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 Related to: Moe Berg
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Moe Berg

   Wilber’s Moe Berg Stories
by Rick Wilber
First story: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apr/May 2012

At the end of Wilber’s first Moe Berg story, Moe himself admits that he doesn’t know what’s going on, and I admit that I’m in the same boat—but I can tell you that that was the first story that I read in the Moe Berg subgenre of time travel stories. In this case, Red Sox catcher Moe Berg travels (as he did in real life) to Zurich with the mission to kill Heisenberg, but this is only one of many Moe Berg lives; in many of those lives he interacts with a beautiful young woman and seeming time-travel agent who only sometimes encourages him to kill Heisenberg. You can also read about Moe in one other of Wilber’s alternate history stories and at least one independently conceived story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
  1. Something Real (Apr/May 2012) Asimov’s
  2. At Palomar (Jul 2013) Asimov’s

 But I have to admit I’m not real sure what’s going on here. 




   “Uncertainty”
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, Feb 2013

For me, the main story of time-travel agent Leah wandering from one World War II encounter with Heisenberg to another did not have a clear notion of time travel, and the ties to the uncertainty principle were not germaine to the story. The exposition of the uncertainty principle itself was also confused, conflating it with the observer effect and not correctly representing the fact that a particle cannot simultaneously possess both a sharply localized position and a sharply localized momentum. On the other hand, I did enjoy the opening scene with Moe Berg, and the mix-ups are partly from his layman’s point-of-view.

 Werner Heisenberg’s controversial uncertainty principle was one of the cornerstones of quantum physics. Heisenberg postulated that it was possible to know a particle’s position or that it was possible to know how fast the particle moved, but no one could know both the position and movement of the particle at the same time. Berg had spent quite a bit of time in Oxford, talking with leading scientists as he prepared for this job, and one of them used a description that moved away from particles into theory, which Berg appreciated. That scientist had told Berg that at its core, Heisenberg’s principle meant this: The act of observing changes the thing being observed. 


 

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Thanks for visiting my time-travel page, and thanks to the many sources that provided stories and more (see the Links and Credits in the menu at the top). —Michael (main@colorado.edu)