In Reed's story, which first appeared last year in Clarkesworld Magazine, George Bailey finds himself in a foreign dimension looking at a woman who strongly resembles his wife Mary. But George isn't here to learn an important lesson about his self-worth; instead, he's been dropped here without rhyme or reason by interdimensional traveler with too much time on his hands. Fortunately, Mary, the librarian of a much more advanced civilization than George's, quickly surmises what's going on:

"Then how do you know he was an angel?"

"He said he was."

"And after you rescued him...what happened? Wait, no. Let me guess. Did your angel make noise about earning an aura or his halo-?"

"His wings."

"Really? And you believed that story?"

George gulped.

"And what did this wingless man promise you, George."

"To show me..."

"What?"

"How the world would be if I'd never been born."

She couldn't help but laugh again. Really, this man seemed so sweet and so terribly lost. She was curious, even intrigued. Not that the stranger was her type, of course. But then again, this was a remarkable situation, and maybe if she gave him a chance...

It may not be a heartwarming tale of personal redemption, but it's an interesting tale of parallel worlds, and an optimistic one in its own right.

A Woman's Best Friend [Clarkesworld Magazine]

Sugimoto's "The TV Show" is a feast for the eyes from the get-go, but watch all the way through to see its multiple realities bleed into one another.

An earlier video, "Full Moon Party," replays human history with furrier primates in the starring roles:

[via Metafilter]

How many universes are in the multiverse? [arxiv.org via Universe Today]

The idea of traveling between alternate realities is a common theme in speculative fiction. Multiverse stories are a logical extension of allohistory, and a close relative of that other grand old convention, time travel. The idea is often explained as inspired by the Many-Worlds Interpretation first formulated by Hugh Everett in 1957, but its use in literature and storytelling has been long with us. Jorge Luis Borges used the theme in his 1941 story "The Garden of Forking Paths". There are earlier examples in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World of 1666 (recently revisited by Alan Moore) and in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights. Ancient multiverses can be found in the Hindu cosmology and the nine worlds of the Norse mythos were around long before Jack Kirby.

Right from the start, Banks' Transition has superficial similarities to Michael Moorcock, especially the Jerry Cornelius stories. Both books feature amoral agents with shifting loyalties, flitting between versions of Earth. They party down in exotic locales, averting or causing global calamity — like rock stars trashing an infinity of hotel suites. Victorian airships and super-assassins abound. The theory goes that all of Moorcock's fiction is one big multiverse, from the Sword and Sorcery worlds of Elric of Melniboné or Corum Jhaelen Irsei to the decadent Dancers at the End of Time. All the various characters in these works are aspects or avatars of a stock cast of meta-players often compared to the Commedia dell'Arte theater tradition with its tricksters, oafs, and backstabbers. Jerry Cornelius is a 20th Century face of the slightly mis-named Eternal Champion. He's an anarchist secret-agent, a super-slick antihero whirling in a blaze of intoxicants and ready fuck anything that fucking moves. David Bowie as Doctor Who, turned up to fuckin' twelve! While quite entertaining, it should be no surprise that these quintessential examples of SF's New Wave movement can be a wee bit disorienting. Product of the times.

For a speculative fiction ride of sex, drugs, and rock&roll that's less experimental (ahem, easier to read), I prefer Mick Farren, singer of the proto-punk band The Deviants, White Panther Party member, and Elvis scholar. Out of print, but well worth the hunt, are his multiverse romps in The DNA Cowboys Trilogy and Necrom, some truly weird fun shit. The dimension-tripping demon Yancey Slide from those adventures also turns up in the more recent Kindling and Conflagration He also wrote the Victor Renquist novels, a series of vampire novels that aren't totally lame. 2002's Underland has the CIA, vampires, and Nazis duking it out with flying saucers in the Hollow Earth beneath Antarctica. Yeah. Hell, just track down anything you can by Mick Farren.

