Books tagged with: parallel universe

Reviewed by Matt Karder. I have never been an ardent fan of short stories but this collection certainly is an exception. The flow within the prose is a major factor. Short sentences bursting with content focus the reader’s attention very effectively. A Worm In The Well & The Worm Turns The first two...

A parallel world action drama with everyone urgently following mission briefings and investigating crimes, Asks the Dream pitches the reader into the centre of a grey shaded struggle where the characters feel cleaner than the corporations they are taking orders from. When it suits her, Charity is a...

Axiomatic is a collection of science fiction short stories by Greg Egan. Most science fiction fans these days would agree what when it comes to hard science fiction, Greg Egan is one of the best. In ten years he has given us a good handful of novels, all every much driven by the laws of nature, as E...

Black Light is an original science fiction novel, written by Christian Tremain. Josh Brenin is going through some pretty tough times. Since he lost his wife in a car crash, Josh has been unable to adequately deal with life. He loses his high paid exceutive job and begins to suffer from insomnia, cau...

Caesars Bicycle is a science fiction novel by the American author John Barnes. Mark Strang is a Crux Ops, which means that he hops around in timelines fighting the Closers (your basic timeline hopping bunch of slave drivers). This is the third book in the Timeline Wars series (the first two being Pa...

Cantata 140 (also known as "the crack in space") is a science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. The name comes from Bach's Cantata BWV 140 which is also known as "Sleepers, Wake". The year is 2080 and overpopulation has become such an issue that millions of people have voluntarily become cryogenically...

A book filled with ideas and scenes that demonstrate a strong command of both language and writing, Dream Alchemy by Nicholas Boyd Crutchley is a tricky text to review, mostly because it lacks a coherent story. Crutchley is playing with a multiple reality concept. We have occasional hints of this wi...

Earth Sink is a science fiction apocalyptic vision by Ilyan Lavanway. War has broken out on the planet of Antecedeon, a seemingly perfect alien world where peace and harmony have reigned for countless generations. A group calling themselves the New Order have grown bored and fed up with perfection a...

Empire State is the début novel of the talented author Adam Christopher, combining a superhero tale with an alternative reality prohibition era noir-esque New York. Throw in gangsters, private investigators and a rogue robot and even a slight nod to steampunk then you have one daring mix. The parall...

Europe in Autumn was my first experience of Dave Hutchinson's unique and astonishing voice. It is simply sublime fiction, a deep and intelligent story and one of my favourite reads of recent times. It was impressive enough to win SFBook Book of the Year in 2014. Europe at Midnight is the much sought...

Extinction Game is a clever novel that mixes a post-apocalyptic setting with parallel worlds and a thrilling plot. It all begins with Jerry Beche who believes he is the only survivor following a viral pandemic that sweeps the globe. While eking out an existence alone in the quiet wilderness that sur...

Finity is a science fiction novel by the author John Barnes. The writing of a Science Fiction story that takes place in an infinite-multiple-universe setting often runs into the basic problem of stopping the main character from just finding the best possible universe and then staying there. Once rem...

Frankenstein Unbound is a science fiction novel by the British author Brian Aldiss. Time is starting to break up, when Joseph Bodenland, a citizen of the year 2020, gets thrown back through time and space to Lake Geneva around the time when Mary Shelly was writing the original Frankenstein story. To...

I discovered Michael Moorcock’s work fairly late in life. I’d just started teaching in Higher Education and was pointed towards both Elric of Melibone and his academic text – Wizardry and Wild Romance. The latter I found disagreeable, but deeply insightful and the former a read I could begin but not...

Review by Luis Villazon. Ira Nayman bills himself as the proprietor of the “Alternate Reality News Service”, a sort of Reuters for the multiverse. This collection of short stories is structured like a newspaper, with technology stories, crime reports, obituaries and advice columns supplied by ARNS c...

Nightingale’s Lament is a novel in the Nightside series by Simon R Green. The Nightside occupies the same space but in another dimension as London does. To travel there one must know the correct portals. John Taylor lived in Nightside all his life until it was discovered that his mother was not huma...

Joe is a private detective who after a visit from the obligatory attractive but mysterious woman is tasked with finding the author of the pulp-fiction series "Osama bin Laden: Vigilante". In this alternative history which seems to have split some time after world war two, the horrific terror attacks...

The Affirmation is one seriously good book, managing to create a complex and mind bending scenario that plays on the structure of reality, levels of existence and the nature of the mind - the very notion of "self" and the idea of identity. The story is narrated in the first person by the central pro...

The Beautiful Land makes excellent use of the parallel dimensions theory as it relates to time travel. Here you don't directly travel in time but to a different point in a parallel world which could be almost like our own or vastly different depending on the changes that have taken place. Here thoug...

