There's a Benford book, Cosm, with a fascinating and relevant idea at the center of it. The book is mostly about how painfully political the academic world is, but the idea behind the book would've made an interesting short story.
..err...spoilers.
Spoilers Below. Basically, having gained the ability to create universes within this one, researchers realize that only some of the ones they create are viable. Furthermore, only a smaller subset of those are universes in which the universe-creating capability is created. Essentially, this means that those are the only "fertile" universes; the rest are basically neuters, incapable of reproducing. The anthropic principle then suggests, unless we are (incredibly) the first universe to create a new universe, that we live in a universe which is just the latest in a long chain of universe experiments, and that the viability of the universe is due to successive refinements.
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Potentially spoilery relevance
Date: 2006-07-27 02:18 pm (UTC)..err...spoilers.
Spoilers Below.
Basically, having gained the ability to create universes within this one, researchers realize that only some of the ones they create are viable. Furthermore, only a smaller subset of those are universes in which the universe-creating capability is created. Essentially, this means that those are the only "fertile" universes; the rest are basically neuters, incapable of reproducing. The anthropic principle then suggests, unless we are (incredibly) the first universe to create a new universe, that we live in a universe which is just the latest in a long chain of universe experiments, and that the viability of the universe is due to successive refinements.