My personal favorite is the story "Why I Left Harry's All-night Hamburgers," by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Look it up if you're not familiar. It's a different take on the concept than most.
The Star Trek 2009 Movie "parallel timeline" is mentioned and the article also says "the new Movie-Earth lines up so well with Mirror-Earth and OriginalSeries-Earth that it's really only a matter of time before some comic or novel seeks to cross them all over"...
Is that now the most popular theory in Star Trek fandom, that there are three different universes describing 1. ST:ENT/ST:TOS/ST:TNG/ST:DS9/ST:VOY 2. ST:ENT/ST:2009movie 3. the Mirror episodes (OriginalSeries-Earth, Movie-Earth, Mirror-Earth or whatever they are called)?
If it is a "parallel timeline" does Star Trek fandom also accept it as a "parallel universe"?
What about ST:TNG Yesterday's Enterprise - that's a different kind of time travel from the Star Trek 2009 Movie?
@John Nor: Considering TNG doesn't keep continuity with TOS (exhibit A: Zephram/Zefram Cochrane's birth planet, exhibit B: KHAAAAN), I'd make it at least 4.
"Even before most people had heard of Erwin Schrödinger, we knew that there were plenty other Earths out there..."
First, the immediate examples given after this statement all post-date Schrödinger(1887-1961). Schrödinger postulated his happy happy cat in 1935. There are examples of multiverse stories that do indeed predate Schrödinger, the various "fairy world" stories would count but they're more fantasy than science fiction (albeit, one man's magick is another's technology and demons are just really powerful nasties from another dimension). Second, uh, most people still haven't heard of Schrödinger. :-)
Additions to the mix . . . Roger Zelazny's Amber series or Keith Laumer's Imperium or H. Beam Piper's Paratime Police . . . ad infinitim.
@Azogue: Perhaps the first use of the idea of fictions creating alternate universes was by De Camp and Pratt. Their characters travelled between worlds by changing their mental axioms and visited the worlds of Norse, Irish and Finnish myth, Orlando Furioso, The Faerie Queen, Coleridge's Xanadu and I'm sure others, (not in that order).
There were quite a few ongoing comic series that continued to amaze this year.
Paul Dini's run on Detective Comics was absolutely superb, and even if you dont share his hard-on for Zantanna (Have you checked yourself for a pulse lately?), you have to admit the new Ventriloquist is shaping up to be a fascinating villain.
Angel: After The Fall and Buffy: Season VIII have both got me hooked, even though I haven't watched either series since they stopped airing first run episodes. My only major complaint with Angel, is that the artwork is so shoddy in places it's very difficult to tell who's who, especially when they're reintroducing some minor character who appeared in a few episodes of the TV series. That, and I still don't know what's up with the talking fish.
In Fables, we had the rather abrupt ending to the massive story arc that's dominated most of the previous 50 issues. Suddenly the war with the adversary is over, and the good guys have won. Hurray! Umm... Does that mean the story is over? Not by a long shot! Kudos to Bill Willingham for showing that winning the war is only half the battle, and picking up the pieces can have just as dramatic consequences.
The Walking Dead My god. This series has more twists and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco. Thought your favorite characters were safe as long as they stayed inside the prison? Ha! Think again suckers! Well, at least Rick's family is going to be okay... sonovabitch!!!! Yay, not everyone was slaughtered! Wait, who are these new guys? Huh... Did that guy just say he knew what was causing the zombies?!?!
I stopped reading Hellblazer for quite a while, since it didn't really seem to be going anywhere, but Jock seems to have brought back the bastard we all know and love. The bit with the bones of St. Nicholas has got to be one of the single most bad-ass moments in the entire series.
This year also saw a few new issues of Fell (though not as many as their should be), Buckaroo Banzai (which wasn't to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed it), Criminal Macabre, Jack of Fables, No Hero, and Ellis's run on Thunderbolts.
@JohnnyZito: Agreed, loved RIP. The fact that loose ends aren't tied up and there's still some unanswered issues makes it, in my mind, all the more appealing.
