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133-400: In the original five stories, psychologist Harold Shea and his colleagues Reed Chalmers, Walter Bayard, and Vaclav Polacek (Votsy) travel to various parallel worlds where ancient myths or old literature are reality. In the course of their travels, other characters are added to the main cast, notably Belphebe and Florimel, who become the wives of Shea and Chalmers, respectively, and Pete Brodsky,

266-442: A tabletop RPG in novel form and feature sophisticated rules for battling monsters and overcoming obstacles. The story can be decided by factors other than the reader's choices, such as dice rolls (or other randomization mechanics, such as leafing through the book to arrive at a random paragraph number), the lack (or presence) of equipment or other items, or by various statistics, such as running out of health points. The latter style

399-447: A Wonderful Life , George Bailey makes a wish that he had never existed, which an angel, Clarence, asks God to grant to teach George how important his life really is; he is about to be arrested for fraud in relation to money having gone missing from the bank he runs. He gets to see what his gentle sleepy town would be like if he never lived, including the death of his brother Harry at a young age, which in turn results in many troops dying in

532-404: A book under the name of The Magic Quest to Puffin which Puffin agreed to publish. Having spent six more months developing the concept it was published under the name of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982. Another notable UK gamebook series is Lone Wolf , developed by Joe Dever in 1984. Like Fighting Fantasy , the writer was an experienced Dungeons & Dragons player who developed

665-482: A book with a maze-like narrative, which may have inspired the gamebook form. The children's book Treasure Hunt , published in 1945 in Britain under the name of "Alan George" (probably a pseudonym), is another early example of a story with multiple paths for the reader to follow. Programmed learning materials have been recognized as an early influence on the development of branching path books. This learning method

798-423: A channel to distribute solitaire adventures, with both free and commercial adventures made available as electronic documents. Adventure gamebooks incorporate elements from Choose Your Own Adventure books and role-playing solitaire adventures. The books involve a branching path format in order to move between sections of text, but the reader creates a character as in a role-playing game, and resolves actions using

931-458: A character claims that the universe is dangerous because the poem went unfinished, but whether this was his misapprehension or not is not established. Some fictional approaches definitively establish the independence of the parallel world, sometimes by having the world differ from the book's account; other approaches have works of fiction create and affect the parallel world: L. Sprague de Camp 's Solomon's Stone , taking place on an astral plane,

1064-622: A character in a jail comes to the bars every hour on the hour to announce that " Yngvi is a louse!". This phrase has moved into the lexicon and has taken on a life of its own in certain SF-related circles. Who, or what, Yngvi may be is not mentioned in the book, though in Old Norse , Yngvi is another name for the god Freyr . The Incomplete Enchanter and The Castle of Iron have also been issued together as The Compleat Enchanter (1975); Wall of Serpents has also been issued under

1197-550: A dream or some other altered state of consciousness . Examples include the Dream Cycle stories by H. P. Lovecraft or the Thomas Covenant stories of Stephen R. Donaldson . Often, stories of this type have as a major theme the nature of reality itself, questioning whether the dream-world is as real as the waking world. Science fiction often employs this theme in the ideas of cyberspace and virtual reality . In

1330-541: A fantastic island, as Jonathan Swift does in Gulliver's Travels or in the 1949 novel Silverlock by John Myers Myers , or be sucked up into a tornado and land in Oz . These " lost world " stories can be seen as geographic equivalents of a "parallel universe," as the worlds portrayed are separate from our own, and hidden to everyone except those who take the difficult journey there. The geographic "lost world" can blur into

1463-611: A few cases, the interaction between the worlds is an important element, so that the focus is not on simply the fantasy world, but on ours as well. Sometimes the intent is to let them mingle and see what would happen, such as introducing a computer programmer into a high fantasy world as seen in Rick Cook 's Wizardry series, while other times an attempt to keep them from mingling becomes a major plot point, such as in Aaron Allston 's Doc Sidhe . In that story, our "grim world"

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1596-417: A game-system. Unlike role-playing solitaire adventures, adventure gamebooks include all the rules needed for play in each book. Adventure gamebooks are usually not divided into numbered pages, but rather into numbered sections of text, so that several sections may fit in a single page, or a single section can span several pages. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was published in 1982, the first of what became

1729-485: A kamikaze attack, whom Harry would have saved if George was around to save Harry. At times, alternative universes have been featured in small scale independent productions such as Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's It Happened Here (1964), featuring an alternative United Kingdom which had undergone Operation Sea Lion in 1940 and had been defeated and occupied by Nazi Germany . It focused on moral questions related to

1862-582: A minor character appearing therein to that of The Arabian Nights by the agency of an unnamed magician who appears to be intended to represent L. Sprague de Camp himself. "Return to Xanadu" was first published in The Enchanter Completed: A Tribute Anthology for L. Sprague de Camp edited by Harry Turtledove and published by Baen Books in 2005. The original publication of the first three Pratt and De Camp collaborations ("Roaring Trumpet", "Mathematics of Magic", and The Castle of Iron )

1995-489: A more explicit "parallel universe" when the fantasy realm overlaps a section of the "real" world, but is much larger inside than out, as in Robert Holdstock 's novel Mythago Wood . However, increasing geographical knowledge meant that such locations had to be farther and farther off. Perhaps influenced by ideas from science fiction, many works chose a setting that takes place in another, separate reality. As it

2128-540: A parallel universe and our own—may serve as a central plot-point , or it may simply be mentioned and quickly dismissed, having served its purpose of establishing a realm unconstrained by realism. Discworld , for example, only very rarely mentions our world or any other worlds, as Pratchett set the books in a parallel universe instead of in "our" reality to allow for magic on the Disc . While technically incorrect, and looked down upon by hard science-fiction fans and authors,

2261-591: A parallel universe but is actually a distinct idea. A counter-Earth is a planet that shares Earth's orbit but is on the opposite side of the Sun, and thus cannot be seen from Earth. There would be no necessity that such a planet would be like Earth in any way, although typically in fiction it is practically identical to Earth. Since Counter-Earth is within our universe and the Solar System , reaching it can be accomplished with ordinary space travel. Convergent evolution

