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Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse

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Leif Hassell
06/07/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
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.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/07/09

@Leif Hassell: That's a GREAT story.
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John Nor
06/07/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
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?
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/07/09

@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.
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Nudemanatee
06/06/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
The great thing about an infinite number of parallel universes is that in one of them I'll manage to write something witty here.
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Nudemanatee
06/06/09

@Nudemanatee: No you won't.
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Grey_Area
06/06/09

@Nudemanatee: Oh you will, but it will be in a reality where no intelligent life ever evolved to appreciate it. Bummer.

Still, love your commenter name!
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Brian David Phillips
06/06/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
"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.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/06/09

@Brian David Phillips: "Sidewise In Time" is pretty close to the postulated theoretical kitty.
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/06/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
I'd like to see some of those DC Earths on a more regular basis. Some of them sound fun.
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Azogue
06/06/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
Heinlein, nicely codified the multiverse decades ago.

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.
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Mathmos
06/06/09

@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).
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/06/09

@Mathmos: The "Incompleat Enchanter" series. Delightful stories. Years before Heinlein did it.
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Srynerson
06/06/09

In reply to Get Away From It All By Traveling The Multiverse
I was so irritated when SciFi dropped Charlie Jade after just two episodes. I like Stargate re-runs as much as the next person, but c'mon!
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Evil Tortie's Mom: R.O.A.C.H.
06/06/09

@Srynerson: They didn't drop it, they moved it to like 2 AM on Mondays. They did show them all.

Unless of course my TiVo got them from an alternate universe. In which case it better be finding me Firefly seasons 2-5.
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