The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls...
Robert A. Heinlein

As I read more of his novels, I realize we are walking into a multiverse. A more realistic multiverse. In fact, Wiki calls it the Heinlein multiverse. In a previous book, I read from the author "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" We read about a computer/AI that became a singularity (self-awareness) The AI-assisted with freeing the moon from the subjection of the Earth. The singularity has many names. In the "mistress" book it is named Mike but it is also known as Adam Seline.

In "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" there is a human group that belongs to "The Circle". Their purpose is to of course better the human race in all the timelines where humans exist, even though the histories of each timeline do not match up (a real characteristic of a multiverse from a physics point of view.) In this particular novel, to accomplish this they must retrieve Mike (Adam Seline) or at least his components. This particular AI had a unique ability to predict mathematically probabilistic social outcomes.

The ability to predict human behavior has always been a difficult part of any science due to uncertainty. Then again science would not be science if it wasn't for uncertainty. Many SF authors have dealt with this concept such as Isaac Asimov with Psychohistory. For the Circle to have a Singularity to predict human behavior, would give them the ability to make more changes in the timelines to move humanity to perfection.

But one factor that one must consider is that in the multiverse, there will be other groups of time travelers. There are the "Time Lords" and the "revisionists" all with their own agenda of what is the best course of action for history in the timelines and universes. The Time Lords are not humans as far as I can tell, and not much is said about the Revisionists. I guess I will read more about them in other Heinlein books.

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