Parallel Worlds of Clifford D. Simak
*3.8.1904
+25.4.1988
Clifford Simak,
Nature of Time and Parallel Worlds
Hugh Everett
III graduated at the Princeton University in 1957 under the supervision of the
famous American physicist John Wheeler. In his doctorate thesis Everett had
developed the first formal scientific 'no-collapse' theory that describes
parallel worlds. He proposed that infinite time-branching-off into every
possible direction is equally real as the time we experience right now. His thesis
on the subject is known as the Many-Worlds interpretation of the quantum
theory. Although the latter has been overlooked for many years, today it
is gaining increasing acceptance and becomes the main challenger of the
standard and rapidly retreating Copenhagen interpretation. It ought to be
stressed that many years before the appearance of Everett's thesis, Clifford
Simak had thoroughly described parallel worlds (esp. alternate Earths) in his
science-fiction works using almost identical philosophy in a poetic atmosphere
and flavor of rural humility and beautiful autumn weather.
"In
the east the moon was rising, a full moon that lighted the landscape so that he
could see every little clump of bushes, every grove of trees. And as he stood
there, he realized with a sudden start that the moon was full again, that it
was always full, it rose with the setting of the sun and set just before the
sun came up, and it was always a great pumpkin of a moon, an eternal harvest
moon shining on an eternal autumn world.
The realization that this was so all at once seemed shocking. How was it
that he had never noticed this before? Certainly he had been here long enough,
had watched the moon often enough to have noticed it. He had been here long
enough - and how long had that been, a few weeks, a few months, a year? He
found he did not know. He tried to figure back and there was no way to figure
back. There were no temporal landmarks. Nothing ever happened to mark one day
from the next. Time flowed so smoothly and so uneventfully that it might as
well stand still."
(Clifford D. Simak: The Autumn Land,
(a short story that originally appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1971, Vol. 41, n.
4)
Clifford D.
Simak, one of the finest modern science-fiction writers, has dealt with time
paradoxes (e.g., in his short story about synchronicities, Worrywart,
first publ. in Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1953), immortality
(e.g., in his novelette Eternity Lost, first publ. in Astounding
Stories of Super-Science, July 1949; or the famous short story Grotto of
the Dancing Deer, first in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact,
April 1980), time travel (e.g., Sunspot Purge, 1940; Small
Deer, 1965; Mastodonia, 1978; Over the River and Through
the Woods, 1965; The Thing in the Stone, 1970; Highway of
Eternity, 1986) and alternate (parallel) worlds (e.g., in the famous
novel City (particularly in the story Aesop, orig. in Astounding
Stories of Super-Science, December 1947) , Ring Around the Sun (a
novel, 1953), All Flesh is Grass (a novel, 1965), Destiny Doll (a
novel, 1971), Auk House (a novella, 1977), Enchanted Pilgrimage and
Special Deliverance (both novels, 1975, 1982) ... etc.) very frequently.
He has published over 25 novels and possibly about 300 short stories.
Interesting and poetic is his typical flavor of pastoral or American
'small-town viewpoint'. Simak was born and raised in Millville (small town in
Wisconsin) and became probably the best known proponent of the pastoral science
fiction. He spent his adult life as a teacher and journalist in Michigan and
Minnesota and often pictured the Midwest and its people. According to Poul
Anderson: "when (Simak) dealt with his Midwestern land and
people, he was one of the finest regional writers the United States has had. He
knew them, he was them, and he gave them to us in his own homely words, which
he nevertheless made into poetry." Well-known became Simak's quote
from the introduction to Skirmish (1977):
"My
reluctance to use alien invasion is due to the feeling that we are not likely
to be invaded and taken over. It would seem to me that by the time a race has
achieved deep space capability it would have matured to a point where it would
have no thought of dominating another intelligent species. Further than this,
there should be no economic necessity of its doing so. By the time it was able
to go into deep space, it must have arrived at an energy source which would not
be based on planetary natural resources."
Clifford
Simak began his career with the first published story The World of the Red
Sun (it appeared originally in Wonder Stories 1931 and reissued
thanks to Isaac Asimov in Before the Golden Age, Doubleday 1974). Simak
became really one of the most sophisticated and humane of John Campbell's Golden
Age writers (the so-called "Golden Age" of science fiction began in
about 1938). In the story mentioned above we can see a funny and entertaining
portrayal of very confusing effects of an unfortunate travel forward in time
(the point was that the travel backward is impossible).
In the
famous Simak's novel City (a linked collection of stories from the
1940s, first published as a novel in 1952, and named the winner of the
International Fantasy Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year),
the dogs are well aware that in fact there is no past at all. Moreover, they
say that
"...we
thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't,
when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's
another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day,
when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone.
It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with
it."
(Simak, City)
The same logic is used in another well-known Simak's novel, Time is the
Simplest Thing, in which the past is pictured only as a vanishing ghost:
("There was no grass. There were no trees. There were no men, nor any
sign of men...") while the future is empty, too ("It was a
place without a single feature of the space-time matrix that he knew. It was a
place where nothing yet had happened - an utter emptiness. There was neither
light nor dark: there was nothing here but emptiness. There had never been
anything in this place, nor was anything ever intended to occupy this place..."
(Simak, Time is the Simplest Thing)
"This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in
it - and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the
dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill
all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahaed.
Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life
moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have
ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the
viewpoint of men who'd long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor
did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only
valid point for life - life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and
once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased.
