„The Manderpootz Series" includes the three stories of Stanley G. Weinbaum's early science fiction trilogy. He is best known for his short story „A Martian Odyssey" which has been influencing Science Fiction since it was first published in 1934. Weinbaum is considered the first writer to contrive an alien who thought as well as a human, but not like a human. In a series of comedies featuring the eccentric scientist Professor Manderpootz – including the Alternate-History story „The Worlds of If", „The Ideal" and „The Point of View" – he flippantly devised absurdly miraculous Machines. The humorous stories follow the doings of Dixon Wells, a perpetually late playboy who runs afoul of the inventions of his friend and former instructor in „Newer Physics," Professor Haskel van Manderpootz, a supremely immodest genius who rates Einstein as his intellectual equal.