"The Alibi Was As Dead As the Automobile"

IF the old saying is true about how familiarity breeds contempt, then it follows, doesn't it, that too much familiarity could breed . . .

"A Kind of Murder."

By Larry Niven (born 1938; Wikipedia HERE and the ISFDb HERE).

Illustrated by Jack Gaughan (1930-85; ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: Analog, April 1974.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Short story (14 pages).

Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 43).

   "There was a new kind of murder going around."

WHETHER it's the past or the present, a killer will always have to deal with an alibi. In the future, however . . .

Principal characters:

~ Alicia Walters (deceased), Jeffrey Walters ("We've been through this before, and it never changes anything"), Officer-Two Hennessey ("You thought that raising her temperature would foul up our estimate of when she died"), Hank Lovejoy ("but he still couldn't get her out of his hair"), George Larimer ("We were together the whole time, if that's what you want to know"), and Officer-One Fisher ("Listen, if she got on his nerves that much, she may have irritated some other people too").

References and resources:

- "familiarity breeds contempt":

  "The proverbial saying ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ express the idea that a close long-term relationship with a person or situation brings about feelings of boredom or lack of respect." (Phrase Finder HERE.)

- "Teleportation obeyed the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Conservation of Momentum":

  "The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time. In the case of a closed system the principle says that the total amount of energy within the system can only be changed through energy entering or leaving the system. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another." (Wikipedia HERE.)

  "In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (pl.: momenta or momentums; more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. . . .Newton's second law of motion states that the rate of change of a body's momentum is equal to the net force acting on it. Momentum depends on the frame of reference, but in any inertial frame it is a conserved quantity, meaning that if a closed system is not affected by external forces, its total linear momentum does not change." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "explain drop ship technology for morons":

  "A shuttlecraft, also known as a shuttle spacecraft, shuttle ship, drop shuttle, drop spacecraft, or dropship, is a type of spacecraft described in theory and science fiction. Serving the same purpose as a ship's tender, it is a smaller vessel that is launched from a mother ship and has the ability to transport people or cargo between ships, or to and from a planet's surface without being damaged or destroyed." (Wikipedia HERE).

- Our last confab with Larry Niven concerned his hardboiled crime fiction (HERE). Another story involving teleportation and murder is his "The Alibi Machine" (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~