There were certain basic things, perhaps - the very earth, itself - which
existed through every point in time, holding a sort of limited eternity to
provide a solid matrix. And the dead - the dead and fabricated - stayed in the
past as ghosts. The fence posts and the wire strung on them, the dead trees,
the farm buildings, and the bridge were shadows of the present persisting in
the past. Persisting, perhaps, reluctantly, because since they had no life they
could not move along. They were bound in time and stretched through time and
they were long, long shadows.
He was, he realized with a shock, the only living thing existing in this
moment on this earth. He and nothing else..."
(Clifford D. Simak: Time is the
Simplest Thing)
And the crux
for the contemplation of parallel worlds is exactly in the following philosophy:
"One
world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels
of another world that plodded just ahead. One world's tomorrow, another world's
today. And yesterday is tomorrow, and tomorrow is the past.
Except, there wasn't any past. No past, that was, except the figment of
remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one's mind.
No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film
that one could run backwards and see what-once-had-been...
One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for
it had never been. For there wasn't any past, there never had been any, there
wasn't room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another
world."
(Simak, City).
And more clearly:
"There isn't any room," said Joshua. "You travel back along
the line of time and you don't find the past, but another world, another
bracket of consciousness. The earth would be the same, you see, or almost the
same. Same trees, same rivers, same hills, but it wouldn't be the world we
know. Because it has lived a different life, it has developed differently. The
second back of us is not the second back of us at all, but another second, a
totally separate sector of time. We live in the same second all the time. We
move along within the bracket of that second, that tiny bit of time that has
been allotted to our particular world."
(Simak, City)
"'Time sense?'
'Time sense, sir. The other worlds. They are a matter of time, you know.'
'No, I didn't,' Vickers said.
'There is no time,' said Hezekiah. 'Not as the normal human thinks of time,
that is. Not a continuous flow of time, but brackets of time, one second
following behind the other. Although there are no seconds, no such things as
seconds, no such measurement, of course.'
'I know,' said Vickers. And he did know. Now it all came back to him, the
explanation of those other worlds, the folIowing worlds, each one encapsulated
in a moment of time, in some strange and arbitrary division of time, each time
bracket with its own world, how far back, how far ahead, no one could know or
guess.
Somewhere inside of him the secret trigger had been tripped and the inherent
memory was his, as it always had been his, but hidden in his unawareness, as
his hunch ability still was largely trapped in his unawareness.
There was no time, Hezekiah had said. No such thing as time in the terms of
normal human thought. Time was bracketed and each of its brackets contained a
single phase of a universe so vastly beyond human comprehension that it brought
a man up short against the impossibility of envisioning it.
And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the
future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite
number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single
phase of the Universe.
Back on Man's original Earth, there had been speculation on travelling in
time, of going back into yesterday or forward into tomorrow. And now he knew
that you could not do it, that the same instant of time remained forever within
each bracket, that Man's Earth had ridden the same bubble of the single instant
from the time of its genesis and that it would die and come to nothing within
that self-same instant.
You could travel in time, of course, but there would be no yesterday and no
tomorrow. But if you held a certain time sense you could break from one bracket
to another, and when you did you would not find yesterday or tomorrow, but
another world."
(Clifford D. Simak: "Ring
Around the Sun", from Chapter 38)
"(Latimer said:) 'Prime world is present time? Your old world and
mine?'
(Gale said:) 'Yes. If you think, however, of prime world as present time,
that's wrong. That's not the way it is. We're not dealing with time, but with
alternate worlds. The one you just came from is a world where everything else
took place exactly as it did in prime world, with one exception man never
evolved. There are no men there and never will be. Here, where we are now,
something more drastic occurred. Here the reptiles did not become extinct. The
Cretaceous never came to an end, the Cenozoic never got started. The reptiles
are still the dominant species and the mammals still are secondary.' "
(Clifford D. Simak: "Auk House",
a novella, Ballantine, 1977)
Some remarks on the nature of time in
science-fiction generally and in works of Clifford Simak
Time-Travel Impossibility and Space-Time-Life
Interconnectedness
- Clifford Simak: Why
Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967) Doubleday and Ace Books, New York 1967;
in this excellent novel on immortality it is concluded that life is one with
space and time (therefore the time travel is impossible), that life-death has
the same sense as matter-energy, so there is a "law of the conservation of
life": life continues forever, it can't be destroyed (no more than
energy), it is as everlasting as time and space itself
Time Treated As Psycho-Biological Phenomenon
- Alfred Jarry: Commentaire
pour servir a la construction pratique de la machine a explorer le temps
(1900), an excellent "sci-fi essay" from Jarry's works relating to
'Pataphysique and Docteur Faustroll; translated from French into English by
Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor as How to Construct a Time Machine
(1950, 1965), new edition in The Traps of Time, ed. by Michael Moorcock,
Rapp & Whiting, London, 1968
- Clifford Simak: Aesop
(1947) a novelette that originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction,
December 1947, and reissued as a chapter of the novel City (Gnome 1952)
it pictures mind-induced "teleportation" to parallel worlds.
- Clifford D. Simak: Time
and Again (1950, 1951) orig. appeared in three parts as Time Quarry
in Galaxy, October 1950, November 1950, and December 1950; then publ. by
Simon & Schuster, 1951 as a novel (it has been publ. by Dell Book also as First
He Died). It is probably the most wonderful novel on destiny and
time-travel ever written. Practically in each Simak's novel the time travel
(as well as teleportation to distant parts of galaxy or visits to parallel
worlds) is viewed as related to mind. Even in this novel where classical
time machines are used, the phenomenon of time is treated as a mental concept,
with time located directly in the brain (so, for time travel is used a
"time brain").
