inception

In comments to yesterday's post about my favorite Many-Worlds story, a couple of people mention "All the Myriad Ways," a Larry Niven short story. I don't think I've ever actually read the story, but it gets brought up all the time, so I'm familiar with the concept. It's an angle on Many-Worlds that I don't like, and has something in common with the central conceit of Inception, which is also not high on my list of literary tropes, though my reaction isn't anywhere near as negative as Scott's. If you're not familiar with it, here's the summary from Wikipedia: A police detective, pondering a…
We haven't yet gotten to the point where we're comfortable leaving SteelyKid with a babysitter, so seeing the movie everybody's talking about took a while. Since she's off at Gammy's, though, we got a rare night to ourselves and went to the movies. My immediate reaction is that it's great to see a movie that's kind of smart and not based on anything dominating the box office. If this helps break us out of the endless cycle of re-makes and comic-book movies, I'll be as happy as anyone. This is an extremely well-done movie, with everything shot, acted, and choreographed very well. There was…