# Van Manderpootz — Short Fiction character guide

> Van Manderpootz in Short Fiction by Stanley G. Weinbaum.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Manderpootz, the great van Manderpootz, the incomparable van Manderpootz

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

## Snapshot

A ruddy-faced, magnificently vain professor whose inventions — the idealizator, the attitudinizor — turn abstract physics into personal catastrophe for his favorite test subject.

## Who they are

Van Manderpootz is the genius at the center of the Dixon Wells stories, a man who treats his own mind as a natural wonder and his assistant's offhand remarks as seeds of epoch-making discovery. His flaw is not incompetence but boundless self-admiration: he invents devices that let people see through another's eyes, then hands them to Dixon without ever testing them himself. His psychons, cosmons, and chronons give the stories their comic-serious engine — the notion that thought, light, and matter are interchangeable, and that a great man's ego might be the only reliable constant.

## Relationships

### [Professor Ludwig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/professor_ludwig)

_professional_

Professor Ludwig and Van Manderpootz are colleagues in scientific research, often debating or collaborating on theories.

### [Carter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/carter)

_professional_

Carter works under or alongside Van Manderpootz, likely as an assistant or junior scientist.

### [Professor Ludwig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/professor_ludwig)

_professional_

Professor Ludwig and Van Manderpootz are colleagues in scientific research, often debating or collaborating on theories.

### [Carter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/carter)

_professional_

Carter works under or alongside Van Manderpootz, likely as an assistant or junior scientist.

### [Professor Ludwig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/professor_ludwig)

_professional_

Professor Ludwig and Van Manderpootz are colleagues in scientific research, often debating or collaborating on theories.

### [Carter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/characters/carter)

_professional_

Carter works under or alongside Van Manderpootz, likely as an assistant or junior scientist.

## In the story

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

Inventor of the subjunctivisor; explains the impossibility of time travel into past/future and demonstrates his device for viewing parallel conditional worlds.

### [The Ideal](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/chapters/the-ideal)

The eccentric inventor who explains his theories on perfection and anarchy, and demonstrates the idealizator.

### [The Point of View](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_51_se/chapters/the-point-of-view)

The inventor who explains the theory of subjective reality and demonstrates the attitudinizor; he is proud of his genius and dismissive of others.

## Links

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