Along with Moorcock, two other Monsters of Multiverse Literature ( or "Mul-Lit") are The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny and the series that inspired that, World of Tiers by Philip José Farmer. They have much more of a fantasy feel than the above, especially because of an overuse of courtly language in the former and centaurs and other classic monsters in the latter. You'll also find plenty of complex machinations by powerful groups or families (Zelazny is notorious for Daddy Issues) and decadent, lusty adventure (more of Farmer's bag in trade, but evident in both). I enjoyed both of these series as a teen, but to be honest that was a long time ago and my impressions are murky at best. I recall the fiveTiers with more fondness, but that might be due to the risqué covers by Boris Vallejo. I can assert with some authority that the reader should stop after the first five Amber books, do not read the second series, do not collect the recent stuff written by John Gregory Betancourt. Sadly, Amber suffers from a terminal case of Herberts' Syndrome.

The quirky standalone Roadmarks by Zelazny could be considered a multiverse book. In it, the space-time continuum is an actual highway accessible to a few. The protagonist tools around the centuries in a dusty old pickup running guns to the Persians at Marathon. Occassionally he passes Hitler, his VW bug parked at the side of the road looking for the weed-choked off road to where he won WWII. I'm going to try and fit in some Amber andTiers, maybe revisit Riverworld too, just for old time's sake.

Now that I'm thoroughly soaked in nostalgia, allow me to wax rhetorical on multiverse comic books I always liked. Yes, they're old, I'm old; get used to it, and get off my urine-covered stoop.

The capes-and-tights set is plagued with multiverses, and they're always having Ultimate Critical Infinity Wars — boooring. A refreshing change from all that was the " Zenith" strip in2000 AD (1987-1992). This was young Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's contribution to the British superhero deconstruction attack of the 1980s. It had battles between multiple Earths, hippie/fascist versions of the same superheroes, the Lloigor from the Cthulhu Mythos, and a hero who was a real asshole. Yeowell's brushy B & W artwork was a sweet counterpoint to the usual 4-color superhero look, too.

For graphical goodies of a more science fictional bent, you cant go wrong with the ligne claire and spacey psychedlia of Jean Giraud better known as Moebius, co-creator of Métal Hurlant magazine. The Airtight Garage is a series of artificial pocket universes built into the asteroid Flower 51. They are the playgrounds/battlefields for the likes of Lady Malvina, Major Gubert, the crew of the spaceship Ciguri, and Jerry Cornelius. Hey, whaaa? Yep, Moorcock allowed other artists, writers, and musicians the use of the character in a sort of Open Source deal. For a while Marvel had a problem with that and the character was renamed Lewis Carnelian for a while. Weird. There are songs about Jerry by Blue Öyster Cult and Hawkwind, but I digress. Moebius returned to the Airtight Garage in '96 with Man from the Ciguri from Dark Horse. All lots of fun.

Bryan Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is also often compared to Moorcock, and in many ways improves upon him. Frankly, when you want to read about sexy psychic spies fighting transdimensional evil, it's hard to top the Arkwright stories. I love Talbot's vision of alternate Britains, like the one where Cromwell's Revolution still rages on and the Puritans terrorize the skies from massive airships. The complex plot jumps around jarringly in the original series, before finally coalescing, as you begin to see the multiverse as Luther does. There is also an audio version with the voices of David Tennant and Paul Darrow, I've never heard it — but wow, fangasm. The later 1999 sequel, Heart of Empire from Dark Horse again, follows the story of Luther's daughter in a much more linear fashion, with absolutely gorgeous art and much of that retro-Victorian futurism the kids like.

I have a particular fondness for the idiosyncratic doodles of doom by of Matt Howarth. His anarchic city-world of Bugtown is the home of indestructible assassins, rockstars, giant sharks, and nuclear goddesses; all of whom flit through the most surreal and impossible alternate universes imaginable. The series Those Annoying Post Brothers and Savage Henry are just packed full of crazy. Many experimental underground musicians make regular appearances in Howarth's work. There are adventures featuring Conrad Schnitzler, The Residents, and Micheal Moorcock collaborators, Hawkwind. Geez, that guy gets his beard into everything. Howarth also draws great aliens that look really alien, like cacti crossed with really uncomfortable furniture. Look for the very funny SF Konny & Czu strips.

"So Grey", I hear you say, " how about something less reminiscent of your college-dorm lava-lamp days? Something more, y'know [describes a circle in the air] for the kids?"

Well, the most well known Young Adult books with multiverse themes would probably be Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Chris Roberson should be getting a lot more attention for his time-space tripping adventures of the Bonaventure-Carmody family in novels likeHere, There & Everywhere, Paragea, and End of the Century. Oh and big surprise, Roberson has worked with Michael Moorcock often.

