Hi

I'm reading the 'Narnia Chronicles' at the moment. It made me wonder about parallel worlds. I think there are actually quite a few books about this. The ones I've read include 'The Talisman', 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant', 'Imajica'.

Do you know of other books like this? Do you have an idea about the 'literary history' of the concept? It must have come from somewhere.

Thanks

Polygon

Lewis Carroll's Alice is the best one I can think of.
Madeleine L'engle's Wrinkle in Time.

Alternate realities are a whole sub-genera of Science Fiction! There are tons of books out there, but I'm not certain just how you'd search them out. Try 'alternate reality' or 'alternate history' as well as 'parallel worlds' in your favorite search engine.
Let me think on this for a bit and get back to you. I have a huge collection of SF.

A few things of note on this subject:

1) The Narnia Chronicles is not a parallel world book series. A parallel world is one which mirrors events and characters within the primary world, but has subtle differences based on actions of the people with the world. An example would be the Sci-Fi television series Sliders. The Narnia books are an example of an alternate world, so is the wonderful Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

2) If you want to read some great books based on the theory of parallel worlds I'd suggest The Blue Adept Series by Piers Anthony or The Man in the High Castle by P.K.Dick. The former is a series of books about a young man who can switch between a world of fantasy and a world of the future. The latter takes place in only one world, but that world is based around the situation of the axis winning WWII.

Please, if you disagree with the above statements feel free to argue. After all, open discussion on such topics is what the forum is all about right?

Your explanation makes sense, but I don't entirely agree. Perhaps it is just a matter of vocabulary. To me, alternate means 'one or the other', whereas parallel means 'existing simultaneously but separately'. Or should I consider 'alternate' to be a general term encompassing all kinds of literature dealing with 'different' worlds?

I will check out the books you suggested. I also remembered the 'Amber series' by Roger Zelazny.

"Woman on the Edge of Time", Marge Piercy.

WHew that's a scary one! But it's a classic. Somewhat like Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed".

This parallel / alternate arguement is a funny one. It's true that all sci-fi / fantasy worlds could be considered alternate, but not all can be parallel. The first criteria that must be met is that in a parallel world book a character must travel between two worlds during points in the book. Secondly, I would think that parallel worlds must be linked together in some way other than the one character being able to travel between them.

Using these simple criteria (and I do mean simple, there must be a better explanation out there somewhere) we can start to put order to some of the books mentioned. Alice, in Lewis Carroll's books, does travel from one world to another. However, besides her ability to travel between them, Wonderland and Victorian England have no similarities.

The Blue Adept series, on the other hand, has two worlds that slolwy become dependent on each other. The success or failure of the character in one world greatly effects his success in the other world.

On another note, using this classification system I must admit that The Man in the High Castle would not be classified as an alternate world book. Really it is an alternate world of OUR world, and not of a any character within the story. However, it still is an amazing read.

You make some distinctions that I'd never thought about. What I had in mind as 'alternate reality' are all the books in which the beginning premiss is something like "what if the Nazis had won" or "what if Lincoln wasn't assassinated" or (one of the quirkiest ones I've read) "what if Marilyn Monroe had had JFK killed"? Upon reflection, I agree that this is different from parallel worlds, but I'm not sure I agree with your definition of just what a 'parallel' world is, and I never ever thought of the 'Alice' books as falling into either of these categories. (I think of them as pure fantasy.)

My favourites are also supposed to be real, the three 'Journeys' series by Robert Monroe (Journeys out of the body, Far journeys, The ultimate journey).

Also the children's book Tom's secret garden was a favourite of mine (the garden being in a parallel time/place).