The Worlds of If

If was an American science-fiction magazine launched in March by Quinn Publications, . With the August issue Worlds of Tomorrow was merged with If, though it was another year before Galaxy actually switched to a monthly.
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IF Magazine : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive

Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. If was merged into Galaxy Science Fiction after the December issue, its th issue overall. Jungle in the Sky by R. A Chat with the Editor If, May by Paul W. Fairman Personalities in Science Fiction: Palmer by Paul W. Fairman Guest Editorial by James V. Taurasi Science Briefs If, May MacApp Matchmaker by Charles L. If, September by Paul W.

Jules Verne by Paul W. Fairman Personalities in Science: Leonardo Da Vinci by Paul W.

Fairman Science Briefs If, Quinn Personalities in Science: Galileo by Eve P. Wulff Science Briefs If, Podkayne of Mars Part 2 of 3 by Robert A. If, December by uncredited Worth Citing If, If, March by Paul W. A Chat with the Editor If, March If, July by Paul W. Personalities in Science Fiction: Quinn "It's About Time George and the Dragonmotive by Robert F. Quinn Worth Citing If, Rat in the Skull by Rog Now suppose then that the great engineer Dixon Wells invents a machine capable of traveling very fast, enormously fast, nine-tenths as fast as light.

You then fuel this miracle ship for a little jaunt of a half-million miles, which, since mass and with it inertia increases according to the Einstein formula with increasing speed, takes all the fuel in the world. But you solve that. You use atomic energy. Then, since at nine-tenths light-speed, your ship weighs about as much as the sun, you disintegrate North America to give you sufficient motive power.

You start off at that speed, a hundred and sixty-eight thousand miles per second, and you travel for two hundred and four thousand miles. The acceleration has now crushed you to death, but you have penetrated the future. And as for the past—in the first place, you'd have to exceed light-speed, which immediately entails the use of more than an infinite number of horsepowers.

We'll assume that the great engineer Dixon Wells solves that little problem too, even though the energy output of the whole universe is not an infinite number of horsepowers. Then he applies this more than infinite power to travel at two hundred and four thousand miles per second for ten seconds.

He has then penetrated the past. As for the past, I have just explained that all the energy in the universe is insufficient for that. He tapped a thick pad of typewriter paper on the table beside him. Van Manderpootz takes always the shortest, the most logical course. I do not travel along time, into past or future. Me, I travel across time, sideways! Those are real, the worlds of past and future. What worlds are neither past nor future, but contemporary and yet—extemporal— existing, as it were, in time parallel to our time? The worlds of 'if. It will show, as I told you, the conditional worlds.

Editorial Reviews

You might express it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would have happened. I use polarized light, polarized not in the horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourth dimension —an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossal pressure, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in the direction of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave, though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient.

A considerable improvement over time-traveling in past or future, with its impossible velocities and ridiculous distances! They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is a real number as opposed to V-2, which is imaginary. They are the worlds that would have been if—Do you see? You could see, for instance, what New York would have been like if England had won the Revolution instead of the Colonies.

Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat stolen from one of my ideas, by the way and you, the user, become part of the device. Your own mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if George Washington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, he could have seen what you suggest. You can't even see what would have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but I can. The device will show ten hours of what would have happened if—condensed, of course, as in a movie, to half an hour's actual time's "Say, that sounds interesting!

I'd like to know what would have happened if I'd sold out my stocks in instead of ' I was a millionaire in my own right then, but I was a little—well, a little late in liquidating. The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered me into the Physics Building, and thence into his own research laboratory, much like the one I had visited during my courses under him. The device—he called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated in hypothetical worlds —occupied the entire center table.

IF Magazine

Most of it was merely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy was the prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart of the instrument. Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. I suppose everyone is familiar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few years ago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy; sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a real aid to memory. A maze of vague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen, and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene or circumstances he is trying to remember.

He turns a knob that alters the arrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the design corresponds to his mental picture—presto! There is his scene re-created under his eyes. Of course his own mind adds the details. All the screen actually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but the thing can be amazingly real.

I've seen occasions when I could have sworn the psychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality itself; the illusion is sometimes as startling as that. Van Manderpootz switched on the light, and the play of shadows began.


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Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that point I direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you have nothing to do but watch. I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoate sounds of the device hummed like distant voices, but without the added suggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face flashed and dissolved and then, finally, I had it.

There was a picture of myself sitting in an ill-defined room; that was all. I released the knob and gestured. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picture cleared, and amazingly, another figure emerged, a woman, I recognized her; it, was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere actress of the "Vision Varieties of ' I'll say I did!

I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07 to '10, trying to marry her, while old N. I think those threats were what kept her from accepting me, but after I took my own money and ran it up to a couple of million in that crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened. When the crash of the spring of '10 came and bounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. Wells, her favor dropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were engaged, in April —we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been late again.

And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out, and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring at me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzes became voices. I want to go back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and your golf. You're a walking corpse! Just because you were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're a tin god.

Those friends of yours—they trail after you because you give parties and spend money—my money. You ought to try it, Marie. She glared in rage and—well, that was a painful half-hour. I won't give all the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved into meaningless colored clouds. It might have been! Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might have been— worse! It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when I rose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father was unnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'd never been on time.

He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me and dragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcastically to my missing the Baikal; I reminded him of the wrecking of the liner, and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocket would have been late, and so would have missed colliding with the British fruitship.

It was likewise superfluous for him to mention that when he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in the mountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that. The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled to ask, "And have you, sir? But those aspersions of his rankled, especially that about the Baikal. Tardy I might be, but it was hardly conceivable that my presence aboard the rocket could have averted the catastrophe.

It irritated me; in a way, it made me responsible for the deaths of those unrescued hundreds among the passengers and crew, and I didn't like the thought. Of course, if they'd waited an extra five minutes for me, or if I'd been on time and they'd left on schedule instead of five minutes late, or if —if! The word called up van Manderpootz and his subjunctivisor—the worlds of "if," the weird, unreal worlds that existed beside reality, neither past nor future, but contemporary, yet extemporal.

Somewhere among their ghostly infinities existed one that represented the world that would have been had I made the liner.

by H.G. Wells

I had only to call up Haskel van Manderpootz, make an appointment, and then—find out. Yet it wasn't an easy decision. Suppose—just suppose that I found myself responsible—not legally responsible, certainly; there'd be no question of criminal negligence, or anything of that sort—not even morally responsible, because I couldn't possibly have anticipated that my presence or absence could weigh so heavily in the scales of life and death, nor could I have known in which direction the scales would tip.

Just— responsible; that was all. Yet I hated to find out. I hated equally not finding out.