Questions tagged [parallel-universe]
For questions about a parallel universe or alternative reality, a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality.
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A universe not quite like ours
Okay this is a story someone else was telling me about. I wanted to read it but he didn't remember the title. This was in the mid-eighties; the story itself must be at least that old.
The protagonist ...
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What is the first instance of a portal to another world?
In ancient Greece, the gods lived up on a mountain, and Hades seems to have been a place that you could sail to.
Personally, I think in modern times the concept of a portal or wormhole is so familiar,...
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What's the most recent specific historical element that is common between Star Trek and the real world?
It is well known that there appears to be some divergence between the events of the Star Trek universe and ours (in particular, the Augments and Khan Singh, etc.)
Related: Has Star Trek ever ...
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Can Marty McFly ever truly return home?
In the Back to the Future trilogy, the character Marty McFly travels back in time, and meets his own parents. In doing this, he directly changes the outcome of many things including the relationship ...
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Story Identification: Fantasy world that is "the one true world"
Sometime in the early 90's, I borrowed an audio book from a local library. I would be interested in reading it in full, but I don't remember the author or title. Given that it was an audio book in a ...
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Movie with two parallel universes, each of which is a television show in the other's universe
I didn't expect this to be so difficult to find since it was relatively recent, but my Google searches are turning up nothing but listicles.
Details:
Most likely made sometime between 2005 and 2015
...
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Is there a depiction of Superman where he is an African American?
Is there a comic book, animation, or any other media where Superman is depicted as being an African American?
I know that there are alternate universes where he is, for example, a Soviet, but I'm ...
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Was the Enterprise-D the first Galaxy class starship? Why?
According to the script of Yesterday's Enterprise, the Enterprise-D was, "the first Galaxy Class warship built by the Federation".
How can that be? I thought the first would be the Galaxy, hence the ...
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Sci-fi novel involving parallel universes and possible time travel
I'm trying to identify a science fiction novel I read many years ago but whose title and author escape me.
I think it was borrowed because I went through all my books, but I couldn't find that one.
...
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Is there a difference between a parallel universe and an alternate universe?
This was prompted by a previous question I had here, but I decided it was a good stand-alone question.
This is a general science fiction question and not specific to any particular world.
Is there a ...
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Was there an original and definitive use of alternate dimensions/realities in fiction?
The fictional device or premise of alternate dimensions or realities seems so common today that it requires almost no explanation when used in stories. But despite how common this is now, it must have ...
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Story about machines generating energy with parallel universes, endangering ours
I suppose I read this story in a book in the nineties but I have no memory of actually reading it or the cover, I just remember a lot of the plot.
Scientists find out they are being contacted by the ...
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Book where Earth is invaded by a future, parallel-universe Earth
I read this young-adult science-fiction book about 10 years ago, I believe I may have picked it up through an advance reader copy program. If it was an ARC, details may have been changed before ...
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SF book about people trapped in a series of worlds they imagine
I read this story a while ago, before 1990, probably quite a bit eartlier, and I suspect it is rather older than that (60s or 70s?). I think it was a short story, but I am not sure.
It is set in the ...
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Complicated story identification from book cover
I really want to find this book again. I had it back in the seventies, the story was complex, surreal, competing realities type.
The cover showed one figure (I think), anyway, their neck was a ...
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Book involving a metaverse of many parallel worlds, a section of which is known as "The Blight"
I am trying to find a book I read maybe 40 years ago, but which has stuck with me.
There were many "parallel" worlds, each only slightly different (as usual). Most of the worldlines adjacent ...
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Novel in which the protagonist fades out is forgotten by, and can't interact with, the rest of the world
Trying to identify a novel I read years ago (probably in the '80s) in which the protagonist (late teens, early 20s?) is gradually forgotten by and ceases to be able to interact with the rest of the ...
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Short story about a hole to another universe that pulls in metal
This question reminded me of a story I read in the 90s.
A woman is caught shoplifting a bunch of metal items by throwing them into her purse. She has no memory, and the purse is empty. Anything metal ...
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Man transported from Alternate World into ours by a Neutrino Detector
Probably read 15-20 years ago. English Paperback.
Scientists running a deep underground Neutrino Detector [might have been cosmic rays]. It was a VERY Large tank of water with detectors built into ...
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A novel about a group of scientists who think they've invented a teleporter
I read this a few years ago, around 2015/16 I think and I cannot for the life of me remember the title of it and googling isn't helping at all.
It was about a group of scientists who are working on ...
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A man sent to a parallel Earth to save someone important
This is not a novel, but "longish" short fiction, novelette or novella. I read it around 1984, in an already used book containing half a dozen or so stories, in a cheap hotel in the US. There were ...
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TV Alternate World Story - No WW2
In the 1960s or possibly 1970s I saw a British tv programme in which a man gets transferred into an alternate world. I only remember a few snatches. He gets a coin in change with Edward VIII's head ...
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Story about a multiverse theory of immortality
Please help me identify a short story I read about a guy who believed that the multiverse was true, but the one that we experienced was the one in which we lived the longest. He was also contemplating ...
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First instance of a universe being "close enough"
My favorite Simpsons episode is the 1994 Halloween episode in which Homer Simpson repeatedly travels back in time and makes changes in the past, resulting in bizarre alterations to the present. ...
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Story: Ship repeatedly blasted into parallel universes
I read this short story about 10 years ago.
A young female starship officer wakes up after an attack by the dreaded mysterious alien enemies. She finds only part of her ship still in existence, and ...
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What exactly are the 'voids' in the Fringe parallel universe?