- Brian W. Aldiss: Man
in His Time (1965) this really excellent short story has been first
published in the author's collection Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian
Aldiss, Faber & Faber 1965; then in anthology SF Reprise 4, Ed.
by Michael Moorcock, 1966, Compact, then in Nebula Award Stories 2, Ed.
by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison, 1967, Doubleday; and in anthology The
Traps of Time, Ed. by Michael Moorcock, 1968, Rapp & Whiting; in 1967
it was Hugo finalist - the second best short story (but Hugo Award came to Neutron
Star by Larry Niven) and in 1966 it was also Nebula finalist - the second
best short story (Nebula Award came to The Secret Place by Richard
McKenna)
- Clifford Simak: Ring
Around the Sun (1952-53) a novel orig. publ. in three parts in Galaxy
Science Fiction, Part I., December, 1952 (Vol.5, n.3), Part II. January 1953 (Vol.5, n.4), Part III, February 1953 (Vol.5, n.5);
and as a novel publ. by Simon & Schuster in 1953). A mind-induced "teleportation" to parallel worlds via
"time sense".
- Clifford D. Simak: A
Choice of Gods (1972), first publ. by Putnam, New York 1972; it had been
1973 Hugo Award finalist for Best Novel but winner was The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov, 2nd When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold, 3rd There
Will Be Time by Poul Anderson, 4th The Book of Skulls by Robert
Silverberg, 5th Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg and 6th A Choice of
Gods by Clifford D. Simak, A Choice of Gods had been also 1973 Locus
Poll Award finalist for Best SF Novel but winner was again The Gods
Themselves by Isaac Asimov, 2nd The Book of Skulls by Robert
Silverberg, 3rd Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, 4th When Harlie
Was One by David Gerrold and 5th A Choice of Gods by Clifford D.
Simak
- Clifford D. Simak: Mastodonia
(1978) a novel that first appeared in 1978, publ. by Ballantine (
- Clifford Simak: Highway
of Eternity (1986), a novel publ. by Ballantine Del Rey and SFBC - a novel with
classical time machines as well as with a clear picture of mind-induced time
travel as well as mind-induced "teleportation" to the "Highway
of Eternity"....
Philosophy of Non-Existence of Time, Timeless Universe
- Clifford D. Simak: Cosmic
Engineers (1939) a novel that first appeared in the Astounding Science
Fiction, Ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.; February 1939; (Part 1 of 3); March
1939 (Part 2 of 3); April 1939 (Part 3 of 3) and as a novel it reappeared in
1950 (Gnome Press) - an idea about the fifth dimension which "is
eternity. It is everything and nothing... all rolled into one. It is a place
where nothing has ever happened and yet, in a sense, where everything has happened.
It is the beginning and the end of all things. In it there is no such thing as
space or time or any other phenomena which we attribute to the four-dimensional
continuum."
- Jorge Luis Borges:
"Funes el memorioso" (1942) a story publ. originally in
- Jorge Luis Borges: Funes,
the Memorius (1944) publ. in the "Artifices"- section of the
collection Ficciones publ. in 1944 and translated by Andrew Hurley; it
issued as Funes the Memorious (1964) for Labyrinths (last
translation by James E. Irby). In the following quote there is a clear hint of
Julian Barbour's modern conception of timeless landscape called Platonia:
"...it bothered him (i.e. Ireneo Funes) that the dog at three
fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three
fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands,
surprised him every time he saw them."
- Jorge Luis Borges:
"Una de las posibles metafísicas" (1944) an utterly important
and outstanding essay that originally appeared in Sur, n. 115, p. 59-67,
Buenos Aires, May 1944
- Jorge Luis Borges:
"Nueva refutación del tiempo" (1947) larger version of "Una
de las posibles metafísicas", it first appeared in Sur, n.
147-149, Buenos Aires, January-March 1947, 34 pp.; then it reappeared (1952) in
the important collection of Borges' essays Otras inquisiciones (Other
Inquisitions), Buenos Aires, Sur 1952, p. 202-221.
- Clifford Simak: Aesop
(1947) a novelette that originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction,
December 1947, and reissued as a chapter of the novel City (Gnome 1952)
it pictures reality as an eternal, moving present: "The way we keep
time was to blame," said Ichabod. "It was the thing that kept us from
thinking of it in the way it really was. For we thought all
the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we
never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's
another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day,
when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone.
It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with
it."
- Clifford Simak: Ring
Around the Sun (1952-53) a novel orig. publ. in three parts in Galaxy
Science Fiction, Part I., December, 1952 (Vol.5, n.3), Part II. January 1953 (Vol.5, n.4), Part III, February 1953 (Vol.5, n.5);
and as a novel publ. by Simon & Schuster in 1953). "There is
no time," (said the robot Hezekiah most clearly in this book)
excellent picture of "worlds without end" and of earths where there
is "room enough"
- Jorge Luis Borges: A
New Refutation of Time (1964) an English version of "Nueva
refutación del tiempo" issued in the collection Labyrinths,
(last translation by James E. Irby); publ. in U.S. by New Directions, 1964,
first publ. by Penguin Books in 1970, quotes are from an issue by Penguin
Classics, London, New York 2000. My apologies that I have
included this wonderful philosophical essay. It is partly because of the
author himself and partly because there are really very faint differences
between Borges' fiction and his philosophical essays. According to the latter
giant of fiction: "Time, if we can intuitively grasp such an identity,
is a delusion: the difference and inseparability of one moment belonging to its
apparent past from another belonging to its apparent present is sufficient to
disintegrate it."
