All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven

If you ever recommend me a book, and I say I’ll check into it, rest assured that though it may take upwards of 8 years, I will get around to it.

Way back in the days before Internet Messenger, I had an email conversation with a friend about the Back to the Future trilogy and time travel movies in general. In that conversation, he referenced an essay from All the Myriad Ways about time travel.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I was pondering my excessive number of credits on paperbackswap.com, and I remembered that book. Someone had it, and it arrived in time for my latest trip to Juarez.

It’s a mixture of sci-fi short stories and essays, and includes one of the more famous and wittier essays in sci-fi history, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, a frank and logical discussion of Superman’s potential sex life. One imagines that the writers of Superman II had read this essay.

Ironically, the weakest essay of the bunch was the one on the various (fictional) theories of time travel. It was good to be sure, but missed some of the things we discussed in emails in 1999. Of course, the book was written sometime before 1971, but neither of the 1999 writers were purporting to be career science fiction writers describing an overview of all time travel theories.

The short stories were also well written and engaging, which almost makes up for the later Ringworld books.