From what I can tell the primary reason that the other parallel universe is seeking to destroy our universe is because they presume that the voids that appear there are being caused by this universe.
...
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Boy meets female version of self from alternate dimension after his mother dies
When I was young I read a book about a teenage boy whose life was very miserable because his mother had died. He then finds a girl in his house and she thinks she is in her house. They share about ...
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Name a book of the 80s about a group of scientist/students being transported to a parallel universe
Can you help me identify this book? I read it in the 80s. What I can remember:
It was about a group of people who get sucked into a parallel
universe / another world after a device malfunctions and ...
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2018-2019 short Netflix series about a world that splits into two identical halves
Trying to remember a short Netflix series about a world that experiences a catastrophic event where it splits into two separate but identical halves. Each half is a whole image of the original world, ...
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A (G-rated) graphic novel with a picture of purple tentacles coming out of a door on the cover
I'm trying to find a graphic novel about two kids, a boy and a girl, who moved to an old family house because they couldn't afford where they were living anymore. In the house, they discovered a ...
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What "time travel" story required the traveller to mentally reconstruct his world in order to return to it?
Here's what I remember about it:
The protagonist is sent a relatively short distance into the future
(maybe a year? I've forgotten).
When he arrives in this "future" he finds himself in a completely ...
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In the Star Trek Episode "The Alternative Factor", why did Lazarus have to be locked in the corridor between universes?
Wikipedia article on the episode. It is clear to me that the Lazarus from the normal universe wanted to meet the Lazarus from the anti-matter universe, and if that would happen both universes would be ...
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Short story where a character moves through dimensions via mental exercises
It's been about 25 years since I read a story in an anthology. The only details I remember from it are that a guy is told that if, while walking down a road (or something similar), he mentally forces ...
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When was the concept of multiverse used in comics for the first time?
The concept of multiverse, sharing different universes and characters travelling in other alternate dimensions, when was the first time this happened in comic books ?
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Female protagonist that is sick in one reality and well in another
I read a few books in a series of novels with a female protagonist. She was either severely injured or very ill in 'our world', but she was able to travel to another dimension. They referred to the ...
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Book: Gen-manipulated intelligent squids explore space/planet
I'm looking for the author and title of a book. I believe it's (supposed to be) the first in a trilogy, all using the same characters, but taking place in different universes - with only humans, with ...
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Why would Quinn wait to Slide to a new reality?
In Sliders, the first trip they make they slide away from earth before their timer counts down. This means they can't get back to Earth-1 directly.
Later in the series they're faced with many, many ...
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Book - Man returns from Vietnam and opens portal to another world with his ham radio
If I remember correctly, a guy comes home from Vietnam and starts playing with his ham radio and somehow creates a portal to another Earth.
Then I remember a jump in time. Now, it's our time and ...
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Why are the two universes in Fringe not more divergent?
related: Why are there only 2 universes that are visitable?
It seems that there are differences in the universes dating back to the 1930s
Zeppelin flight was effectively finished in the USA by the ...
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Book where people are continually slipping between "close" parallel alternate worlds/paratime without realizing it?
Only clear recollection from the book is an example along the lines of:
Experience: I know I put my keys on the table next to the door, but when I went back they weren't there. Looked all around the ...
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Book where a soldier is transported to an alternative Earth during the Battle of Verdun (WW1)
This is a long-shot as I remember very little about the book. It may not even have been written in English, but in Dutch.
I read this in the first half of the 1980's. Got it from my school library. ...
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First occurrence of a character being philosophically overwhelmed by the multiverse
Quite often a character in stories (comics, movies, books, etc) that discuss parallel worlds and the multiverse is overwhelmed mentally and philosophically. The concept that pops their mental fuse is ...
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80s-90s novel about reptilian overlords, with "east" or "west" in the title
Novel about a parallel world where the dominant species is reptilian. Some humans (or a human?) are captured and their way of life is threatened. Very severe race with different clans at war with each ...
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What was the earliest SF work that used the idea of the "Multiverse"?
The discussion below this question leads me to ask: What was the earliest SF work that used the idea of the Multiverse (parallel universes or alternate worlds)? I'm looking for fairly hard SF ...
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What is the title of a story about a elevator through time and the smallest possible change [duplicate]
Many years ago I read a story about a guy working for an organisation that would influence time-lines by traveling through time using a sort of elevator. The objective of the operators was to ...
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Old SF story, similar to "Sliders", involving a group who've been sliding through alternate Earths, and have gotten lost
Spoilers, BTW. The story concerns a group who have been sliding through alternate Earths, and are lost. They're terrified of being identified as some Earths are aware of sliders and don't approve. ...
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A audio book about two children and an apprentice wizard?
I remember back when I was a child (late nineties), I listened to some audiotapes. One of them was story about two children, and a wizard who accidentally teleports into them when he is trying to pass ...
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Which was the first story featuring merging of alternative/parallel universes?
In Orguss (1983), a space-time oscillation bomb explodes, and as a result, several dimensions are merged into one, having Earth inhabited by different races.
Reading on the internet, I found about ...
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Looking for a book about a drug that causes habitual users to cross to another world that has an extra color
I've been trying to find a book that I read in the early 90's, but that judging from the cover was published in the late 60's/early 70's about a drug epidemic that was actually backed by the UN ...
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A web comic where a woman in a hoodie asks what universe she is in?
Some years back I read a beautifully illustrated fantasy web comic, rather surreal.
All I remember is a woman in a hoodie stumbling into some alternate world. She zipped up her hoodie to obscure her ...
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