I really like science fiction short stories. About a year ago I read a
story I really liked and would like some assistance in tracking it
down. The story was about a guy who found some book in a bookstore
(about infinite universes... or something like that). The story is
sorta this guys monologue about this book. He describes the book as
saying that life gets more and more improbable as we continue to live,
but that we don't die because of the fact that there are infinate
universes we always stay alive in some of them (gross and most likely
utterly inacurate paraphrasing mine). The guy in the story was upset
by this idea. At the end of the story he is in a restaurant (I think)
and the restaurant is bombed killing him and everyone else in it. But
then... millions of years later... aliens find his DNA (or something)
and are able to reconstruct him and bring him back to life. I think
the final sentence in the story was something like .."I'm not afraid
of dying... but I'm starting to fear that I never will". I have been
looking for a while, but can't seem to find this short story. So I'm
hoping the professionals can help :)

I don't know the name of the author
I don't know the name of the story
I don't know when the story was written

All I know of the story is as I've described above. I hope it's
enough. Thanks for any help!

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 02 May 2003 01:06 PDT

Hello, Epelo849. 
Do you remember where you first glimpsed the story? Was it in a
magazine or story collection in book form, or online? Could you have
seen it in any major SF magazine like Interzone, Asimov's, FSF or
Analog? This will give a clue as to where the story could be found.
Thanks.

I thought about your story description for a minute, and remembered an
old sci-fi story about a man who accidentally hops through the
multiverse by walking through a thick, pea-soup fog.  This caught my
eye, and I started Googling for "infinite universes" and "sci-fi".
 
That produced too much, so I read over the paragraph again, and the
phrase "more and more improbable" caught my eye -- seemed unique,
somehow.
 
Turns out it is, or at least reasonably so.  Only 283 hits, and on the
first page was a link to a review of Sci-fi Anthologies [1], titled
"The Perseids and Other Stories".  It's a collection of short stories
by Robert Charles Wilson [2], who appears to be a really interesting
writer.  I'm going to look for this collection at my local library and
read the story "Divided by Infinity" [3], which appears to be the one
you seek.
 
 [1a] http://masl.to/?S6D523B64 
 [1b] http://www.januarymagazine.com/SFF/perseids.html 
 [1c] http://www.sfsite.com/10b/per91.htm 
 [1d] http://www.eternalnight.co.uk/books/w/wilsonrobertcharles/theperseids.html
 
 [2a] http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Robert_Charles_Wilson.htm
 
 [3a] http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010312/harrowing_urban_fantasy.shtml

If I can be of further service, please let me know :)  Thanks.

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Request for Answer Clarification by epelo849-ga on 02 May 2003 08:27 PDT

Well, that does seem to narrow things down :) But I won't know for
sure until I'm able to read the story...which leads me to want to know
if there is, by any chance, text avaliable on the internet of the
story? Sometimes stories are avaliable for all to see, and I was
wondering if maybe this story could be amongst them somewhere. Thank
you for the information you have provided so far... I'm going to have
to make a stop to the library :)

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Clarification of Answer by coral-ga on 07 May 2003 10:26 PDT

Alright, I'm sitting at my local public library reading the story now;
it's definitely the one you describe, complete with the collapse of
improbabilities and the aliens resurrecting Mr. Keller after the Earth
is mostly fried by a developing black hole.
 
I do apologize for not getting back to you sooner; it's taken me this
long to get to a library to confirm your answer, and I couldn't reply
without getting the book and reading the story myself.
 
It's an interesting story, by the way; thank you for the
recommendation!

I was surprised by how quickly I received a correct answer...
especially given the ambiguity of my question. I would have
appreciated a response to my answer clarification request, and I
didn't receive one... so for that reason alone I am rating this
researcher 4 instead of 5. But, aside from this, I had been looking
for a long time to find this information and had come up empty handed.
Google Answers has surpassed my expectations... and for $10 the price
was definitely right. Thank you coral-ga, and thank you, Google
Answers. This is an incredibly helpful service, which I will
undoubtedly be using again in the future.