The Cybernetic Walrus is a science fiction novel by the Jack L Chalker. On my version of this book the title contains the words Book One - which is, if you ask me, a good thing. All too often you have to read the fine print on the back of a book to find out that it's number one in a series - sometim...

The Divine Invasion is a science fiction novel by the critically acclaimed author Philip K Dick. Couple of people live in some bubbles on a crispy cold methane planet. Bachelor pad one: the guy loves some Rondstadt type woman (Linda Fox) and is a dj from his home dome. The lady in the next bubble is...

And so we come at last to the final volume in the remarkable journey that is The Long Earth . It also happens to be the swansong of that singular author Sir Terry Pratchett. And what a finale it is. The Long Cosmos lives up to the promise the authors have been building with this series, it is quite...

The Long Earth follows the premise that there are an infinite number of alternative dimensions, all existing within one great "Multiverse", each universe containing a slightly different version of the Earth. A few years in the future and a device powered by the humble potato (it will make sense, tru...

Anyone who has been following the Long Earth series will be eagerly awaiting this fourth and penultimate novel in Stephen Baxter's and Terry Pratchett's series. The Long Mars was the strongest novel in the series so far and so The Long Utopia has a lot to live up to. The Long Utopia is set some time...

The Long Earth is an outstanding novel; entertaining with some great touches and a unique story that has Pratchett's touch of genius about it - combined with Baxter's hard-scifi edge and world building skill. All the ideas and the vast scope of the story carried the book forward really well but it s...

The Man in the high castle is the hugo award winning alternative history novel by Philip K Dick. After the Axis won the Second World War the African continent is virtually wiped out, the Mediterranean drained to make farmland and the United States divided between the Japanese and the Nazis. The Japa...

The Nomad of Time trilogy (The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar), compiled into one volume in this paperback edition from Gollancz is a nostalgic treat for fans of steampunk and alternative history. These three stories are the memoirs of Oswald Bastable, Captain of the 53rd...

Back in November 2011 Jeff and Ann VanderMeer published "The Weird", the ultimate collection of weird tales of the last 100 years. This November they turn their attentions to Time Travel in another landmark Tome. This is without a doubt the most definitive collection of stories featuring time travel...

Noomi Rapier is a rookie investigator with the Transdimensional Authority, a force who police the travel between dimensions. When Noomi and her partner "Crash" Chumley find a dead body slumped over an altered transdimensional machine in one of the many dimensions they patrol, they must discover not...

What were once Miracles are now Children's Toys by Ira Nayman is a collection of news stories from alternate realities, as told by the intrepid reporters from the Alternate Reality News Service and is the second volume in the collection. The Author Ira Nayman is the recent winner of the "2010 Swift...

Flatland is a novel by Edwin Abbott Abbott about a two dimensional world. The story tells the tale of a humble square as he guides us through some of the idioms of life in two dimensions. He has a dream about visiting Lineland, a one dimensional world and while there try's to convince the worlds lea...

It's great to see Philip K Dick stories continue to be explored and consumed in different forms of media. His writing still popular long after his death. For those who aren't aware, the UK TV station Channel 4 (Broadcast in the US via Amazon Video) has started a new 10 part anthology series called E...

I have always been a fan of Roger Zelazny. When I was a teenager, The Chronicles of Amber were a library book quest to find the whole set, which never quite happened, so it wasn’t until later in adult life that I was able to purchase the bumper edition that contained them all. Doorways in the Sand w...

Raft was originally a short story published in Interzone back in 1989. Baxter admitted struggling to contain the story to such a short space however and eventually Raft  became the authors first published novel. It's also the first book in the authors Xeelee sequence (although no Xeelee make an appe...

To anyone who has seen the latest Avengers movies you will know that Thanos is not a nice chap. He single handily (infinitely glovely) creates an intergalactic genocide. Despite this, the films try to give him some sympathetic elements; he only wipes out so many to save the whole. The Thanos of Stua...

What is war good for? Not much, but it does advance some technologies faster than they might have been. Microwave technology, nuclear, plastic surgery – all have benefitted from being pushed by necessity. What about a war on a distant planet? Like here on Earth, any opposing armies will be looking f...

A surreal science fiction story, ostensibly set in 1992, Ubik tells the story of an alternative Earth where a range of telepathic abilities have manifested amongst all aspects of society and to counter them, a series of anti-talents have emerged that dampen and suppress these new gifts. Philip K. Di...

What would you do should a sudden cataclysmic event effect the Earth? The answer is that you will probably be dead, but if you are lucky enough to be the protagonist of a book you are likely to have survived. It would be a very short book otherwise. The events in Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald’s...

In Stephen Baxter's collaboration with the late Terry Pratchett, he imagined that there were a limitless number of parallel dimensions just a small step away, each with a slightly different version of Earth (although none others of which contained indigenous humans). In his latest novel, World Engin...