For something different, try Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin. This is a collection of bright and witty capriccios about a woman who discovers how to shift to alternate worlds by being bored and dyspeptic in airport waiting rooms. As usual, LeGuin makes many wry observations about society and class. There's one story about a civilization of flightless avian people and their transcontinentaln migrations...the ending is beautiful. I could mention Dark Tower series by Stephen King or Charles Stross' The Merchant Princes but I'm just not into them, so I won't. Philip K. Dick's doesn't make the cut either: that's really only a duoverse.

I really loved Neal Stephenson's Anathem and it's all about the multiverse, but does it really belong with these other stories? Well of course it does! If for no other reason than it's completely different from the Michael Moorcock imitators. Yes, all the action takes place in one cosmos — going to another world is a one-way trip and requires a big honkin' generation starship. There is the mystery of Fraa Jaad, who appears to be able to move at will between the slightest possibilities. I noticed something odd, even though Stephenson beats us about the head and neck with tons of higher mathematics and metaphysics, he's awfully vague about the actual mechanism for traveling from one reality to another. This is probably the smartest move. Some writers do a lot of handwaving about Quantum and dress it up in blinky lights and an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But usually, it just boils down to closing your eyes and clicking your heels three times. How very apt for a thought experiment.

Multiverse stories are becoming more prevalent on TV these days. That kid from Stand by Me fought Nazi cavemen from Dimension X or whatever in Sliders. The color coded Charlie Jade looked interesting, but I haven't watched it yet. Lost has used the Many Worlds Interpretation, but they will try just about anything these days.

I see Leonard Nimoy is going back and forth in alternate worlds a lot these days (in Fringe and the Star Trek movie.) Glad to see that sort of thing again.

Somebody asked me recently if multiverses were the Next Big Thing in Speculative Fiction? I like the multiverse concept and would like to see different takes on it, that aren't all about decadent ubermensch and their interdimensional power struggles.

And honestly, we don't need Next Big Things. Trendy conventions in writing are a symptom of a lack of originality. Speculative fiction itself should be a glorious sprawling multiverse exploring all manner of settings and styles. Right now, too many of the worlds in the new book section are getting too recognizable, I'm looking at you Contemporary Urban Fantasy! And you with the top hat and goggles, we've talked before about this, you need to seek help.

So yeah, this trip down multiverse lane has been fun — but I think it points out a flaw in sub-genre stories. Why do they all start running together? Why so many Shadowy Conspirancies, Power Hungry Libertarian Scensters and Moral Relatavisim in a majority of these alternate reality adventures. The Multiverse must have more possibilities than that.

Special thanks to Alan Beatts and Chris Braak for their helpful ideas.
Top image from Heart of Empire by Bryan Talbot, 1999.

Commenter Grey_Area is known on many worlds as Chris Hsiang. He brachiates through the endlessly forking branches of possibility frightening all the turtledoves.

Even before most people had heard of Erwin Schrödinger, we knew that there were plenty other Earths out there; we'd seen Star Trek's Mr. Spock with a goatee, or watched the Justice League and Justice Society meet up thanks to a crystal ball. I've already written about my undying love for the concept, and I'm not alone; sci-fi loves to offer glimpses of the roads less taken, whether they're character-based or somewhat more... epic. Consider the following while planning a summer trip to another world:

What Mad Universe
If you're looking to get away from it all, you could do much worse than decide to take a break on the parallel Earth from Fredric Brown's 1949 novel. Admittedly, you'd have to avoid being accused of being an alien spy when you try to spend your money, but isn't that a chance you'd want to pay to visit a world where spaceflight was accidentally discovered in 1903, and astronauts are pin-up girls?

Eye in the Sky
Of course, you'd have to be careful of your own subconscious if travel to parallel Earths followed the rules of Philip K. Dick's 1957 novel, where alternate realities were entirely subjective manifestations of your own state of mind. Unless, of course, your state of mind was completely relaxed because you're going on vacation. Oh, the tangled web we weave...

