# Unknown — Short Fiction character guide

> Unknown in Short Fiction by Stanley G. Weinbaum.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** I, mine, myself

**First appearance:** 0000-a-martian-odyssey

## Snapshot

Dixon Wells, a wealthy, chronically tardy heir who keeps getting pulled into van Manderpootz's reality-bending experiments — and keeps falling in love with the wrong women.

## Who they are

He's the first-person voice of the van Manderpootz tales, a rich man's son who can't reach his desk on time but can be counted on to volunteer for any device that scrambles perception. Twice burned by inventions — once loving a dead girl, once an ideal who never existed — he swears off romance while his father quietly prefers his lateness to be caused by science rather than 'vision starlets. His susceptibility and self-deprecating humor make him the perfect guinea pig for stories about how much of reality is just point of view.

## In the story

### [The Worlds of If](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/chapters/the-worlds-of-if)

First-person narrator in the opening dialogue with van Manderpootz, later identified as Dick Jarvis in the conversation about time travel.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/unknown_narrator
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters