It has been a trying time the last few weeks. My father sick
and in the hospital required me to fly back to visit the family. For those
inquiring, he is ill, and it is a matter of time before he passes.
To take my mind off the rigors and realities of life, I
spent time with some very old friends, and the topic of multiverses and
parallel realities came up. Wow! There is a great deal of misconceptions of
multiverses and the implications of such things occurring. A confusion
regarding my multiversal setting and the Dreamers who inhabit it, how can they
“walk between worlds” as I call their ability to traverse time, space and
various realities.
Multiverses are a great way to explain situations in stories
that are complicated. Things like time loops, alternate realities and space
travel without the realities of distance for story continuity. However, in hard
science fiction the readers are fairly versed in science, so trying to tap
dance around it is difficult.
With a grin, I explained to my friends that as a writer I
accept that parallel universes exist; therefore, the concept of infinity is
also true. Infinity is an abstract concept describing something without any
limit. Quickly a cough and hand went up asking how can infinity exist?
Well infinity exists if there is always an in-between state
between two possible outcomes. Say, you draw a line on a piece of paper; at the
end of the line, you place a dot. There is a myriad of outcomes to where one
dot maybe in relation to the other dot along that line. The space between the
two original points is where the dots can be moved closer to one another and as
long as there is a space between them there is always a third outcome.
Each parallel universe is a reflection of another but there
are differences in that universe that caused it to split from the universe it
is reflecting. For instances our lines and dots universes are all reflections
of the one universe where the dots are at the terminus of the line. Each
parallel universe is a dot and line; however, the location of the dots is
different in each universe therefore making a universe, parallel to every other
dot-line universe, save for the location of the dots. Thus creating an infinite
number of possible dot-line universes.
This comes from Hugh Everett III, who in 1957 while at
Princeton, came up with the idea that if two alternatives can interfere with
one another, then these alternatives must exist simultaneously. If they exist
simultaneously they cannot occupy the same space, hence they must be in a
separate but parallel universe.
So each universe is wholly unique and separate from each
other by some alternate placement of the dots.
As I explained this to my friends, several noted that they
had bought e-books that held similar concepts but were all over the place with
them and in no way made sense. With a begin smile, I told them to buy my books,
and that there are many sci-fi e-books out there with similar concepts but if
the writer doesn’t put time in trying to understand them, even at a basic
level, their science fiction often lacks focus.
The best parallel universes are different but not overly, so,
to make them radically different doesn’t
make sense. Star Trek used the parallel universe concept with opposite personality
differences in the crews. The crew everyone loved and the other a dastardly pirate
crew. It was great the familiarity of
the setting and characters was the base dot-line universe and the personality
dots had been moved slightly to give us the pirate personalities.
Infinite parallel universes are great and offer so many
avenues of exploration to the writer, but to use them with any competence a
working knowledge of the concepts is a must. Now where did my dot go?
