Sarah Pinsker: And Then There Were (N-One)

[bibliogramma]

Sarah Pinsker's novella, And Then There Were (N-One), starts out strange, but in a way that grabs and teases and doesn't let go. The conceit is fascinating - in the vastness of the multiverse, the Sarah Pinsker (or at least, one of the Sarah Pinskers) who is a quantologist and who discovered the multiple universes and how to traverse them, holds a conference to which she invites a wide selection of the other Sarah Pinskers.

Who hasn't wondered what their lives might have been like, what they might have been like, if.... So many kinds of if. If they'd made different decisions, if their childhood had been different, if they had been born in a different kind of world. Obviously, Sarah Pinsker has, and she's used that to create a compelling situation for a story, any story. That this story is in fact a murder mystery inspired by the Agatha Christie novel referenced in the title makes it even more strange and compelling.

The novella deftly portrays the confusion of the protagonist - the only Sarah Pinsker at the convention who has any experience in detective work, albeit as an insurance investigator - called upon to unravel the circumstances of the death of one Sarah Pinsker among many. As the mystery unfolds, so do the philosophical questions about responsibility, reality, and 'the road not taken' that fascinate us all.

(Published in Uncanny Magazine March/April 2017. https://uncannymagazine.com/article/and-then-there-were-n-one/)