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a talent for writing deep, meaningful scifi. He won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2016 for Children of Time and the 2019 BSFA best novel award for the follow-up Children of Ruin . There are few authors that can quite match his vision for non-human intelligence, or his flair for...

Making an author come up with a single science fiction  concept  is tricky enough, but to ask them to come up with an infinite number of multiverses is just plain mean. Tim Pratt only have themselves to blame  as they choice to take  Zaxony   Delatree  on an adventure across a multitude of worlds.  ...

Over the next three days, three reviews will stand before you. Read them in any order, some elements will be the same, others  quite different . If you  would like to go straight to the segment   unique to this  review , please start with paragraph 4.   Drafting  a book  must be like standing in fro...

Over the next three days, three reviews will stand before you. Read them in any order, some elements will be the same, others quite different. If you would like to go straight to the segment unique to this review, please start with paragraph 4. Drafting a book must be like standing in front of a ser...

I have conversations with my colleagues and a surprising number of them are dismissive of Science Fiction as being too farfetched and complicated. This is not true, as it is such a wide genre. There are Sci Fi books that will cater for readers who only want a touch of the unreal, but there are also...

Are you playing the game? Made you look. The idea of a metagame that embroils a hero is not a new one, but it is hard to pull off. The amount of financial resources and secrecy that is required to convince Michael Douglas to jump off a building is beyond what the average person can afford, unless yo...

Obsession can be a powerful emotion and lead you down a dark path. Being stalked causes the victim so much fear, not only because they are having to deal with the reality, but also what might happen. In the case of Madison May, she does not know she is being stalked until it is too late. A strange m...

If you had the chance to start over again from an early age and know what you do now, would you take it? A chance to live your life again; buy those shares in Apple, know some of the exam questions and football results? The answer for me is no. 80 years more life is not worth risking my family. What...

That one time you saved the world with stick with you for a lifetime. You may bask in the glory one day and wake up with cold sweats the next, either way, the event will be forged in your memories forever. What about two times? Three or four? Do you think that James Bond can remember one supervillai...

What are you going to do if Godzilla arrives. You must have a plan in mind. At least one for home and one for the office. I used to have a great plan that would see me have an almost 100% chance of surviving, but then I went and started a family. Now I have no chance as their little legs are just no...

I love sleep and have a deeper appreciation of it since having a family. I find myself able to drop off in a second as I snatch any five minutes I can before being woken up again at 5 am. The number of naps that I have would not be advisable in the world of Zaxony Delatree as I may end up waking up...

Think too long on the multiverse and your mind will explode. Every tiny action you take splits off into another multiverse, then extrapolate that with everything making tiny actions. There will be an infinite number of universes that only differ from the way you tied your shoelace that morning. Popp...

I read and listen to books in all formats, but still prefer the feel of paper in my hand. Audiobooks are great for the commute, but they are just not pacy enough for me, I read quickly, and a narrator often seems to go in slow motion even at 1.5 speed. 2000AD and Penguin Audio must know my brain as...

There is a reason that you should avoid tackling the multiverse in a story as the very nature of them means that the possibilities are infinite. Every decision ever made split off to make two different pathways and so on. A story that spans multiple Earths will have to pick which ones to visit. Do y...

I do not like to think too much about the Large Hadron Collider, I let better minds than mine consider hurtling atoms at each other at considerable speed to access some sort of God particle. I get nervous enough around the toaster. Other things go on at CERN too, the invention of the internet for on...

I set a high bar set for science fiction short story collections that is in no way the fault of any modern author. Unfortunately for them I read The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury at an influential age. I rate a collection against the creepy science fiction/horror tones that Bradbury was able to cr...

What made people think that the middle of the desert was the right place to build a town like Los Vegas where people from around the world flock to get their vice on? It was the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere, safe from prying eyes and it was desperate to for people to visit. There should...

As a child you read books and imagine that you may be that child who is whisked away on an adventure. Perhaps you will be the chosen one to be taken through a magical wardrobe or told you are a wizard. By the time you are studying for a PhD such flippancy is no longer part of your character, so how...

As comic book fans, we really are living in the best of days, not because there is so much content to read or watch, but because the artform is established. The concept of comics, superheroes and, in this case, Marvel are well enough known that we can play with the format. Marvel has been doing it f...

Comics have a complex history with some storylines going back decades. Even the relatively new superheroes can have intricate lore. Moon Knight has had plenty of time to muddy the waters with almost 50 years of stories to look back on, but it is not the depth of the stories that make Moon Knight so...

There are books in a person’s life that helps to define their taste in genres. I was lucky enough in my teenage years to work my way through some of the classics of science fiction instilling a lifelong love of the genre. One novel that stands out among the best was Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Ma...

Invent any innovative technology and it won’t be long until someone finds a way to use it to make money via base entertainment. We are talking wine, woman, and song. The same can be said of future worlds; the Emperor may have thought he had an iron grip on all his subjects, but just below the surfac...