2394-571: A person decides between jam or butter on his toast , two universes are created: one where that person chose jam, and another where that person chose butter. The concept of "sidewise" time travel, a term taken from Murray Leinster's " Sidewise in Time ", is used to allow characters to pass through many different alternative histories, all descendant from some common branch point. Often, worlds that are more similar to each other are considered closer to each other in terms of this sidewise travel. For example,

2527-491: A policeman who is accidentally swept up into the chaos. In the later continuations, the most notable additions to the cast are the recurring villain Malambroso and Voglinda, the young daughter of Shea and Belphebe. The protagonists utilize a system of symbolic logic to project themselves into the worlds they visit, but it is an inexact science, and they miss their target realities as often as they hit them. For example, in

2660-542: A pre-existing world. Occasionally, this approach becomes self-referential, treating the literary universe of the work itself as explicitly parallel to the universe where the work was created. Stephen King 's seven-volume Dark Tower series hinges upon the existence of multiple parallel worlds, many of which are King's own literary creations. Ultimately the characters become aware that they are only "real" in King's literary universe (this can be debated as an example of breaking

2793-419: A reference to the number of the paragraph or page that should be read next if that branch is chosen (e.g. to go north turn to section 98). The narrative thus does not progress linearly through the book or follow the paragraphs in numerical order. The story continues this way until a paragraph or page which ends that branch of the story. Many solitaire or adventure gamebooks feature a single "successful" ending, and

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2926-489: A space ship accidentally travels to another dimension (implied to be hell ), turning the crew insane and driving them to kill each other. Some films present parallel realities that are actually different contrasting versions of the narrative itself. Commonly this motif is presented as different points of view revolving around a central (but sometimes unknowable) "truth", the seminal example being Akira Kurosawa 's Rashomon . Conversely, often in film noir and crime dramas ,

3059-471: A space-like dimension in which humans could travel with the right equipment. Wells also used the concept of parallel universes as a consequence of time as the fourth dimension in stories like The Wonderful Visit and Men Like Gods , an idea proposed by the astronomer Simon Newcomb , who talked about both time and parallel universes; "Add a fourth dimension to space, and there is room for an indefinite number of universes, all alongside of each other, as there

3192-624: A timeline is not explicitly stated to have been erased, it is still there. Parallel universes as a result of time travel can serve simply as the backdrop, or it may be a central plot point. The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove , where the Confederate Army is given thousands of AK-47 rifles and ends up winning the American Civil War , is a good example of the former, while Fritz Leiber 's novel The Big Time where

3325-572: A universe where World War II ended differently would be "closer" to us than one where Imperial China colonized the New World in the 15th century. H. Beam Piper used this concept, naming it "paratime" and writing a series of stories involving the Paratime Police who regulated travel between these alternative realities as well as the technology to do so. Keith Laumer used the same concept of "sideways" time travel in his 1962 novel Worlds of

3458-435: A war between two alternative futures manipulating history to create a timeline that results in or realizes their own world is a good example of the latter. Subscribing to the many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Physics , alternative histories in fiction can arise as a natural phenomenon of the universe. In these works, the idea is that each choice every person makes, each leading to a different result, both occur, so when

3591-481: A well-known writer of erotica. Solitaire adventures were a parallel development. This type of book is intended to allow a single person to use the rules of a role-playing game to experience an adventure without need of a referee. The first role-playing game solitaire adventures to be published were those using the Tunnels & Trolls system, beginning with the book Buffalo Castle in 1976, making Tunnels & Trolls

3724-684: Is a biological concept whereby unrelated species acquire similar traits because they adapted to a similar environment and/or played similar roles in their ecosystems. In fiction, the concept is extended whereby similar planets will result in races with similar cultures and/or histories. Again, this is not a true parallel universe since such planets exist within the same universe as our own, but the stories are similar in some respects. Star Trek frequently explored such worlds, in episodes including " Bread and Circuses ", " The Omega Glory ", and " Miri ". The 2017 episode of British science fiction television programme Doctor Who , " The Doctor Falls ", explains

3857-411: Is a hypothetical universe co-existing with one's own, typically distinct in some way. The sum of all potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often called the " multiverse ". Another common term for a parallel universe is "another dimension", stemming from the idea that if the 4th dimension is time, the 5th dimension—a direction at a right angle to the fourth —is a direction into any of

3990-410: Is a police officer in one universe and a serial killer in another, who travels to other universes to destroy versions of himself, so that he can take their energy; and FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions (2004), the main character runs away from a totalitarian nightmare, and he enters into a cyber-afterlife alternative reality. The current Star Trek films are set in an alternative universe created by

4123-701: Is an imperfect shadow of the heavenly equivalent. One of the first science-fiction examples of a parallel universe is Murray Leinster 's short story Sidewise in Time , published in 1934, which portions of alternative universes replace corresponding geographical regions in this universe. Sidewise in Time analogizes time to the geographic coordinate system , with travel along latitude corresponding to time travel moving through past, present and future, and travel along longitude corresponding to travel perpendicular to time and to other realities. In modern literature, parallel universes can serve two main purposes: to allow stories with elements that would ordinarily violate

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4256-516: Is based on the premise that the essence of a being described as Satan , trapped in a glass canister and found in an abandoned church in Los Angeles, is actually an alien being that is the 'son' of something even more evil and powerful, trapped in another universe. The protagonists accidentally free the creature, who then attempts to release his "father" by reaching in through a mirror . In Event Horizon (1997), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson ,

4389-517: Is for an indefinite number of sheets of paper when we pile them upon each other." There are many examples where authors have explicitly created additional spatial dimensions for their characters to travel in, to reach parallel universes. In Doctor Who , the Doctor accidentally enters a parallel universe while attempting to repair the TARDIS console in " Inferno ". Douglas Adams , in the last book of