- Clifford D. Simak: Shakespeare's
Planet (1976) a novel, first publ. by Berkley/Putnam and reappeared in Science
Fiction Special 28, 1978, about the mystery of time: "Time is the
complete mystery. We cannot be certain of its actuality. It has no handle we
can grasp to examine it."
- Ian Watson: Miracle
Visitors (1978) an outstanding sci-fi novel with a Jungian explanation of
the U.F.O. phenomena; 1st publ. by Victor Gollancz, Ltd. in 1978. Watson's
Sheikh Muradi said:... Ah, Salim, in what way is it
our century? Do we own time? Do we generate time?" - "God's
century it is," agreed an elder. - "He recreates the world every
moment," another nodded. - "Is time 'real'? Then hand me some! Is the
world-within-time real? No, reality is elsewhere. It is where Khidr moves. God
sustains the illusion of the world for us. Where is your consciousness, Salim?
Can you show me some of it?" "
Parallel Worlds in a Timeless Universe
- Jorge Luis Borges: The
Garden of Forking Paths (1941) see the sublist Typical Many-Worlds
Stories - Time-Branching Into parallel Worlds)
- Clifford Simak: Aesop
(1947) first and extremely successful timeless parallel-worlds novelette that
originally appeared in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December
1947, and reissued as a chapter of the novel City (Gnome 1952, the novel
received International Fantasy Award for Best Fiction in 1953). While in his Cosmic
Engineers (1939) the timelessness is attributed to the fifth dimension, in Aesop
the timelessness is here and now because you can "travel back along the
line of time and you don't find the past, but another world., another bracket
of consciousness. The earth would be the same, you see, or almost the same.
Same trees, same rivers, same hills, but it wouldn't be the world we know.
Because it has lived a different life, it has developed differently. The second
back of us is not the second back of us at all, but another second, a totally
separate sector of time. We live in the same second all the time. We move along
within the bracket of that second, that tiny bit of time that has been allotted
to our particular world."
- Clifford Simak: Ring Around the Sun
(1952-53) the best novel about parallel worlds in a timeless universe, orig.
publ. in three parts in Galaxy Science Fiction, Part I., December, 1952
(Vol.5, n.3), Part II. January 1953 (Vol.5, n.4), Part III,
February 1953 (Vol.5, n.5); and as a novel publ. by Simon & Schuster in
1953). "'There is no time,' said Hezekiah. 'Not
as the normal human thinks of time, that is. Not a continuous flow of time, but
brackets of time, one second following behind the other. Although
there are no seconds, no such things as seconds, no such measurement, of
course.'"
- Fred Hoyle: October The
First Is Too Late (1966) a novel publ. by Harper & Row 1966 with a
scientific picture of timeless universe. Dr. John Sinclair said: "... the
idea of time as a steady progression from past to future is wrong. I know very
well we feel this way about it subjectivelly. But we're the victims of a
confidence trick... "
Alternate Histories
- Ward Moore: Bring the
Jubilee (1953),
Parallel Realities
- Lewis Carroll:
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass (1872) here
is also a hint on second-level-dream-generated realities - the sleeping king
dreaming Alice herself
- Clifford Simak: Mirage
(aka Seven Came Back), (nv), Amazing
Stories, October 1950 - probably the only Simak's work that could be
classified as a parallel-reality story
- Philip K. Dick: The
Man in the High Castle (1962) alternate worlds, alternate histories, New
York, Putnam 1962; Gregg Press, Boston,
- Philip K. Dick: Martian
Time-Slip (1964) a novel publ. by Ballantine in 1964 with a hint on
parallel worlds at the end of it, probably can be equally placed with the
sublist of typical parallel worlds
- Philip K. Dick: The
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) an excellent novel about parallel
realities originally publ. by Doubleday, it has received the British Science
Fiction Award in 1966
- Philip K. Dick: We
Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1968) as a short story orig. in The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1966 (Ed. by Edward L.
Ferman), then in the anthology Nebula Award Stories 2, Ed. by Brian W.
Aldiss and Harry Harrison, 1967, Doubleday; and then in the anthology The
World's Best Science Fiction: 1967, ed. by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry
Carr, and publ. by Ace in 1967
- Ursula K Le Guin (Ursula
Kroeber Le Guin): The Lathe of Heaven (1971) a really fascinating novel
of dream-generated parallel realities, it has been first publ. in Amazing
Science Fiction, March and May 1971; and first as a novel by Avon 1971);
what George Orr dreams becomes true but Miss Lelache interpreted it as "Dual
time-tracks, alternate universes..."; name of this novel - "The
Lathe of Heaven" -comes from the Taoist Chuang Tse (book of the same
name - Chuang-Tzu, XXIII) who says: "Those whom heaven helps we
call the sons of heaven. They do not learne this by learning. They do not work
it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop
at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will
be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." It issued in Czech in 1994,
publ. by Ivo Železný as "Smrtonosné sny".
