A couple of days ago I caught a really interesting show on the history channel about the possibilities and consequences of parallel universes. The bottom line was some to many physicists believe that parallel universes or the multiverse do exist. (This is a new concept to some so new that word flags multiverse as misspelled.) I being a long time comic book reader and sf writer have been familiar with the concept for a while now. Though it’s something I’ve always avoided tackling in writing because quite simply I always thought the concept was too mindboggling for my simple mind to comprehend.
In the book I am writing now, The Seven Sapphire Sirens are currently ancestors from an alien race. The show though on history channel got me thinking, wouldn’t it be kind of neat if the atlantians actually came from a parallel dimension? This in turn got me thinking again about the possibilities and consequences of such dimensions and how we would deal with them. It is an interesting subject that got my mind off on a tangent. Are there an infinite number of possible parallel universes? Does every single action a person takes or decision they make cause a “branch” in one universe that creates another universe? Do my parallel universes coincide with the parallel universes of the people I interact with everyday? If so it seems like the number of universes each of us are living in would always be growing. So infinity would be getting larger?? Surely even infinity must have some sort of practical limit. Which brings up another question: what is the main universe? Is there a main universe?
To make a super complicated matter about matter even more complicated I started thinking how this would effect such metaphysical concepts like God and soul. Would each universe have its own God? Is there a hierarchal of Gods? Would there be one ruling God? What exactly would God be? I have no idea. To get a bit (but not much) more down to Earth would we share any mental / physical or psychic links with any parallel Universe copies of ourselves? To put it in more spiritual way do all of our parallel selves share the same soul? Do they share some sort of energy bond that some people call a soul? If one of ourselves dies do the others feel it? I would like to think all the “mes” out there do share some kind of common bond. But really I have no idea.
Finally I concluded, I don’t think humans (at least not this one) can truly comprehend how vast infinity and time and space are. Therefore writing about it or trying to write about it is something I will leave to other people. The Atlantians will be aliens from another planet. That is a concept I can truly sink my teeth into and appreciate. I can deal with writing about how we would deal with other cultures and races and how they would deal with us. As for parallel universes, they made for an interesting mental detour. Hopefully it was a detour that sparked my creative flow as I passed around it to my story.
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3 comments:
You know one of my personal favorite writers tackled exactly this topic not once but a few time. Perhaps you have heard of Robert A. Heinlein? His book The Number Of The Beast is exactly that, an exploration of the multiverse and the theoretical possibilities. I don't know how much of it was truly from his own mind, but within the story his character postulates that universes can be created two ways: One, by a "writer" who makes a story that so many people believe in that the universe that it exists in becomes a living entity, i.e. L. Frank Baum's OZ. The other postulate is that at certain cusp points in history the universe divides like cellular mitosis, for one result one universe, for the opposite result a different universe. To really get the grasp of his whole concept there are three books to read, but as a writer you probably want to avoid that because it is easy to let one influence the other. If you want to know which books they are I will be happy to tell you, but you must ask! Although any of them stand on their own quite well.
It has also been tackled on the SciFi Channel show Stargate SG-1 many times, but without the in-depth analysis
Further on shipping's comment: Cat Who Walks Through Walls expanded on the multiple universe idea which respect to multiple timelines. The Burroughs Irrelevancy Drive (from Beast) is used by the Time Corps to jump between universes and timelines.
Yeah I have seen the Stargate Episodes. Star Trek also used parallel universes a lot. They just don't ever attempt to justify them.
I am reading: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
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