Doppelgänger/Journey To The Far End Of The Sun
Who doesn't wish that scientists could still discover a parallel Earth on the opposite side of the sun, as in this classic 1969 movie written by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, creators of Thunderbirds, UFO and Space: 1999? The idea was recycled three years later in Marvel Comics' Warlock stories (and later in their Heroes Reborn arc), but Doppelgänger's world - where everything is reversed from ours, including writing, thanks to the wonders of flipping film - remains the one to beat. Imagine getting away from it all in a world where everything is backwards.

The Eternal Champion
Michael Moorcock's Multiverse works slightly differently than most, in that each world includes facets of people, instead of multiple versions of the same people, and each world may be vastly different from the one you're familar with. This may be a plus for your holiday, of course; experience something entirely new, and be less likely to run across a more successful, happier and healthier version of yourself in the process. (Much more traditionally multiversual, but feeling like it should be mentioned in the same breath as Jerry Cornelius: Matt Fraction's comic Casanova, where the hero is trapped in a parallel Earth, replacing the him that had died there.)

Star Trek
With this summer's movie, Starfleet's finest have finally come up with a parallel timeline (including an Earth, so it counts, thank you very much) that measures up to the show's classic Mirror Universe. Out of all the revamps and reboots that we've seen, this is one of the few that made the choice to make the revamp the center of the story and patiently explain that history may have been changed, but all that did was create a new parallel timeline. Pandering to the original show's fanbase? Sure - but doing so in such a way that it doesn't stop the movie for everyone else. Yes, the crew of the Enterprise have played around in the timestream many of times, but 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 in a Spock-centric altern-orgy, and I for one can't wait. As it is, Trek doesn't just offer one utopian future, but two; your choice depends on just how much time you feel like you want to spend with William Shatner.

Fringe


What was the ingredient that made this show more than just an X-Files wannabe with an eccentric scientist and a cow? The sudden, surprise introduction to a war with a parallel Earth (complete with explanation of the multiverse concept for newbies, above). Admittedly, the glimpses we've seen of the alternate Fringe world(s?) haven't been especially alluring to those seeking a quiet getaway - It all seems to be explosions, Charlies with scars and grim skies, unless you're in a shining New York with multiverse magnet Leonard Nimoy and his newspapers that mention JFK still being alive (Maybe we should call this parallel Earth-StereotypicalRightWingViewOfADemocraticFantasy?) - but there's a downside to every vacation spot.

Sliders


Like Quantum Leap (or, if your tastes run to a slightly later vintage, The Time Tunnel) before it, Sliders took the idea of characters just trying to get back home and ran with it... Ran across the multiverse, that is (A similar idea was behind the earlier, and much less successful Otherworld television series from the mid-80s). Five seasons of hopping between Parallel Earth San Franciscos on a television show budget demonstrated a wide variety of possible alternate worlds out there, including an Earth where Britain won the Revolutionary War leading to the British States of America, an Earth where a zombie plague has been unleashed, an Earth where dinosaurs are still alive, and an Earth where Ancient Egyptian is the dominant culture. Sadly, they didn't find an Earth without shitty CGI effects, but it was the 1990s. As a model for how to spend your summer, I'm torn whether or not to recommend it. Maybe you should ask yourself how much you really love San Francisco.

DC Comics
Less one potential getaway than a superpowered version of Orbitz, DC's superhero line loves the idea of a multiverse like almost none other; their original multiverse came from the company trying to come up with ways of haphazardly adding characters from other publishers without confusing things too much as much as anything, but the current version is much more structured... and finite. For one thing, there are "only" 52 Earths, now. Here are the ones we know about. Pick your favorite:

