The collection A Century of Science Fiction contains a vignette by Laumer titled Worlds of the Imperium (Extract), which does not appear in the published novel. It depicts a scene of a man with a hoe standing over a plant, and describes the eerie and horrific changes as the same scene shifts across parallel universes. The man becomes an armored beast as the plant becomes ever more hostile and ferocious, and then by degrees the scene shifts back to a man, albeit with green skin and horns, standing with a hoe. The scene may have been inspired by the well-known painting and poem.