4522-466: Is given feedback and is asked to pick a different answer. This educational technique would form a basis for many later narrative gamebook series. During the 1960s, authors from several different countries started experimenting with fiction that contained multiple paths and/or endings. Some literary works in this vein include the French-language novel L'ironie du sort (1961) by Paul Guimard ,

4655-523: Is most commonly associated with the British Fighting Fantasy (FF) franchise (started in 1982), which originated, codified, and popularised much of the more advanced format that many later gamebooks would follow (the geographic dichotomy led to this type of gamebook sometimes being analogously referred to as "British style"). CYOA and FF are the two most popular, successful, and enduring gamebook franchises of all time, rendering them

4788-408: Is not an example of a parallel universe. It is a more scientifically plausible use of hyperspace. (See wormhole .) While the use of hyperspace is common, it is mostly used as a plot device and thus of secondary importance. While a parallel universe may be invoked by the concept, the nature of the universe is not often explored. So, while stories involving hyperspace might be the most common use of

4921-647: Is now not possible to reach these worlds via conventional travel, a common trope is a portal or artifact that connects our world and the fantasy world together, examples being the wardrobe in C. S. Lewis ' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or the sigil in James Branch Cabell 's The Cream of the Jest . In some cases, physical travel is not even possible, and the character in our reality travels in

5054-439: Is paralleled by a "fair world" where the elves live and history echoes ours, where a major portion of the plot deals with preventing a change in interactions between the worlds. The idea of a multiverse is as fertile a subject for fantasy as it is for science fiction, allowing for epic settings and superhuman protagonists. One example of an epic and far-ranging fantasy "multiverse" is that of Michael Moorcock , who actually named

5187-519: Is populated by the daydreams of mundane people, and in Rebecca Lickiss's Eccentric Circles , an elf is grateful to Tolkien for transforming elves from dainty little creatures. These stories often place the author, or authors in general, in the same position as Zelazny's characters in Amber. Questioning, in a literal fashion, if writing is an act of creating a new world, or an act of discovery of

5320-483: Is that you are imagining these things in the context of fiction while the physicists and mathematicians are imagining them in terms of science. I suspect it is the romantic imagination working, as it often does, perfectly efficiently in both the arts and the sciences." Unlike many science-fiction interpretations, Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories go far beyond alternative history to include mythic and sword and sorcery settings as well as worlds more similar to, or

5453-399: Is the concept of hyperspace . Used in science fiction, the concept of "hyperspace" often refers to a parallel universe that can be used as a faster-than-light shortcut for interstellar travel . Rationales for this form of hyperspace vary from work to work, but the two common elements are: Sometimes "hyperspace" is used to refer to the concept of additional coordinate axes . In this model,

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5586-576: The Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks, one of the first adventure gamebook series. With over 60 titles, including a variety of spin-offs, the series popularised the gamebook format in the UK and many other countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, the United States, Portugal, Tanzania, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Israel, Japan, and after

5719-569: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Mostly Harmless , uses the idea of probability as an extra axis in addition to the classical four dimensions of space and time similar to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics , although according to the novel they were more a model to capture the continuity of space, time and probability. Robert A. Heinlein , in The Number of

5852-706: The 1000 Gefahren series in Germany and the Tú decides la aventura series in Spain. The sixtieth and "lost" entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, Bloodbones , was finally published by Wizard in 2006. In recent years, the format may be getting a new lease of life on mobile and ebook platforms. This type of book was seen predominantly as a form of entertainment for children. Nonetheless, there were books with more didactic purposes (ranging from historical series such as

5985-529: The Czech Republic and Russia . In Azerbaijan , Narmin Kamal's novel, Open It's Me , offers the reader a choice to either read the book as a random collection of thirty-nine short stories about the same character, or as a single novel. A photo of the book's hero is published on the final page and the author asks the reader questions about the character. The branching-path book commercial boom dwindled in

6118-414: The laws of nature ; and to serve as a starting point for speculative fiction , asking the question "What if [event] turned out differently ?". Examples of the former include Terry Pratchett 's Discworld and C. S. Lewis 's The Chronicles of Narnia , while examples of the latter include Harry Turtledove 's Worldwar series . A parallel universe—or more specifically, continued interaction between

6251-709: The 1980s in several other countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Chile, Denmark and Japan. Despite the domination of works that have been translated from English in most non-English-speaking countries, a sizable number of original gamebooks—both individual books and series—have been published in various countries; this is especially the case in France and in Japan (e.g. Tokyo Sogensha 's Super Adventure Game series and Futabasha 's Bouken Gamebook series). In some other countries, publication both of translated series and of original books began in later years. For example,

6384-550: The 1980s, this series was only available in Catalan and Spanish. Heather McElhatton published a bestselling gamebook for adults in 2007, called Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel . It was followed by a sequel titled Million Little Mistakes published in 2010. Some contemporary literary novels have used the gamebook format, including Kim Newman 's Life's Lottery (1999) and Nicholas Bourbaki's If (2014). In 2011, McGraw-Hill Education began releasing adaptations of

6517-410: The 2000 film The Family Man , the 2001 cult film Donnie Darko , which deals with what it terms a "tangent universe" that erupts from our own universe; Super Mario Bros. (1993) has the eponymous heroes cross over into a parallel universe ruled by humanoids who evolved from dinosaurs; The One (2001) starring Jet Li , in which there is a complex system of realities in which Jet Li's character

6650-415: The 8th Dimension , where the "8th dimension" is essentially a "phantom zone" used to imprison the villainous Red Lectroids. Uses in horror films include the 1986 film From Beyond (based on the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name) where a scientific experiment induces the experimenters to perceive aliens from a parallel universe, with bad results. The 1987 John Carpenter film Prince of Darkness

6783-714: The Beast , Heinlein quantizes that the many parallel, fictional universes – in terms of works of fiction. He postulates that all fictional universes are accessible by the "time twister" in the air vehicle named the Gay Deceiver . Heinlein also " breaks the fourth wall " by having both Robert and his wife Virginia visit an inter-universal science-fiction-and-fantasy convention in the book's last chapter. Heinlein continues this literary conceit in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond

