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Living Space

100 statements
18 feature instances
6 referencing feature instances

Living Space	type	TVTItem
Living Space	label	Living Space
Living Space	page	LivingSpace
Living Space	comment	First published in Science Fiction Stories (May 1956 issue), this Short Story by Isaac Asimov is a Science Fiction story about a possible solution to earth's overpopulation.Clarence Rimbro and his family live on an alternate earth, like many other people. The entire planet hosts a single house, protected by a huge forcefield. Said field is large enough to contain a five-acre greenhouse, which provides self-sufficient plants and animals for the family to eat. Even the air and water are self-sufficient. They have to be, because the earth he lives on has no life, and a carbon dioxide atmosphere. But there's a banging going on outside the forcefield, which means someone else is on his planet.So the Housing Bureau sends two people to investigate, and they discover that Nazi Earth has also created an Interdimensional Travel Device, and were building homes not far from the Rimbro home. They're able to negotiate reasonably, since there's an infinite number of alternate earths to choose from. They leave, and Rimbro is told it was a geological problem, one that they fixed.Once that's settled, Alec Mishnoff, who handled the negotiations with Nazi Earth, is getting debriefed by his local Bureau Head, Berg. Berg questions Alec on why he was expecting to find a colony from another earth on that planet. It turns out, Alec wasn't expecting humans at all. Given the infinite vastness of space, Alec is expecting that they'll encounter aliens that have mastered Casual Interstellar Travel and want to colonize the planet, too. Berg is telling him how ridiculous the idea is, when Alec's partner calls in to say there's a crazy homeowner trying to tell him about aliens.It has been anthologized over a dozen times, turned into two different audiobooks, and Isaac Asimov would include it in four of his collections, such as Earth is Room Enough (1957), Science Fiction Verhalen 3 (1964), The Complete Stories, Volume 1 (1990), and Living Space Science Fiction Triple Feature (2012).
Living Space	fetched	2023-06-20T22:49:34Z
Living Space	parsed	2023-06-20T22:49:34Z
Living Space	processingComment	Dropped link to TitleDropAnthology: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
Living Space	processingUnknown	Title Drop Anthology
Living Space	isPartOf	DBTropes
Living Space / int_14180452	type	Instantly Proven Wrong
Living Space / int_14180452	comment	Instantly Proven Wrong: Alec Mishnoff explains how their houses are almost certainly going to encounter alien life, and he's worried about when it'll happen. Department Head Berg is in the middle of telling him how ridiculous the idea is when Bill Ching calls in to report three-eyed tentacled aliens have been sighted.
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Living Space	hasFeature	Living Space / int_14180452
Living Space / int_19b6f396	type	Alternate Timeline
Living Space / int_19b6f396	comment	Alternate Timeline: Alec Mishnoff is able to figure out that the German-speaking builders are from an alternate Earth timeline where Nazi Germany won a tribal conflict. Still the same year, ignoring differences of Nach Hitler versus Anno Domini.
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Living Space	hasFeature	Living Space / int_19b6f396
Living Space / int_1d47dc06	type	Alternative Calendar
Living Space / int_1d47dc06	comment	Alternative Calendar: The protagonists use the Anno Domini calendar (possibly with minor changes), but when Alec Mishnoff asks the German-speaking builders he's encountered what year they think it is, he finds that they're measuring time since Hitler's rise to power (Nach Hitler).
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Living Space / int_31c5e7fb	type	Starfish Aliens
Living Space / int_31c5e7fb	comment	Starfish Aliens: At the minimum, these aliens have purple skin, tentacles, three eyes, and visible red veins.
Living Space / int_31c5e7fb	featureApplicability	1.0
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Living Space	hasFeature	Living Space / int_31c5e7fb
Living Space / int_3eb0f889	type	Pun-Based Title
Living Space / int_3eb0f889	comment	Pun-Based Title: The title has a subtle pun, as it refers to people having larger homes by colonizing dead versions of Earth, each Earth being considered a home, and that a home on a dead Earth is essentially living (in) space. Made more explicit in the first Dutch translation, "Wonen in de Ruimte", which means "Living in Space".
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Living Space / int_48d464ca	type	Interdimensional Travel Device
Living Space / int_48d464ca	comment	Interdimensional Travel Device: This Earth developed dimensional travel technology instead of Casual Interstellar Travel, because the technology was too difficult. Homes are built on alternate Earths that never developed life as we know it. Devices are keyed to work with the front door and what is effectively the garage. A unique 'probability pattern' is used to describe each Earth.
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Living Space / int_48d464ca	featureConfidence	1.0
Living Space	hasFeature	Living Space / int_48d464ca
Living Space / int_61ff365d	type	Deflector Shields
Living Space / int_61ff365d	comment	Deflector Shields: Each home that Earth proper builds is contained in a forcefield that keeps the oxygen atmosphere inside and the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere and weather outside.
Living Space / int_61ff365d	featureApplicability	1.0
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Living Space	hasFeature	Living Space / int_61ff365d
