The Worlds of If

Dixon Wells has a ready excuse for every late arrival, but missing a rocket liner to Moscow gives his habitual delay a more serious meaning. After the vessel is lost in a collision, he visits Haskel van Manderpootz, his former physics professor. The professor claims that his latest invention can look sideways through time, showing the worlds that would have existed if a person had made a different choice.

Stanley G. Weinbaum builds this science fiction short story around the unsettling consequences of small decisions. Wells wants to test his part in the air disaster, while van Manderpootz treats the machine as further proof of his own exceptional gifts. Their exchanges mix speculative explanations of time and relativity with the comedy of a boastful teacher and his persistently delayed student. The story offers an imagined future of rocket travel and visiphones, alongside a recognisable anxiety about missed chances and responsibility.