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6916-417: The Beast , postulated a six-dimensional universe. In addition to the three spatial dimensions, he invoked symmetry to add two new temporal dimensions, so there would be two sets of three. Like the fourth dimension of H. G. Wells' "Time Traveller," these extra dimensions can be traveled by persons using the right equipment. Perhaps the most common use of the concept of a parallel universe in science fiction

7049-551: The Beast . Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp took the protagonist of the Harold Shea series through the worlds of Norse myth, Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene , Ludovico Ariosto 's Orlando Furioso , and the Kalevala – without ever quite settling whether writers created these parallel worlds by writing these works, or received impressions from the worlds and wrote them down. In an interlude set in " Xanadu ",

7182-752: The Bulgarian market, the works of numerous Bulgarian gamebook authors were most popular with readers. During the popularity peak of gamebooks in Bulgaria, Bulgarian publishing houses believed that only Western authors would sell and, as a consequence, virtually all Bulgarian gamebook authors adopted English pseudonyms. This tradition persisted after their nationality was publicly disclosed. A smaller number of Hungarian authors also adopted Western pseudonyms, in addition to "official titles" that were also in English. Several adventure gamebooks have been released in

7315-515: The Consequences! by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins was published in the United States in 1930, and boasts "a dozen or more" different endings depending on the "taste of the individual reader". The 1936 play Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand , about a trial, is unusual in that members of the audience are chosen to play the jury and deliver a verdict, which then influences the play's ending: guilty or not guilty. Also quite early on,

7448-477: The Elven world lies through a patch of mist in the woods. It was constructed when the Elven were thrown out of our world. Travel to and fro is possible by those in the know, but can have lethal consequences. Isekai is a subgenre of Japanese fantasy light novels, manga, anime, and video games revolving around a normal person being transported to or trapped in a parallel universe. Often, this universe already exists in

7581-628: The French-language book Histoires comme tu voudras (Stories as You Want Them, 1978) by Marie-Christine Helgerson, among others. In the US, The Adventures of You series appeared in 1976–77, with two titles that would later become part of the groundbreaking Choose Your Own Adventure series: Sugarcane Island by Edward Packard and Journey Under the Sea by R. A. Montgomery . Tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons were another early influence that would contribute in major ways to

7714-816: The Gnome King", the classical Chinese epic novel Journey to the West in "Sir Harold and the Monkey King," the romantic fantasies of Miguel de Cervantes ' Don Quixote (with the unique twist of its being Quixote's version of reality rather than Cervantes') in "Knight and the Enemy", Virgil 's Graeco-Roman epic the Aeneid in "Arms and the Enchanter", the old Russian Tale of Igor's Campaign in "Enchanter Kiev," Bhavabhuti 's Baital Pachisi (or "Vikram and

7847-545: The Imperium . More recently, novels such as Frederik Pohl 's The Coming of the Quantum Cats and Neal Stephenson 's Anathem explore human-scale readings of the "many worlds" interpretation , postulating that historical events or human consciousness spawns or allows "travel" among alternative universes. Universe 'types' frequently explored in sidewise and alternative history works include worlds whose Nazis won

7980-645: The Second World War , as in The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick , SS-GB by Len Deighton , Fatherland by Robert Harris , and Earthside by Dennis E. Taylor , and worlds whose Roman Empire never fell, as in Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg , Romanitas by Sophia McDougall , and Warlords of Utopia by Lance Parkin . The concept of counter-Earth might seem similar to

8113-586: The Spanish-language novels Hopscotch (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Juego de cartas (Card Game, 1964) by Max Aub , and the works of the French literary group known as the Oulipo (1967). Other early experiments include the short stories "Alien Territory" and "The Lost Nose: a Programmed Adventure" (both 1969) by John Sladek , the novel The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles , and

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8246-486: The Sunset , using characters from throughout his science-fictional career, hauled forth from their own fictional universe. Heinlein also wrote a stand-alone novel, Job: A Comedy of Justice , whose two protagonists fall from alternative universe into alternative universe and after a number of such adventures die and enter a stereotypically Fundamentalist Christian Heaven (with many of its internal contradictions explored in

8379-615: The T&;T system, as well as solos for other tabletop role-playing games. The first commercially successful series of gamebooks was the Choose Your Own Adventure series establishing the "American" gamebook tradition. The "British" tradition, as exemplified by the Fighting Fantasy series, was, by contrast, slightly younger. British gamebooks differ from the American tradition by having rules more strongly influenced by

8512-515: The Vampire"), a proto- Arabian Nights collection of Indian tales, in "Sir Harold and the Hindu King", Edgar Rice Burroughs ' Barsoom in "Sir Harold of Zodanga", and William Shakespeare 's The Tempest in "Harold Sheakespeare". There exists one additional contribution to the series; "Return to Xanadu" by Lawrence Watt-Evans , which revisits the world of Kubla Khan and transfers

8645-639: The Wasp: Quantumania . This series of universes overlaps or encompasses with universes depicted in Sony's Spider-Man Universe and the animated Spider-Verse franchise. The success of Marvel's Multiverse Saga, particularly Avengers: Endgame in 2019, led to a noticeable rise in the popularity of multiverses and shared universes in films of the early 2020s, predominantly for superhero films but also in Hollywood more broadly. Notable examples include

8778-619: The aforementioned Spider-Verse franchise, 2022's Academy Award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once , the DC Extended Universe film The Flash , and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always . Some filmmakers and critics, including Endgame co-director Joe Russo , have expressed concern that film studios may be embracing multiverse-centric plotlines to capitalize on characters and intellectual property with pre-existing popularity, ultimately to

8911-518: The aforementioned Time Machine to books with religious themes such as the Making Choices series). Also, a few branching-path books were aimed at adults, ranging from business simulations to works of erotica. Barring the aforementioned works of Dennis Guerrier in the 1960s, one of the earliest examples of the form is the five-volume Barcelona, Maxima Discrecion series, which adapted the noir fiction genre to an interactive form. Published in