- Robert Anson Heinlein: The
Number of the Beast (1980) an important
"out-of-their-minds"-parallel-worlds novel (Heinlein admired Clifford
Simak's books and was probably partly inspired by Simak's novel Out of Their
Minds 1970)
Typical Parallel Worlds,
Many-Worlds Stories - Time-Branching Into Parallel Worlds
- Murray Leinster: Sidewise
in Time (1934) four years before The Legion of Time of Jack
Williamson came Leinster's story Sidewise in Time, originally published
in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June 1934, and was probably the
first time that the strange concept of branching parallel worlds appeared in
modern science-fiction; here, in a sidewise path of time some cities never
happened to be built, and Leinster's vision of Earth's extraordinary geological
oscillations 'sidewise in time' had long-term effect on other authors (e.g.,
Asimov's Living Space, The Red Queen's Race, and The End of
Eternity
- Jack Williamson: The Legion
of Time (1938) first published as a magazine serial in three parts: Astounding
Science Fiction, May 1938 (Part I); June 1938 (Part II); July 1938 (Part
III); this is a competent action adventure story in the SF tradition of its
day, and seems to become the first real concept of branching parallel worlds -
later known as many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - appearing in
print and using a scientific language, as a book also publ. London, Sphere
1977)
- Clifford D. Simak: Cosmic
Engineers (1939) a novel that first appeared in the Astounding Science
Fiction, Ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.; February 1939; (Part 1 of 3); March
1939 (Part 2 of 3); April 1939 (Part 3 of 3) and as a novel it reappeared in
1950 (Gnome Press) - probably the best account of parallel worlds as "infinite
probabilities, all existing, drawing some shadow of existence from the mere
fact that they are probable or have been probable or will be probable. The
stress and condition of circumstance selects one of these probabilities, makes
it an actuality. But the others have an existence, just the same. An existence, perhaps, that we could not perceive." I think that the latter
formulation had probably best anticipated the situation in quantum physics and
the future work of Hugh Everett III and his development of the first formal
theory that began to describe many other worlds in 1957...
- Jorge Luis Borges: The
Garden of Forking Paths (1941) this excellent short story has been
originally published as El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, in his
own collection of short stories El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, Buenos
Aires, Sur, 1941, then publ in English in his story collection Ficciones,
that first appeared in full in 1944 and has been translated by Andrew Hurley,
and then appeared in the anthology about time "The Traps of Time",
translated by Helen Temple and Ruthven Todd and edited by Michael Moorcock, the
latter being first publ. in 1968) - this story is certainly the best expression
of Many Worlds before the World War II and includes also a hint on timeless
nature of the universe. Donald A. Yates has translated it in English for the
collection Labyrinths.
- Fritz Leiber (Fritz
Reuter Leiber, Jr.): The Big Time (1958) publ. in Galaxy
March/April 1958; Ace 1961; Hugo-Award winning novel on branching parallel
worlds
- Isaac Asimov: The End
of Eternity (1955) a novel on time-patrolling in branching parallel worlds
publ. by Doubleday 1955
- Isaac Asimov: Living
Space (1956) a short story on parallel worlds, orig. publ. in SF Stories,
May 1956
- Clifford D. Simak: All
Flesh Is Grass (1965) first published by Doubleday in 1965, an excellent
novel about parallel worlds, the plot is situated in Milville. It had been 1965
Nebula Award finalist for Best Novel (but winner was Dune by Frank
Herbert, 2nd was The Star Fox by Poul Anderson, 3rd Nova Express
by William S. Burroughs, 4th Rogue Dragon by Avram Davidson, 5th Dr.
Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick, 6th The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick, 7th The Genocides
by Thomas M. Disch, 8th The Ship That
Sailed the Time Stream by G. C. Edmondson, and 9th A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer,
and 10th position All Flesh is Grass)
- Richard Bach: Jonathan
Livingston Seagull (1970) an excellent short story whose author contemplated
(since 1959!) an idea of a bird learning to pass beyond the walls of
limitations, an idea of seagulls who say that they are going "...from
one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away
where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for the moment.. "
- Ian Watson: Chekhov's
Journey (1973) an excellent novel on parallel worlds first publ. by Victor
Gollancz, Ltd. in
- Clifford D. Simak: Auk
House (1978) an excellent novella that first appeared in the anthology Stellar
#3, Ed. by Judy-Lynn del Rey, Publ. by Ballantine, 1977; it had been Locus
Poll Award finalist 1978 for Best Novella (but winner was Stardance by
Spider Robinson and
Jeanne Robinson, second position had A Snark in the Night by Gregory
Benford, third Aztecs by Vonda N. McIntyre, and fourth Auk House
by Clifford D. Simak)
- Clifford D. Simak: Special
Deliverance (1982) a novel publ. by
- Michael McCollum: A
Greater Infinity (1982) a novel first publ. by Ballantine - Del Rey in
1982, parallel universes, alternate histories
- Ian Watson: Slow
Birds (1983) a novelette orig. publ. in The Magazine of Fantasy &
Science Fiction, 1983, and reappeared in the collection Slow Birds and
Other Stories publ. by Gollanz in 1985; it was Nebula Award finalist in
1983 for the best novelette (6th position); Hugo finalist for best novelette in
1984 (4th position), and Locus Poll Award finalist in 1984 for best novelette
(3rd position)
- George Alec Effinger: Schrödinger's
Kitten (1988) a short fiction published originally in Omni, Patrice
Adcroft, 1988, Omni Publications International Ltd. and then in The 1989
Annual World's Best SF, Ed. by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, 1989,
Daw (u nás jako Schrödingerova kočička (1992) In: Donald A. Wollheim
představuje nejlepší sci-fi povídky 1989, Laser, Plzeň 1992, str. 83-104).
It received 1988 Nebula Award for best novelette, 1989 Hugo Award for best
novelette, 1989 SF Chronicle Award for best novelette, and 1989 Theodore
Sturgeon Memorial Short Story Award.
