Sandra Ley. Beyond Time (1976)

     Sandra Ley. Beyond Time (1976) The stories deal with time, time slippage, what-ifs, etc. The most common trope is the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, but a couple of stories take the observer effect to mean a conscious observer, the author apparently not realising that in any interaction between particles each is the observer of the other. That’s what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty is really about.
     Anyhow, the most common tone is elegiac and meditative. Contemplation of what-if will prompt regrets for the actual. Any slippage into an alternate reality will prompt nostalgia for what was lost. Questions of value and purpose appear without prompting: if every choice triggers a new set of realities, then none has more purpose or meaning than any other.
     But despite these philosophical implications, the stories tend to the pedestrian and pompous. The most entertaining simply work out the more or less ironical consequences of a single glitch, with Jefferson (for example) a prime mover in the struggle for the independence of England from America, after George III’s son Frederick establishes himself in the colonies and moves the centre of power from London to Washington. I didn’t read all the tales. * to **½ (2010)