9044-409: The alternate spacetime realities. Fiction has long borrowed an idea of "another world" from myth , legend and religion . Heaven , Hell , Olympus , and Valhalla are all "alternative universes" different from the familiar material realm. Plato reflected deeply on parallel realities, resulting in the worlds of Platonism , in which the upper reality is perfect while the lower (earthly) reality

9177-727: The alternative narrative is a fiction created by a central character, intentionally – as in The Usual Suspects – or unintentionally – as in Angel Heart . Less often, the alternative narratives are given equal weight in the story, making them truly alternative universes, such as in the German film Run Lola Run , the short-lived British West End musical Our House and the British film Sliding Doors . More recent films that have explicitly explored parallel universes are:

9310-544: The ambiguity. Some writers depict the land of the elves as a full-blown parallel universe, with portals the only entry – as in Josepha Sherman 's Prince of the Sidhe series or Esther Friesner 's Elf Defense – and others have depicted it as the next land over, possibly difficult to reach for magical reasons – Hope Mirrlees 's Lud-in-the-Mist , or Lord Dunsany 's The King of Elfland's Daughter . In some cases,

9443-582: The archetypes of their respective, clashing styles and positions on the complexity spectrum. Later series like Lone Wolf and Fabled Lands , typically from Britain, would take the FF formula and push the limits of what could be achieved with printed text narratives (leading to, for example, twenty-book arcs in which the same created character could be taken sequentially from one to the next, or four or more books that contain interlocking references to each other in order to create one huge world map). In all gamebooks,

9576-481: The boundary between Elfland and more ordinary lands is not fixed. Not only the inhabitants but Faerie itself can pour into more mundane regions. Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series proposes that the world of the Elves is a "parasite" universe, that drifts between and latches onto others such as Discworld and our own world (referred to as "Roundworld" in the novels). In the young teenage book Mist by Kathryn James ,

9709-552: The collection of short stories titled Tante storie per giocare (Many Tales to Play With, 1971) by Italian author Gianni Rodari . Taken together, these influences may have contributed to the development of several pioneering gamebooks in the 1960s and 1970s. These include Lucky Les by E.W. Hildick (1967), State of Emergency by Dennis Guerrier and Joan Richards (1969), the Swedish-language book Den mystiska påsen (The Mysterious Bag, 1970) by Betty Orr-Nilsson, and

9842-431: The complexity of the game aspect. At one end are the branching-plot novels, which require the reader to make choices but are otherwise like regular novels (this style is exemplified by the originator of the gamebook format, Choose Your Own Adventure , and is sometimes referred to as "American style"). At the other end of the spectrum are what amounts to "solitaire RPG adventures" or "adventure gamebooks", which emulate

9975-492: The concept in a 1963 science fiction novel The Sundered Worlds . Like many authors after him, Moorcock was inspired by the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics , saying, "It was an idea in the air, as most of these are, and I would have come across a reference to it in New Scientist (one of my best friends was then editor) ... [or] physicist friends would have been talking about it. ... Sometimes what happens

10108-463: The detriment of originality and creativity in filmmaking. Gamebook A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not follow paragraphs in a linear or ordered fashion. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA after

10241-399: The development of the gamebook form. The first module which combined a branching-path narrative with a set of role-playing game rules was Buffalo Castle for the Tunnels & Trolls system (1975). Buffalo Castle was innovative for its time, as it allowed the reader to experience a role-playing session without need for a referee. It has been followed by many other solitaire adventures for

10374-525: The different origins of the Cybermen as parallel evolution , due to the inevitability of humans and human-like species attempting to upgrade themselves through technology; this perspective resolves continuity differences in the Cybermen's history. Convergent evolution may also be due to contamination. In this case, a planet may start out differently from Earth, but due to the influence of Earth's culture,

10507-482: The earliest adventures in this vein were The Solo Dungeon (1978) by British author Richard Bartle, and Survival of the Fittest (1979), published by Judges' Guild in the United States. Both of these adventures were meant to be used with Dungeons & Dragons rules. Solitaire role-playing adventures also experienced a boom in the 1980s. Many role-playing rulesets included solo adventures which were intended to teach

10640-537: The early 1990s, and the number of new series diminished. However, new branching-path books continue to be published to this day in several countries and languages. Choose Your Own Adventure went on to become the longest running gamebook series with 184 titles. The first run of the series ended in 1998. R. A. Montgomery started rereleasing some Choose Your Own Adventure titles in 2005. His company has also released some new titles. New books and series continue to be published in other countries to this day. Examples are

10773-399: The fantasy world. Before the mid-20th century, this was most often done by hiding fantastic worlds within unknown, distant locations on Earth; peasants who seldom, if ever, traveled far from their villages could not conclusively say that it was impossible that an ogre or other fantastical beings could live an hour away. Characters in the author's world could board a ship and find themselves on

10906-474: The first film's villain traveling back in time, thus allowing the franchise to be rebooted without affecting the continuity of any other Star Trek film or show. The 2011 science-fiction thriller Source Code employs the concepts of quantum reality and parallel universes. The characters in The Cloverfield Paradox , the third installment of the franchise , accidentally create a ripple in

11039-603: The first original books in Brazil and Italy seem to have appeared in the 1990s. Translated editions of Choose your Own Adventure , Fighting Fantasy and other English-language series only appeared in Eastern European countries after the fall of Communism . Since the mid-1980s, about 90 gamebooks have been published in Poland , not only as printed books, but also as comics, e-books or mobile applications. The author of

11172-428: The first role-playing game to support solitaire play. Flying Buffalo released 24 solo adventure books (plus several pocket size adventures) in the period 1976–1993. A number of the adventures are still in print today. They were very successful among players of role-playing games and inspired many imitators. Another early role-playing game with solitaire modules made for it was The Fantasy Trip . The first such module

