The Life–Work of Professor Muntz by Murray Leinster Episode #414

Murray Leinster | September 3, 2025

The Life–Work of Professor Muntz by Murray Leinster Episode #414
Murray Leinster

THE LIFE–WORK OF PROFESSOR MUNTZ

Episode #414 · Written by Murray Leinster · Narrated by Scott Miller

Professor Muntz’s strange experiments with parallel time-tracks send ripples into the life of an unsuspecting beer-truck driver. When reality itself begins bending around Mr. Grebb’s troubles at work, the truth might be stranger—and funnier—than he could ever imagine.

Professor Aldous Muntz, brilliant yet painfully shy, retreats from the scientific world just as it begins clamoring for answers about his groundbreaking research on multiple time-tracks. His experimental device—an unassuming machine of coils, tubes, and dials—is left behind in a quiet boarding-house cellar, forgotten after his fatal accident in one branch of reality. But the machine has ideas of its own. As it quietly hums away, it starts delivering newspapers from alternate timelines, each telling a different version of events that should be impossible. Meanwhile, Mr. Grebb, a lumbering and ill-tempered beer-truck driver, is far more concerned with proving that his boss is out to sabotage him than pondering the mysteries of space-time.

When these contradictory newspapers start appearing out of thin air, Grebb becomes confused, frustrated, and finally convinced they hold the key to exposing the real crook at Ajax Brewing. What begins as a bizarre side effect of cosmic mechanics becomes a human comedy of misunderstandings, chance, and unexpected justice. Leinster builds a tale where big scientific ideas play out not in a pristine lab but in the everyday grind of a working man whose life keeps bumping into the extraordinary. In a world where futures branch endlessly and each choice splinters into another timeline, even a simple delivery route can turn into a collision of fate and improbable opportunity.

“The Life-Work of Professor Muntz” blends humor, speculation, and clever plotting into a story that makes grand scientific possibilities feel both accessible and delightfully unpredictable. Leinster’s genius lies not just in describing alternate worlds, but in showing how ordinary people might react if such worlds brushed against their own. This is a story where cosmic theory meets everyday frustration—and where the fate of a beer truck driver becomes unexpectedly entwined with the life-work of a man he never met.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Murray Leinster—born William Fitzgerald Jenkins in 1896—was one of the true trailblazers of classic science fiction. Over a career stretching more than 50 years, he wrote hundreds of stories that pushed the boundaries of what genre fiction could be. Long before parallel universes became a common trope, Leinster explored them with precision and imagination, weaving scientific speculation with engaging human stories. His influential 1946 tale “A Logic Named Joe” even foreshadowed personal computers and the Internet, making him one of the most visionary writers of his era.

His fiction appeared in magazines such as Amazing Stories, Astounding, Weird Tales, Argosy, and countless others, earning him a reputation for versatility and creative fearlessness. Leinster excelled at combining scientific rigor with emotional clarity, and at grounding cosmic-scale ideas in relatable characters. Readers return to him not just for his innovations, but for the warmth, wit, and sense of wonder that permeate his stories. If you are discovering his work for the first time—or rediscovering a forgotten gem—you’re in for a treat.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to The Life–Work of Professor Muntz by Murray Leinster — a tale of alternate timelines, unlikely heroes, and shifting reality—classic science fiction with humor and heart.