Earth 0 is the "core" Earth, the one that all "regular" stories take place on and - more importantly for the purposes of this post - the one that was the basis for the 51 alternate Earths that are known to exist within DC's current multiverse. Of those 51, the following have been identified:
Earth-1 is, essentially, the Earth that most comic fans grew up reading about - Think of it as "Earth Super Friends."
Earth-2 is an Earth that missed out on all of the Silver Age of comics, so there's no Hal Jordan Green Lantern (or Green Lantern Corps at all, for that matter), nor a Barry Allen, Wally West or Bart Allen Flash. For all intents and purposes, it's the same as DC's original Earth-2.
Earth-3 is an Earth of reversed moralities - the Justice League is the Crime Syndicate, Clark Kent is the villainous Ultraman, Lex Luthor is a superhero, and so on.
Earth-4 is as close to Earth Watchmen as you're likely to get outside of the Watchmen series; it's an Earth where only the Carlton characters who inspired Moore and Gibbons' series exist.
Earth-5 is an Earth where the only superheroes are Captain Marvel and his associated Shazam Family of characters.
Earth-6, Earth-7, Earth-32, Earth-37, Earth-38, and Earth-39 are all Earths where the variations are fairly minor, and very continuity based:"What if Batman became Green Lantern?" - That kind of thing.
Earth-8 is a parody of Marvel Comics' Ultimate Earth, where the Avengers are represented by "The Meta Militia."
Earth-9 is the home to the Tangent Comics characters, who bear the same names as the more familiar characters, but are in all other respects different.
Earth-10 is a world where the Nazis won World War II, and home to the guilt-ridden super-Nazi Uberman.
Earth-11 is an Earth where genders are reversed, so you have Superwoman, Batwoman and Wonderman instead of the more familiar versions of the characters.
Earth-12 is an Earth you're very familiar with; it's officially the world of Batman Beyond, which also means that it's the parallel Earth where all the Bruce Timm DC cartoons took place.
Earth-13 is the Earth where many of DC's Vertigo line apparently occurs.
Earth-15 used to be an Earth where all crime had been eliminated by particularly successful superheroes... but then it was destroyed by Superboy Prime, just to prove how much of an asshole he can be. Of course, it theoretically was rebuilt
Earth-16 is the home planet of the Super-Sons, AKA Batman Junior and Superman Junior. Yes, that's right; Superman and Batman got married (not to each other), had sons, and named them after themselves. Don't ask.
Earth-17 is a post-apocalyptic Earth where nuclear apes rule. I promise you, I'm not making this up.
Earth-18 is an Earth where the world is still in Wild West times, complete with cowboy versions of the Justice League.
Earth-19 is an Earth where the world is still in Victorian times, complete with a Batman who has hunted down Jack the Ripper.
Earth-20 is "Pulp-Earth" - essentially, a parallel world where everything is as if it was a pulp novel.
Earth-21 is the Earth from the wonderful DC: The New Frontier series by Darwyn Cooke.
Earth-22 is the Earth from Kingdom Come, Alex Ross and Mark Waid's cautionary tale about why superheroes can't save the world, except for when they can.
Earth-26 is an Earth of smart, talking animals; it was "rendered uninhabitable" during 2007's Captain Carrot And The Final Ark series because funny animal books apparently are silly and not what the audience wants, but then reconstituted at the end of Final Crisis.
Earth-30 is the Earth from Red Son, where Superman landed in communist Russia.
Earth-31 is the Earth from The Dark Knight Returns series, so it's all mutants with sharp teeth and old grumpy Batman.
Earth-33 is an Earth where all of the familiar superheroes are now suddenly (magically, one might say) magicians, with names like "Batmage" and "Lady Flash, Keeper Of The Speed Force."
Earth-34 is an Earth where the British Empire still exists, and is ruled by a tyrannical despot called King Jack.
Earth-40 is an Earth where there are no public superheroes, just superpowered spies who work for the government. Which, if nothing else, would make James Bond movies more fun.
Earth-43 is a parallel Earth plagued by vampires, who have managed to turn Batman into one of their number. There are all manner of other mythical beasts as well, so this is pretty much "Horror Earth".
Earth-44 is Robot Earth; the main superheroes of this Earth are robotic versions of the Justice League.
Earth-48 is, unlike Earths 18 and 19, an Earth far in the future, where humanity is extinct after an intergalactic war has wiped out all native life on the planet.
Earth-50 is the Earth of DC's Wildstorm line. Again, post-apocalyptic, currently.
Earth-51 is, post-Final Crisis, the home to all of Jack Kirby's creations for DC Comics, following it having been yet another post-apocalyptic Earth. At least this one was repurposed for something constructive.

(There are also some Non-Numbered Earths (or, to be completely correct, Earths we don't know the numbers of yet), which include an Earth where Superman and Wonder Woman are black, an Earth where everyone resembles a manga character, and an Earth "just like our own" where superheroes are just the stuff of fiction.)

