Both agree to visit Clarence's Earth to check out the mysterious sounds. At the Housing Bureau are two co-workers Bill Ching, who believes fervently in the parallel Earths as the solution, and Alec Mishnoff, who worries about something he only hints at to others. Naturally, he does what people usually do, and complains to the authorities.

There are noises and rumbling disturbing the silence of his domain. As there are still an infinite number of dead Earths, they can never be filled up, and nobody is worried about the population becoming two trillion in fifty years or so.Ĭlarence finds he has a problem. Clarence enjoys total independence for his family, and an entire planet's worth of living space. Since there are a trillion people living in this time, it would be almost impossible for them to live on one Earth, so each family sets up its house and garden, protected by a force field and running on solar power, on a dead Earth. If the chance of life arising on any one of them is about 50%, then half the time a random choice of a parallel universe will lead to a dead Earth. There are an infinite number of possible Earths, each existing in its own parallel universe. This is no great accomplishment as, thousands of years in our future, anyone can do it. It concerns itself with a possible consequence of the existence of parallel universes, specifically the ones where life on Earth never developed.Ĭlarence Rimbro owns the entire planet Earth. It was first published in the May 1956 issue of Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1957 collection Earth Is Room Enough.

' Living Space' is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. Short story by Isaac Asimov 'Living Space'

Güneş Sistemi Öyküleri by Isaac Asimov