- James P. Hogan: Paths
To Otherwhere (1995) a novel on a machine called Quantum Interference
Correlator or QUIC for using interference between parallel universes at the
quantum level to transfer information between those universes, publ. by Baen
Books in 1995
- Stephen Baxter: Moon
Six (1997) a novelette that first appeared in Science Fiction Age,
1997; a story on parallel worlds in principle very similar to Asimov's Living
Space
Strange Parallel Worlds
- George MacDonald: Lilith
(1895) a fascinating novel from 1895, written by charismatic nonconforming
Christian and mystic, describing vividly a parallel reality behind the frame of
a mirror
- H. G. Wells: The
Plattner Story (1896) a short story that originally appeared in The New
Review, April 1896
- H. G. Wells: The Door
in the Wall (1906) a short story that originally appeared in The Daily
Chronicle, July 14, 1906
- Clifford Simak: Mirage
(aka Seven Came Back), (nv), Amazing
Stories, October 1950
- Roger Zelazny: The
Chronicles of Amber Pentalogy: Nine Princes in Amber (1970), The
Guns of Avalon (1972), Sign of the Unicorn (1975), The Hand of
Oberon (1976), The Courts of Chaos (1978), etc. - here the Amber is
the only real world and all other parallel worlds are Shadows of that real
world and we can certainly recall Platonic Ideas which are eternal,
transcendental, beyond space and time, and cut off from our world which is only
mere shadow of the real one.
- Clifford Simak: The
Autumn Land, (1971), a short story that first appeared in The Magazine
of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1971, Ed. by Edward L. Ferman, Vol.
41, n. 4 (whole number 245); it had been Hugo finalist in 1972 (but Hugo came
to Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven; second position was Vaster Than
Empires and More Slow by Ursula K. Le Guin; third position The Autumn
Land by Clifford D. Simak); it had been also one of the finalists for best
short fiction in 1972 Locus Poll Award (The Queen of Air and Darkness by Poul
Anderson was winner, 2nd position A Meeting with Medusa by Arthur C.
Clarke, 3rd position All the Last Wars at Once by George Alec Effinger,
4th Wheels by Robert Thurston, and 5th The Autumn Land by
Clifford D. Simak), it reappeared in the anthology SF: Authors' Choice 4,
Ed. by Harry Harrison,
- Clifford Simak: Highway
of Eternity (1986), a time-travel novel with a strange parallel reality
called 'Highway of Eternity', Publ. by Ballantine Del Rey and SFBC in 1986
- Terry Bisson: Dead
Man's Curve (1994) a short story first publ. in Asimov's Science Fiction,
June 1994; Vol. 18, No 7 - Whole Number 217, Ed: Gardner Dozois; it is about a
curious parallel universe containing one dead man
Reverse Flow of Time
- Fritz Leiber (Fritz
Reuter Leiber, Jr.): The Man Who Never Grew Young (1947) a short
time-paradox story on reverse flow of time; originally appeared in his own story
collection Night's Black Agents, publ. by Arkham House in 1947; it
appeared also in the anthology Avon Fantasy Reader, #9 1949, Ed. by
Donald A. Wollheim, 1949, Avon Publishing Co.; New York; in the anthology The
Dark Side, Ed. by Damon Knight, 1965, Doubleday; and in the collection The
Best of Fritz Leiber, 1974, Nelson Doubleday.
- Roger Zelazny (1966): Divine
Madness, it first appeared in Magazine of Horror, Summer 1966, Ed.
by Robert A. W. Lowndes, 1966, Health Knowledge, Inc.; New York; then in the anthology
New Worlds of Fantasy, Ed. by Terry Carr, 1967, Ace; and in the
anthology about time The Traps of Time, Ed. by Michael Moorcock, 1968,
Rapp & Whiting.
-.Dan Simmons (1989), Hyperion,
Bantam Spectra and Doubleday 1989 (Hugo Award for best novel in 1990) - reverse
flow of time appeared in one of the stories of this novel
- Ian Watson: Early, in
the Evening (a short story that first appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine,
1996; a funny time-paradox story on 'Collapse of the Continuum')
Immortality
- Karel
Čapek: Věc Makropulos
(1922) The Makropulos Case first published as a play in 1922
- Clifford Simak: Eternity
Lost (1949) first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1949,
Ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr., then in the anthology Best SF Stories 1950,
Ed. by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, Fredrick Fell 1950 and Grayson 1951
- Clifford Simak: Way
Station (1963), this novel orig. appeared in two parts as Here Gather
the Stars in Galaxy, June 1963 and August 1963; as novel it appeared
in New York, Doubleday, 1963; 1964 Hugo Award for the Best Novel
- Clifford Simak: Why
Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967) Doubleday and Ace Books,
- Clifford Simak: The
Werewolf Principle (1967)
- Frank Herbert: The
Heaven Makers (1968) a novel publ. by Avon Books
- Clifford D. Simak: The
Thing in the Stone (1970) a novella that first appeared in If, March
1970, Ed. by Ejler Jakobsson; Vol. 20, n. 3 (issue 146), Universal Publish. and Distrib. Corporation,
- Clifford D. Simak: A
Choice of Gods (1972), first publ. by
- Clifford D. Simak: Univac:
2200 (1973) this short story first appeared in the anthology Frontiers
1: Tomorrow's Alternatives, (Original Science Fiction), Ed. by Roger
Elwood, Collier,
- Clifford D. Simak: Mastodonia
(1978) a novel that first appeared in 1978, publ. by Ballantine (
Time Slowed-Down, Stopped or Frozen
- H. G. Wells: The New
Accelerator (1901) a short story that originally appeared in The Strand,
December 1901, about a drug speeding up subjective life and slowing down speed
of life in the external world
- Clark Ashton Smith: The
Plutonian Drug (1934) a short story, first appeared in Amazing Stories,
September 1934; it is a story about a drug causing past and future stopped in
aa strange eternal present
- Jorge Luis Borges: The
Secret Miracle (1944) first publ. in English in the collection Artifices,
translated by Andrew Hurley, and publ. in 1944, then in the collection Ficciones,
(1956) publ. by Grove Press in 1962, then in the collection Labyrinths,
Publ. first by New Directions in 1964 (here translated by Julian Palley)
- Arthur C. Clarke: All
the Time in the World (1952) time-paradox story, first publ. in Startling
Stories, July 1952; Better Publ. Inc. 1952, time travel into the past, time
paradoxes - accelerator, and a picture of an 'eternal now'
- Clifford D. Simak: Time
is the Simplest Thing (1961) a novel with extremely strange time travel and
time paradoxes, with one chapter concerning a slowing-down of the external
world; orig. publ. in four parts as Fisherman in Analog, April,
May, June, July 1961; as a novel first publ. by Doubleday in 1961
- Clifford D. Simak: The
Werewolf Principle (1967) in this novel there is this "hint":
"The material of the black tower, for example. So thin it seemed
impossible for it to stand, let alone have strength. But there could be no
doubt about its thinness; that information came through very clear and solid.