Charlie Jade

The 2005 South African/Canadian co-production gave us a glimpse at the parallel Earth you should really try to spend some time in: the Gammaverse, where everything is perfect, humanity has worked out how not to squander our resources, and you'll have no trouble getting a hotel room at an affordable rate. Just remember to ignore any offer of a budget weekend in the Alphaverse; it may sound exciting ("Alpha" just sounds good in general, right?), but it's pretty much the hellhole that give you anecdotes but also various forms of disease during your short stay. And if someone suggests a stay in the Betaverse, remind them that that's where you already live and go find a new travel agent. (For more class-based alternate worlds, Warren Ellis' Anna Mercury may be what you're looking for.)

Additional research and reporting by Sarah Hope Williams.

No other information was released to accompany the ad, but the character in the image looks very like Rikki Barnes, Cap's female sidekick from Marvel's 1990s parallel world reboot of the Avengers and Fantastic Four franchises, last seen in 2006's Onslaught Reborn series arriving on "regular" Marvel Earth... making her a Girl Without A World, just like the teaser announces.

Parallel Earths and alternate realities aren't the usual kind of fare from the current Captain America series, which has skewed much closer to realistic spy fodder, but 600th issues do tend to bring out the crazy ideas in characters...

Captain America #600 is released on June 17th.

Coming from the comics background that I do, the first exposure I had to parallel earths was probably DC's Earth-1, Earth-2 and so on; different versions of the same planet that existed at "different vibrational frequencies" to each other, and had different versions of the same characters (On Earth-2, Superman is older - and has a different "S" on his chest! It blew my little childhood mind), but it wasn't until Star Trek's "Mirror, Mirror" episode that I completely fell in love with the concept of there being multiple versions of the same characters in worlds just slightly different from our own.

It's hard for me to explain just why the idea appeals to me so much (Or why I was so thrilled to discover that Schrödinger's cat was, in fact, not the invention of Peter Milligan). Maybe it's really is that I'm indecisive, and love the idea that any decision anyone makes can be made differently by the same person on another Earth somewhere, or perhaps it's just the basic thrill of seeing the road less traveled becoming a little less "less traveled". Nonetheless, it remains one of my favorite SF ideas, and an easy way to bypass my critical faculties (Clone Wars writers, take note). After all, who couldn't love a multiverse full of possibilities?

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it in his book Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries:

With or without warp drives, the long-term fate of the cosmos cannot be postponed or avoided. No matter where you hide, you will be part of a universe that inexorably marches toward a particular oblivion.

Yikes. So what are the particular oblivions that we can expect?

1. Total heat death
If you're like me, chances are your thermodynamics class stopped being pure fun right around the time you learned about the second law. The second law introduces the concept of entropy, often described as a measure of disorder in a system, but really a measure of the system's unavailability to do work — the evenness with which energy is distributed. Once an ice cube melts in a glass of water, for example, there's no way that ice cube will ever be able to go back and do any more work. It's finito.

The same goes for most of the processes in the universe. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that any process, when it occurs, can either increase the entropy of the universe or leave it unchanged; it can't ever decrease the entropy. So when you think about it that way, it's only a matter of time until the entropy in the universe is at its maximum, and there's no room for any more processes to occur — including any kind of life.

2. The big freeze
As the Big Bang was occurring, the temperature of all the matter in the universe was extreme, on the order of trillions of degrees. In the approximately 14-billion-year history that's followed, however, the universe has continued to gradually expand, and so its average temperature has decreased along with it. Today astrophysicists estimate it to be about 2.7 degrees Kelvin.

Astrophysicists, however, will also tell you that the universe's expansion hasn't stopped. And physics mandates that with expansion comes cooling. Eventually, the average temperature of the universe will get all the way down to absolute zero; no matter how fantastic parka technology gets by that time, life will have to stop.

In case 2.7 degrees sounds to you like it's pretty close to zero, here's a nice thing to remember: Experts in the field agree that the heat in the universe should last us at least 10^10^26 more years.

3. A big crunch / big bounce
Our universe started with a big bang, didn't it? Well, perhaps that big bang was just the end of a previous universe's big crunch — it existed for some amount of time, happy and innocent, and then began to slowly shrink into itself until it collapsed. Collapsed, mind you, with a bang.

If this theory is true, it could mean that we're living in an oscillatory universe; whenever one clump of galaxies has run its course, it contracts and explodes to form another. The major difficulty astrophysicists have had supporting this theory is that it doesn't explain how a recurring universe like this would avoid total heat death. There's also the increasing evidence that the universal expansion will continue indefinitely, but our universe has certainly surprised us before.