11305-484: The first story, " The Roaring Trumpet ", Shea intends to visit the world of Irish mythology , and instead ends up in Norse mythology . Most of the worlds visited have systems of physics different from ours, usually magical, which the heroes devote a considerable amount of effort to learning and applying. Much humor is drawn both from the culture shock of their encounters and from the reality that they usually do not understand

11438-528: The fourth wall ), and even travel to a world – twice – in which (again, within the novel) they meet Stephen King and alter events in the real Stephen King's world outside of the books. An early instance of this was in works by Gardner Fox for DC Comics in the 1960s, in which characters from the Golden Age (which was supposed to be a series of comic books within the DC Comics universe) would cross over into

11571-474: The game mechanics of roleplaying games. Sugarcane Island by Edward Packard was written in 1969 but did not see publication until 1976. This became a series when Journey Under the Sea by R. A. Montgomery was published in 1977. Two standalone gamebooks authored by Packard would follow, both published by Lippincott: Deadwood City (1978) and The Third Planet from Altair (1979). While these early efforts apparently achieved some popularity with readers, they (and

11704-542: The gamebook format in general) still did not have a publisher with the marketing strength required to make them available to mass audiences. Packard and Montgomery took the idea of publishing interactive books to Bantam , and thus the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series was born in 1979, beginning with The Cave of Time . The series became immensely popular worldwide and several titles were translated into more than 25 languages. The series reached

11837-475: The idea of another " dimension " has become synonymous with the term "parallel universe". The usage is particularly common in movies, television and comic books and much less so in modern prose science fiction. The idea of a parallel world was popularized in comic books with the publication of The Flash No. 123, Flash of Two Worlds in 1961. In written science fiction, "new dimension" more commonly—and more accurately—refer to additional coordinate axes , beyond

11970-493: The influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books . Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction . Production of new gamebooks in the West decreased dramatically during the 1990s as choice-based stories have moved away from print-based media, although the format may be experiencing a resurgence on mobile and ebook platforms. Such digital gamebooks are considered interactive fiction or visual novels . Gamebooks range widely in terms of

12103-459: The land in which the confrontation takes place – at other times the otherworldly aspects are clear. Most frequently, time can flow differently for those trapped by the fairy dance than in the lands they come from; although, in an additional complication, it may only be an appearance, as many returning from Faerie, such as Oisín , have found that time "catches up" with them as soon as they have contact with ordinary lands. Fantasy writers have taken up

12236-537: The largest number of titles (20) is Beniamin Muszyński. Polish gamebooks are regularly written by their fans and published online by " Masz Wybór " (publishing house which has been operating since 2010). In the 1990s, the gamebook genre became highly popular in Bulgaria for approximately ten years. Whilst internationally well-known series such as Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy were translated for

12369-476: The local systems well enough to be able to predict the actual effects of the spells they attempt. Much of the series' attraction stems from the interaction of the psychologists' logical, rationalistic viewpoints with the wildly counterintuitive physics of the worlds they visit. Their attitudes provide something of a deconstructionist look at the basic rationales of these worlds, hitherto unexamined either by their inhabitants or even their original creators. They allow

12502-467: The main DC Comics universe. One comic book did provide an explanation for a fictional universe existing as a parallel universe. The parallel world does "exist" and it resonates into the "real world". Some people in the "real world" pick up on this resonance, gaining information about the parallel world which they then use to write stories. Robert Heinlein introduces an extension of his Future History series called The World as Myth . In The Number of

12635-468: The most influential and popular gamebook series was the Fighting Fantasy series, which started in 1980 when a Puffin Books representative saw a hall full of 5,000 people playing Dungeons & Dragons and asked Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson to make a book about role-playing games. They instead offered the idea of a book which simulated the experience of roleplaying games. Within a year they presented

12768-589: The novel). Elfland , or Faerie, the otherworldly home not only of elves and fairies but goblins , trolls , and other folkloric creatures, has an ambiguous appearance in folklore. On one hand, the land often appears to be contiguous with 'ordinary' land. Thomas the Rhymer might, on being taken by the Queen of Faerie, be taken on a road like one leading to Heaven or Hell. This is not exclusive to English or French folklore. In Norse mythology , Elfland ( Alfheim )

12901-534: The original Choose Your Own Adventure titles as graded readers . The stories were retold in simplified language and re-organized plotlines, in order to make them easier for English as a second or foreign language readers to play. The choice format of gamebooks has proved to be popular with ESL teachers as a way to motivate reluctant students, target critical thinking skills, and organize classroom activities. Various erotic gamebooks have been published by major publishers. In 1994 Derrière la porte by Alina Reyes

13034-538: The original collaboration ended, Pratt's early death precluding any additional entries. A final planned story set in the world of Persian mythology was never written, nor was a projected response to L. Ron Hubbard 's misuse of their hero in his novella The Case of the Friendly Corpse (1941). (De Camp would finally address the latter issue in " Sir Harold and the Gnome King ".) Reviewing the 1950 edition of The Castle of Iron , Boucher and McComas described

13167-471: The original series, such as the stranding of Walter Bayard in the world of Irish mythology , and to resolve the unaddressed complication introduced by L. Ron Hubbard 's "borrowing" of Harold Shea for use in his novel The Case of the Friendly Corpse . Both of these goals he accomplished in Sir Harold and the Gnome King (1990 chapbook). When the decision was made to continue the series further, this story

13300-460: The original timeline with a new one. As a result, travel between alternative histories is not possible without reverting the timeline back to the original. There are exceptions to the above, and an alternate history doesn't necessarily overwrite the old one. There are no rules written in stone regarding this. Modern ideas of time travel pose the idea of branching timelines, such as the 2009 Star Trek reboot and Avengers: Endgame . Technically, if

13433-501: The parallel universe concept in fiction, it is not the most common source of fiction about parallel universes. Time travel can result in multiple universes if a time traveller can change the past. In one interpretation, alternative histories as a result of time travel are not parallel universes: while multiple parallel universes can co-exist simultaneously, only one history or alternative history can exist at any one moment, as alternative history usually involves, in essence, overriding