But the hint of neutrons was something else - neutrons packed so solidly
together that they assumed the characteristics of a metal, all held in a rigid
association by a force for which there was no definition. The hint indicated
time, but was time a force? A dislocated time, perhaps.
A time straining to take its proper place in either past or future, for ever
striving towards a goal made impossible by some fantastic mechanism that kept
time out of step? "
- Clifford D. Simak: Shakespeare's
Planet (1976) a novel, first publ. by Berkley/Putnam and reappeared in Science
Fiction Special 28, 1978, Sidgwick & Jackson, then again as a book
1986, London: Methuen, and 1988, Ballantine Del Rey. An impressive description
of a creature in a cube that is frozen time itself...
Special Kind of Time Travel
- Clifford D. Simak: The
Thing in the Stone (1970) a novella that first appeared in If, March
1970, Ed. by Ejler Jakobsson; Vol. 20, n. 3 (issue 146), Universal Publish. and Distrib. Corporation, New York; it had second position
as Nebula 1970 finalist for Best Novella (Nebula came to Ill Met in Lankhmar
by Fritz Leiber) and second position as Hugo 1971 finalist for Best Novella
(Hugo came equally to Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber); it
reappeared in World's Best Science Fiction: 1971, Ed. by Donald A.
Wollheim and Terry Carr, 1971, Ace, and in the collection The Best of
Clifford D. Simak, Clifford D. Simak, 1975, Sidgwick & Jackson, and in Skirmish,
Clifford D. Simak, 1977, Putnam. It is an excellent novella about immortality
and of a very special kind of time travel.
- Clifford D. Simak: Mastodonia
(1978) a novel that first appeared in 1978, publ. by Ballantine (
Typical Time Travel
- Svatopluk Čech: Nový
epochální výlet pana Broučka, tentokráte do XV. století
(1889) is probably the first typical time-travel novel, curiously written by an
important Czech writer and poet Sv. Čech (1846-1908). The plot serves here for
strong criticism of the human character of a typical Czech man of the
nineteenth century (Mr. Brouček is brought to the bold era of Hussites and
betrays them, joining crusaders)
- Mark Twain: A
- H. G. Wells: The Time
Machine (1894) a short story, The National Observer, March 24, 1894
- H. G. Wells: Time Travelling (1894) a short story, The National
Observer, March 17, 1894
- H. G. Wells: The Time
Traveller Returns (1894) a short story, The National Observer, June
23, 1894
- H. G. Wells: The Time
Machine (1895) a novel, The New Review, January 1895
- H. G. Wells: The Time
Machine (1895) a novel, Heinemann 1895
- Alfred Jarry: Commentaire
pour servir a la construction pratique de la machine a explorer le temps
(1900), an excellent "sci-fi essay" from Jarry's works relating to
'Pataphysique and Docteur Faustroll; translated from French into English by
Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor as How to Construct a Time Machine
(1950, 1965), new edition in The Traps of Time, ed. by Michael Moorcock,
Rapp & Whiting, London, 1968
- Clifford D. Simak: The
World of the Red Sun (1931) an almost typical time-travel story that
originally appeared in Wonder Stories, December 1931 (but travel
backward in time supposed to be impossible)
- Jack Williamson: The
Moon Era (1932) a short story orig. published in Wonder Stories,
February 1932
- John Wyndham: Wanderers
of Time (1933)
time-travel novelette that originally appeared under author's own
name John Beynon Harris in Wonder Stories, March 1933, Ed. by Hugo
Gernsback
- Clifford D. Simak. Sunspot
Purge (1940), this short story first appeared in Astounding Stories of
Super-Science, Ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr., November 1940, and reappeared
in the collection The Best of Clifford D. Simak, Sidgwick & Jackson
1975
- Robert Heinlein: By
His Bootstraps (1941) a short time-travel, time-loop story from the
"Golden Age" of science-fiction about really mind-bending
time-travel, it first appeared under the name Anson MacDonald in Astounding
Science Fiction, October, 1941, ed. By John W. Campbell,
Jr.
