The Red Queen's Race is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American writer Isaac Asimov; it uses the

Red Queen's race The Red Queen's race is an incident that appears in Lewis Carroll's ''Through the Looking-Glass'' and involves both the Red Queen, a representation of a Queen in chess, and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot. "Well, in our ...

from

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...

's ''

Through the Looking-Glass ''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' (also known as ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'' or simply ''Through the Looking-Glass'') is a novel published on 27 December 1871 (though indicated as 1872) by Lewis Carroll and the ...

'' as a metaphor for the final plot twist. The story also makes reference to Asimov's

psychohistory Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, chil ...

. "The Red Queen's Race" was first published in the January 1949 issue of '' Astounding Science Fiction'' and reprinted in the 1972 collection ''

The Early Asimov ''The Early Asimov or, Eleven Years of Trying'' is a 1972 collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Each story is accompanied by commentary by the author, who gives details about his life and his literary achievements in the period in which he w ...

''. "The Red Queen's Race" was written in July 1948, a month after Asimov received a PhD from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and became a postdoc studying anti-malarial drugs.

Plot summary

The story is told by an unnamed narrator, an agent of an unnamed U.S. intelligence bureau. The agent is tasked with an investigation into an atomic power plant which has been completely drained of power. A Professor of Nuclear Physics, Elmer Tywood, is found dead. As the investigation progresses, bringing in Tywood's research students and his university colleagues, it is revealed that Tywood had developed a means to send objects back in time via "micro-temporal translation." His plan was to "improve" the world by giving Hellenic Greece advanced knowledge in the form of chemistry. The investigating agents and their superior, The Boss, gradually realize that the changes introduced into history might, through the butterfly effect, cause the deletion from existence of every human being alive. The trail eventually leads to the doorstep of Mycroft James Boulder, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, who had been hired by Tywood to translate a textbook of chemistry into Attic Greek. He states that he had figured out Tywood's plan and translated only enough to coincide with historical accounts. With no clear solution, the investigation is shelved and filed under the heading of "?".

References

External links

*
"The Red Queen's Race"
on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Short stories by Isaac Asimov 1949 short stories Short fiction about time travel Science fiction short stories Works originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact {{1940s-sf-story-stub