13566-554: The peak of its popularity with children in the 1980s. It was during this period that Bantam released several other interactive series to capitalize on the popularity of the medium (a few examples are: Choose your Own Adventure for Younger Readers , Time Machine and Be An Interplanetary Spy ). Many other American publishers released their own series to compete with CYOA. One of the most popular competitors seems to have been TSR , who released several branching-path novels based on their own role-playing games. The most famous TSR series

13699-477: The planet comes to resemble Earth in some way. Star Trek also frequently used this theory as well, for example, in " Patterns of Force " and " A Piece of the Action ". Simulated realities are digital constructs featured in science fiction such as The Matrix or The Thirteenth Floor which can parallel ours very closely. It is common in fantasy for authors to find ways to bring a protagonist from "our" world to

13832-469: The possibilities of even greater dimensions. Isaac Asimov , in his foreword to the Signet Classics 1984 edition, described Flatland as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions". In 1895, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells used time as an additional "dimension" in this sense, taking the four-dimensional model of classical physics and interpreting time as

13965-454: The possibility of having stories branching out into several different paths was suggested by Jorge Luis Borges in his short story " An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain " (1941). This story features an author whose novel is a three-part story containing two branch points, and with nine possible endings. Another story by Borges, titled " The Garden of Forking Paths " (1941), also describes

14098-507: The professional ethics of Pauline, a nurse forced into Nazi collaboration. Another common use of the theme is as a prison for villains or demons . The idea is used in the first two Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve where Kryptonian villains were sentenced to the Phantom Zone from where they eventually escaped. An almost exactly parallel use of the idea is presented in the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across

14231-611: The protagonist's world as a fictional universe, but it may also be unbeknownst to them. The most famous treatment of the alternative universe concept in film could be considered The Wizard of Oz , which portrays a parallel world, famously separating the magical realm of the Land of Oz from the mundane world by filming it in Technicolor while filming the scenes set in Kansas in sepia . In Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas classic, It's

14364-632: The reader to view these worlds from a fresh viewpoint. The "worlds" so examined include not only the Norse world of "The Roaring Trumpet", but also the worlds of Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene in "The Mathematics of Magic", Ludovico Ariosto 's Orlando Furioso (with a brief stop in Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's Xanadu from " Kubla Khan ") in "The Castle of Iron", the Kalevala in "The Wall of Serpents", and, at last, Irish mythology in "The Green Magician". With "The Green Magician"

14497-421: The relationships between them can vary quite dramatically, but the essence of them remains the same." There are many examples of the meta-fictional idea of having the author's created universe (or any author's universe) rise to the same level of "reality" as the universe we're familiar with. The theme is present in works as diverse as H. G. Wells' Men Like Gods , Myers' Silverlock , and Heinlein's Number of

14630-409: The remainder are "failures". Thus, a gamebook becomes a "puzzle" since only a few or even one branching paths lead to victory. Branching plot novels, on the other hand, tend to be more concerned with narrative resolution rather than winning or losing, thus often have several endings which may be deemed equally "successful". Gamebooks are typically written in the second person with the reader assuming

14763-503: The role of a character to experience the world from that character's point of view (e.g. "you walk into the cold and dark forest"). Many gamebooks form series with a common theme, trade dress, and/or ruleset. While each book is typically a stand-alone narrative, there are gamebook series such as Steve Jackson's Sorcery! that continue the narrative from the previous books in the series. There are several examples of early works of art with branching narratives. The romantic novel Consider

14896-703: The rules systems to the players. Some companies released lines of solitaire adventures for their own games. Examples of games with prolific solitaire lines were Dungeons & Dragons , GURPS , Das Schwarze Auge , DC Heroes , and Call of Cthulhu . Some third-party publishers continued to release solo adventures for established RPG systems (including Judges' Guild, who released solos for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ). Solitaire adventures were also featured quite frequently in professional RPG magazines and fanzines. Several solo adventures (such as those for Tunnels & Trolls , Dungeons & Dragons , and Das Schwarze Auge ) were translated into other languages. As

15029-535: The same as, our own. The term 'polycosmos' was coined as an alternative to 'multiverse' by the author and editor Paul le Page Barnett (also known by the pseudonym John Grant), and is built from Greek rather than Latin morphemes . It is used by Barnett to describe a concept binding together a number of his works, its nature meaning that "all characters, real or fictional [...] have to co-exist in all possible real, created or dreamt worlds; [...] they're playing hugely different roles in their various manifestations, and

15162-429: The series as "a high point in the application of sternest intellectual logic to screwball fantasy". Damon Knight characterized the series as "relaced, ribald adventure ... priceless," saying that "no fantasy reader should be without them." In 1977 Richard A. Lupoff described the series as "whole planes above the hackneyed gut-spillers and skull-smashers that pass for heroic fantasy ." After Pratt died in 1956, De Camp

15295-540: The setting of Lone Wolf for his campaigns. However the books were also inspired by medieval texts such as Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte d'Arthur . Grailquest is a series of gamebooks written by J.H. Brennan (also beginning in 1984) that were also inspired by the Arthurian legends. Set mainly on Avalon they make use of a dice based system. Branching-path books also started to appear during

15428-456: The story is presented as a series of sections of printed text. These are often but not always numbered. Branching-plot novel sections often run to several pages in length, whereas solitaire and adventure gamebook sections are usually no longer than a paragraph or two. These are not intended to be read in order. Instead, at the end of a text section, the reader is typically given a choice of narrative branches that they may follow. Each branch contains

15561-558: The three spatial axes with which we are familiar. By proposing travel along these extra axes, which are not normally perceptible , the traveller can reach worlds that are otherwise unreachable and invisible. In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote the seminal novel exploring this concept called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions . It describes a world of two dimensions inhabited by living squares, triangles, and circles, called Flatland, as well as Pointland (0 dimensions), Lineland (1 dimension), and Spaceland (three dimensions) and finally posits