4. The big rip
So the universe is continually expanding. Some postulate that it's expanding with increased speed toward a moment where everything in the universe will tear itself apart. First, gravity will become too weak compared to the overwhelming cosmological forces pulling everything out, and galaxies themselves would separate. Then, individual stars and planets would unbind; in the final end, every atom in the universe would lose that essential gravitational imperative holding their elements together, and all of creation would separate into total destruction.

For this, my friends, we've got about 50 billion years to go.

Honestly, though, despair is not the proper reaction to these theories. If you feel like studying quantum mechanics (and who doesn't?), there are plenty more exciting ways to look at the fate of our existence — you could be the one with the next great proposal for what will happen when we drop into a lower energy state, or what exactly we can expect from the supremely mysterious dark energy that occupies 73% of our universe. And if you've been reading io9, you know we've got your back: we're fans of the multiverse theory, and not just because it means that Doctor Who's Billie Piper is having her way with David Tennant in another plane of existence.

All of this is a problem for your distant future relatives anyway. Turn your brain on and give it your all, but you know these cosmic solutions will truly find their answers when the kids are listening to the 10^10^75 offspring of the Jonas Brothers.

Image from Wikipedia.

Describing itself as a movie "about a girl who can walk through walls," the official synopsis of the movie's plot goes a little something like this:

Rebecca is a disgraced scientist conducting illegal experiments to confirm the existence and initiate travel between parallel universes, who accidentally cracks the problem. Her counterparts in neighboring universes are also working on the same problem, but they have their own agendas.

It quickly becomes apparent that the rifts in the space-time continuum caused by inter-dimensional travel can bring about the merging of the affected universes, so it becomes a race against time to close these rifts and save the planet.

Physicists disagree violently as to whether more than one version of our universe may exist. The usual fantasy of alternate universes comes from shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who, where you visit another universe and everything's the same except evil, and with more eyepatches or different facial hair. Here's the evil Worf from an alternate universe enjoying some fun leash-play with Garak, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
DC's current weekly comic, Countdown to Final Crisis, featured a long backup feature called "History Of The Multiverse," in which a group of identical men with weird hair tried to summarize every comic in which someone had visited an alternate universe.For some reason, in DC Comics, the only people who are different in the alternate universes are superheroes, so that Batman is married and has kids, or is a pirate, or was around during World War II. We never see an ordinary person who has different versions in different universes, except maybe for the mail-carrier who starred in that weird crossover between the Milestone and DC universes in the 1990s.

So I was super curious to hear what DiDio, who masterminded the return of the multiverse, would say about its appeal. Is there a philosophical background to the obsession with seeing how things could have turned out differently? The first time I asked DiDio, at the DC Nation panel, he said "Good question" and then didn't really answer. I pressed him a bit more, and here's what he said:

The DC Universe has been built on the multiverse concept. We wanted to bring it back to show the strength of that concept and the multiple interpretations of the characters. And now we're going to focus on the current universe and the current versions of the characters.

These answers made sense (especially the part about nostalgia) but they didn't really satisfy me. I wanted to know what it was about alternate timelines that so fascinated a group of writers and editors in their thirties and forties. Was there some intrinsic appeal to the idea of being able to see how your life might have shaped up if you'd made a different set of decisions?

So I cornered DiDio in the hallway a while later, and asked him again what he thought was so intrinsically fascinating about the multiverse. This time, he said it's all about business. He hadn't wanted to give that answer on the panel, because it's boring, but it's also true. DC Comics went on an acquisition binge during the Silver Age, buying up Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics and a host of other publishers. Because each publisher had its own stable of superhero characters (like Fawcett's Shazam), who barely fit in with the DC characters, it made more sense to pretend that each cast of characters came from a different universe. And then, as the crossovers between the different acquisitions' "universes" became more colorful, they became a fun thing in their own right. As for why DC is revisiting the idea of different universes now, it still seemed to come down to nostalgia, and trying to recharge some old properties.

I never quite got the answer I was hoping for, about the reasons why alternate universes might seem glamorous and exciting to the DC crew. But maybe if I corner Grant Morrison or Dan Jurgens next time, I'll have more luck.