- A. E. Van Vogt: The
Winged Man (1944) with E. Mayne Hull
- Charles Leonard Harness:
Time Trap (1948) a time-travel, time-loop novelette that appeared: 1st
in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1948, John W. Campbell, Jr., 1948,
Street & Smith Publications, Inc., 2nd in New Worlds, May 1965, Ed.
by Michael Moorcock, 3rd in SF Reprise 5, Ed. by Michael Moorcock, 1966,
Compact, 4th in The Traps of Time, Ed. by Michael Moorcock, 1968, Rapp
& Whiting
- Clifford D. Simak: Time
and Again (1950, 1951) orig. appeared in three parts as Time Quarry
in Galaxy, October 1950, November 1950, and December 1950; then publ. by
Simon & Schuster, 1951 as a novel (it has been publ. by Dell Book also as First
He Died)
- Arthur C. Clarke: Time's
Arrow (time travel into the past)
- Ray Bradbury: A Sound
of Thunder (1952) time-travel story from 1952, it appeared in Ray
Bradbury's collection: The Golden Apples of the Sun, Hart-Davis 1953; a
liitle accident with butterfly in the era of dinosaurs
changes profoundly future events)
- John Wyndham: Chronoclasm
(1953) this time-travel story has been first publ. in Star Science
Fiction Stories, Ed: Frederik Pohl, Ballantine 1953
- Isaac Asimov: The
Ugly Little Boy (1958) a short story which appeared in author's collection Nine
Tomorrows, 1959, Doubleday, and later expanded and published with Robert
Silverberg as a novel Child of Time (1991)
- Clifford D. Simak: Small
Deer (1965) this short story first apperaed in Galaxy Science Fiction,
October 1965, Ed. by Frederik Pohl, then reappeared in the collection The
Best of Clifford D. Simak, 1975, Sidgwick & Jackson
- Clifford Simak: Over
the River and Through the Woods (1965) this short story first appeared in Amazing,
May 1965 and has been reprinted in Donald A. Wolheim and Terry Carr (Eds): World's
Best Science Fiction, 1966; New York, Ace Books Inc. 1966, pp. 77-86.
- Clifford Simak: Highway
of Eternity (1986), a novel publ. by Ballantine Del Rey and SFBC
- Isaac Asimov and Robert
Silverberg: Child of Time (1991), a novel publ. by Gollancz
Space and Space-Time Relativity
- Lewis Carroll:
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass (1872) esp.
the Red Queen paradoxes
- H. G. Wells: The
Story of Davidson's Eyes (1895) a short story that originally appeared in Pall
Mall Budget, March 28, 1895 (space paradoxes, paranormal)
- Clifford D. Simak: Cosmic
Enginners (1939) - a novel especially about space-time
- Pierre Boulle: Planet
of the Apes (1963) classical relativity of ageing arising when the speed of
a spaceship is near that of light
- Christopher Priest: Inverted
World (1974) first publ. as a novel by Faber,
- Ian Watson: The Width
of the World (1983) a short story orig. publ. in Universe 13, ed. by
Terry Carr, 1983 - space-distance paradoxes
- Robert Holdstock: "Mythago
Series": Mythago Wood (Victor Gollanz 1984), Lavondyss
(Victor Gollanz 1988), The Bone Forest (short-story collection publ. in
U.K. by Grafton Books 1991 and in U.S. by AvoNova 1992), The Hollowing
(HarperCollins 1993), Merlin's Wood (HarperCollins 1994), Gate of
Ivory, Gate of Horn (in U.S. publ. by ROC
Star Gates Connecting Different Parts of the Universe
- Clifford D. Simak: The
Big Front Yard (1958) this outstanding novelette (1959 Hugo Award for the
best novelette) first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, October
1958 (Vol. 62, n.2); then reappeared in the collection The Worlds of
Clifford Simak (1960) and in the anthology The Hugo Winners, Vol. 1,
ed. by Isaac Asimov, Nelson Doubleday 1962.
- Clifford Simak: Way
Station (1963), this novel orig. appeared in two parts as Here Gather
the Stars in Galaxy, June 1963 and August 1963; as novel it appeared
in New York, Doubleday, 1963; 1964 Hugo Award for the Best Novel
- Clifford D. Simak: Shakespeare's
Planet (1976) a novel, first publ. by Berkley/Putnam and reappeared in Science
Fiction Special 28, 1978
Strange Meetings of Two Separate Time Positions
- Ray Bradbury: Night
Meeting (1950) a short story that originally appeared as a chapter of the
famous collection of more or less linked stories The Martian Chronicles,
publ. by Doubleday in 1950
- Bob Shaw: The Light
of Other Days (1966) this short story probably does not belong exactly to
this category; it is about "slow glass" (slowing down light) - each
new piece of it is black but one could stand the glass beside a landscape until
the scene emerged, about ten years later, showing stories from the past; it
first appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1966 (Ed.
by John W. Campbell, Jr.), then in the anthology Nebula Award Stories 2,
Ed. by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison, 1967, Doubleday; it was 1966 Nebula
Award finalist for the Best Short Story (third position)
- Ray Bradbury: That
Woman on the Lawn (1996) a short story originally published in The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1996; then reappeared in
the collection Quicker Than the Eye publ. by Avon Books in 1996
- James P. Blaylock: The
Other Side (2000) an excellent short story publ. on the web by
scifi.com/scifiction 18.10.2000
Mind-Induced Teleportation to Distant Parts of the Universe
- Clifford D. Simak: Time
is the Simplest Thing (1961)
- Clifford D. Simak: A
Choice of Gods (1972), first publ. by