Three short stories deal with 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 equal (or slight inferior). In "The Worlds of If", Wells
tests an invention that reveals what might have been; in "The Ideal", the
professor creates a device that can show the image of a person's ideal (in
Wells' case, his perfect woman); the contrivance of "The Point of View" allows
one to see the world from another's perspective. In all three, Wells finds and
then loses the woman of his dreams.