is about to test the theory.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1957 story is a clever, unsettling fantasy-horror tale of the roads not taken. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a professor's parlor theory of parallel selves turns dreadfully concrete, and an insincere wish opens a doorway into dimensions best left shut.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

9 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).