Plus, trying to finalize this story with Final Crisis starting immediately afterwards...not so easy. The big question is what they'll do with Batman post-Crisis.
06/07/09
06/07/09
06/07/09
Is that now the most popular theory in Star Trek fandom, that there are three different universes describing
1. ST:ENT/ST:TOS/ST:TNG/ST:DS9/ST:VOY
2. ST:ENT/ST:2009movie
3. the Mirror episodes
(OriginalSeries-Earth, Movie-Earth, Mirror-Earth or whatever they are called)?
If it is a "parallel timeline" does Star Trek fandom also accept it as a "parallel universe"?
What about ST:TNG Yesterday's Enterprise - that's a different kind of time travel from the Star Trek 2009 Movie?
06/07/09
06/06/09
06/06/09
06/06/09
Still, love your commenter name!
06/06/09
First, the immediate examples given after this statement all post-date Schrödinger(1887-1961). Schrödinger postulated his happy happy cat in 1935. There are examples of multiverse stories that do indeed predate Schrödinger, the various "fairy world" stories would count but they're more fantasy than science fiction (albeit, one man's magick is another's technology and demons are just really powerful nasties from another dimension). Second, uh, most people still haven't heard of Schrödinger. :-)
Additions to the mix . . . Roger Zelazny's Amber series or Keith Laumer's Imperium or H. Beam Piper's Paratime Police . . . ad infinitim.
06/06/09
06/06/09
06/06/09
I especially enjoy his concept of "fictons"; units of imagination, that if widely shared create a parallel universe.
Thus his characters visit the Lensman, Dejah Thoris and Oz. Best start off points: "The Number of the Beast" or "The Cat Who Walked Through Walls."
Love that stuff.
06/06/09
06/06/09
06/06/09
06/06/09
Unless of course my TiVo got them from an alternate universe. In which case it better be finding me Firefly seasons 2-5.
12/30/08
Paul Dini's run on Detective Comics was absolutely superb, and even if you dont share his hard-on for Zantanna (Have you checked yourself for a pulse lately?), you have to admit the new Ventriloquist is shaping up to be a fascinating villain.
Angel: After The Fall and Buffy: Season VIII have both got me hooked, even though I haven't watched either series since they stopped airing first run episodes. My only major complaint with Angel, is that the artwork is so shoddy in places it's very difficult to tell who's who, especially when they're reintroducing some minor character who appeared in a few episodes of the TV series. That, and I still don't know what's up with the talking fish.
In Fables, we had the rather abrupt ending to the massive story arc that's dominated most of the previous 50 issues. Suddenly the war with the adversary is over, and the good guys have won. Hurray! Umm... Does that mean the story is over? Not by a long shot! Kudos to Bill Willingham for showing that winning the war is only half the battle, and picking up the pieces can have just as dramatic consequences.
The Walking Dead My god. This series has more twists and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco. Thought your favorite characters were safe as long as they stayed inside the prison? Ha! Think again suckers! Well, at least Rick's family is going to be okay... sonovabitch!!!! Yay, not everyone was slaughtered! Wait, who are these new guys? Huh... Did that guy just say he knew what was causing the zombies?!?!
I stopped reading Hellblazer for quite a while, since it didn't really seem to be going anywhere, but Jock seems to have brought back the bastard we all know and love. The bit with the bones of St. Nicholas has got to be one of the single most bad-ass moments in the entire series.
This year also saw a few new issues of Fell (though not as many as their should be), Buckaroo Banzai (which wasn't to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed it), Criminal Macabre, Jack of Fables, No Hero, and Ellis's run on Thunderbolts.
12/30/08
12/31/08
Agreed, loved RIP. The fact that loose ends aren't tied up and there's still some unanswered issues makes it, in my mind, all the more appealing.
Plus, trying to finalize this story with Final Crisis starting immediately afterwards...not so easy. The big question is what they'll do with Batman post-Crisis.
12/30/08
12/30/08
12/30/08
12/30/08