Living Space / int_63c1170b	type	Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story
Living Space / int_63c1170b	comment	Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: The Housing Bureau lies to Clarence Rimbro about the other parallel universe Earth colonists, calling them a geological instability that has been fixed. Since they were outside the forcefield, Rimbro won't try to verify the story.
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Living Space / int_6a993504	type	Audio Adaptation
Living Space / int_6a993504	comment	Audio Adaptation: Audible and Spoken Realms created an unabridged audiobook in 2014, with Mark F. Smith as narrator and another in 2015, with Mike Vendetti as narrator.
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Living Space / int_a7caa5b5	type	First Contact
Living Space / int_a7caa5b5	comment	First Contact: Alec Mishnoff is relieved when the people he encounters on Rimbro's home (one house to every dead planet earth) are actually humans from another timeline. He, alone in the story, has been fearing that Starfish Aliens will show up because in an infinity of universes, they will. He's horrified to be proven right at the end of the story.
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Living Space / int_a9c7258a	type	Absent Aliens
Living Space / int_a9c7258a	comment	Absent Aliens: Implied Trope. Since Casual Interstellar Travel technology was too difficult to create, Earth has developed dimensional travel technology instead. Without space travel, nobody expects to encounter any alien life. They were wrong.
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Living Space / int_b0692cd9	type	Intro-Only Point of View
Living Space / int_b0692cd9	comment	Intro-Only Point of View: Clarence Rimbro, accountant and all-around nobody, narrates the first third of the story in third person. Once he's convinced the Housing Bureau to investigate, it switches to Alec Mishnoff and his co-workers in the Bureau.
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Living Space / int_b9e8ad28	type	The Multiverse
Living Space / int_b9e8ad28	comment	The Multiverse: There's an infinite number of Alternate Universes, and Earth has mastered the ability to travel among them. The overpopulation problem has been solved by allowing people to build homes on an alternate earth that never developed sapient life. An entire Earth for a single home.
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Living Space / int_d0c8e54	type	Monkeys on a Typewriter
Living Space / int_d0c8e54	comment	Monkeys on a Typewriter: The technology to travel to alternate earths imply an infinite number of said universes. Roughly half of them are not capable of supporting life as we know it, which is still infinity. This Earth developed dimensional travel technology instead of Casual Interstellar Travel, because the technology was too difficult. However, in an infinity of universes, there will be some aliens who have that and not dimension travel. Those aliens may be interested in Terraforming uninhabited planets, which means they'll find the human settlement. The story ends with The Reveal of Starfish Aliens.
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Living Space / int_d1152b75	type	Planet Baron
Living Space / int_d1152b75	comment	Planet Baron: Each settlement established by the humans of "Earth proper" consists of just one household — after all, there's an infinite number of lifeless Earths out there, so why not? — and it's specifically noted that becoming (technically) owners of an entire planet was used as an enticement for colonists. "What man so poor, ran the slogan, as not to have an empire larger than Genghis Khan's?" This ends up coming back to bite them, as other inhabited Earths don't do the same thing, making it billions of times more likely that one of their settlements will be in a universe where Earth is within aliens' reach — which turns out at the end to indeed be the case.
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Living Space / int_df410b77	type	Decoy Protagonist
Living Space / int_df410b77	comment	Decoy Protagonist: Clarence Rimbro, accountant and all-around nobody, is exactly the type of character Isaac Asimov likes to use as The Protagonist in his stories, but once he's gotten the government to listen to his problem, agent Alec Mishnoff takes over as the person resolving the plot.
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Living Space / int_e3109dae	type	Switching P.O.V.
Living Space / int_e3109dae	comment	Switching P.O.V.: The omniscient narrator follows characters based on the Anthropic Principle; it starts with Clarence Rimbro's viewpoint so we can understand how the average person sees living on dead planets. Then it shifts to Alec Mishnoff and his partner Bill Ching to establish how the earths are selected and resolve the initial conflict. Then the story jumps ahead in time to when Mishnoff is being debriefed by his local Head of the Housing Bureau, shifting into his perspective to console Clarence Rimbro, before returning to Alec Mishnoff to reveal what he's been worried about the entire story.
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Living Space / int_name	type	ItemName
Living Space / int_name	comment
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Living Space	hasFeature	Absent Aliens / int_bb07cfb0
Living Space	hasFeature	Alternative Calendar / int_bb07cfb0
Living Space	hasFeature	American Literature (J To M) / int_bb07cfb0
Living Space	hasFeature	Audio Adaptation / int_bb07cfb0
Living Space	hasFeature	Deflector Shields / int_bb07cfb0
Living Space	hasFeature	Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It / int_bb07cfb0

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