15694-506: The time-space continuum and travel into an alternative universe, where the monster and the events in the first film transpired. This concept has been also been passively depicted in the view of a romantic couple in the Indian Tamil Film Irandam Ulagam . In the 2000 film The Beach , Leonardo DiCaprio's character Richard, while sitting on the beach with love interest Françoise ( Virginie Ledoyen ), describes

15827-539: The title The Enchanter Compleated (1980); all three volumes of the original series have also been issued together as The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989). The original tales and de Camp's additions from the 1990s were issued together as The Mathematics of Magic: The Enchanter Stories of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (2007). Parallel universe (fiction) A parallel universe , also known as an alternate universe , parallel world , parallel dimension , alternate reality , or alternative dimension ,

15960-410: The universe is thought to be "crumpled" in some higher spatial dimension, and that traveling in this higher spatial dimension, a ship can move vast distances in the common spatial dimensions. An analogy is to crumple a newspaper into a ball and stick a needle straight through: the needle will make widely spaced holes in the two-dimensional surface of the paper. While this idea invokes a "new dimension", it

16093-540: The unrepentant Malambroso. A final tale sends Shea and Belephebe on an unrelated adventure precipitated by the foolishness of Shea's colleague Polacek. Milieus encountered in the second series include the worlds of Irish myth and the Orlando Furioso (again) in "Professor Harold and the Trustees", L. Ron Hubbard's setting from The Case of the Friendly Corpse and L. Frank Baum 's land of Oz in "Sir Harold and

16226-867: The utopia they have found in Thailand as their own parallel universe. Following its introduction in the film Doctor Strange , the multiverse became central to the Multiverse Saga series of superhero films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe , being depicted in Avengers: Endgame , Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings , Spider-Man: No Way Home , Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , and Ant-Man and

16359-673: The world's fundamental magical rules from the ground up. Holly Lisle ("Knight and the Enemy"), John Maddox Roberts ("Arms and the Enchanter") and Tom Wham ("Harold Sheakespeare") were among the authors who recreated the original formula. The initial impulse for the continuation may have been the successful adaptation of the characters into Tom Wham's authorized gamebook adventure Prospero's Isle , published by Tor Books in October 1987 (the basis of "Harold Sheakespeare"), to which de Camp had contributed an admiring introduction. This may have encouraged him to wrap up long-unresolved loose ends from

16492-498: The worlds toured, and the protagonists' problematic use of magic is abandoned. His interest appears to have shifted to debunking the less credible aspects of the universes visited, rather than taking these as a given and extrapolating the fantasy worlds' physical or magical laws from them, as in the previous sequence. On the other hand, some of the new authors made efforts to duplicate de Camp and Pratt's original achievement, exploring fresh venues where their heroes once again have to learn

16625-411: Was Death Test , published in 1978. Eight adventures were released in total. One thing that set them apart was the need for miniatures and a hexmap, in order to take advantage of the combat and movement systems. These adventures were also very popular and influential. Meanwhile, several third-party publishers started to publish solitaire adventures meant for use with popular roleplaying systems. Some of

16758-543: Was Endless Quest (1982–). Another strong competitor was Ballantine with their Find Your Fate series, which featured adventures in the Indiana Jones , James Bond and Doctor Who universes. Famous author R. L. Stine wrote several books for this line, including The Badlands of Hark , as well as for other series such as Wizards, Warriors and You. Several Choose your Own Adventure spin-offs and many competing series were translated into other languages. One of

16891-490: Was also the name of what today is the Swedish province of Bohuslän . In the sagas, it said that the people of this petty kingdom were more beautiful than other people, as they were related to the elves , showing that not only the territory was associated with elves, but also the race of its people. While sometimes folklore seems to show fairy intrusion into human lands – " Tam Lin " does not show any otherworldly aspects about

17024-458: Was first applied in the TutorText series of interactive textbooks, published from the late 1950s up until the early 1970s. These books present the reader with a series of problems related to a particular area of study, allowing him or her to choose among several possible answers. If the answer to a problem is correct, the reader moves on to the next problem. If the answer is incorrect, the reader

17157-633: Was in Unknown Magazine during its brief run. The remaining two appeared in Beyond Fantasy Magazine and Fantasy Magazine a few years later. Sir Harold and the Gnome King first appeared in the World Fantasy Convention program book in 1990 and as a chapbook the following year. It was later revised and appeared with the remainder of the later continuations in regular trade books. In the original story

17290-473: Was published by Pocket Books France and Éditions Robert Laffont , and later translated into English for Grove Press and Weidenfeld & Nicolson (as Behind Closed Doors ) and into Italian for Ugo Guanda Editore (as Dietro le porte ). Melcher Media in 2003 packaged two "Choose-Your-Own-Erotic-Adventure" books for Penguin Books ' Gotham Books imprint, including Kathryn in the City by Mary Anne Mohanraj ,

17423-404: Was reluctant to continue the series on his own, feeling that the collaboration with Pratt had a flavor impossible for either of them to duplicate alone. When he finally did revive the series in company with younger authors nearly forty years later, this impression was seemingly borne out; while not without interest, his own solo contributions to the second series exhibit a wryer, more cynical view of

17556-456: Was revised slightly to reconcile it with the other new stories, though the fit is somewhat awkward. Once the loose ends are resolved, most of the action in the second sequence involves Shea and Chalmers' quest across several universes to rescue Florimel, who has been kidnapped by the malevolent enchanter Malambroso. After Florimel is finally recovered, a similar effort must be made to recover Shea and Belphebe's daughter Voglinda, likewise seized by

17689-502: Was the case with other types of gamebooks, the production of solitaire RPG adventures decreased dramatically during the 1990s. However, new solos continue to be published to this day. Some companies continue to produce solo adventures for Tunnels & Trolls . There are also new solo adventures for a variety of systems, and even some influenced by the Fantasy Trip solos (such as the ones by Dark City Games). The Internet has provided

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