This morning, I strolled down to the coffeeshop to relax and read a book by an author I’ve always enjoyed (it’s Spring Break, I get to do that!) I started on this book I’d checked out from the library, and it was…a novel about a multiverse.
I hate multiverse stories. All of them. I want you all to stop writing these lazy, incoherent, chaotic exercises in the dismissal of any logical causality.
It’s not that I have any say in the matter, you can go ahead and write whatever you want, but jesus, this crutch to remove any element of rational causality, to allow you to just magically allow anything to happen, leaves me cold. And annoyed. And disappointed. I don’t get that many mornings where I can just sit down with a book and a cup of coffee and unwind.
Look, I don’t expect rigid realism. I’ll read a book about a supernatural killer clown haunting the sewers, or about an interstellar diplomatic mission, and it’s fine. I can suspend disbelief, no problem, as long as I can see consequences playing out and conflicts resolved within the frame of the premises. When suddenly the author has carte blanche to rewind all events and schlep in a character from an “alternate universe” to turn the plot around and go off in crazy directions, I don’t care anymore.
It’s also that they never present the implications appropriately — it’s always about a small handful of people in a crisis, and they invoke A WHOLE COMPLETE VAST ALTERNATE UNIVERSE to save Uncle Billy from a couple of monsters. I hate it. Spare me. Try to find a small flyswatter in your plot to do what needs to be done, rather than relying on a cosmic intergalactic nuke to rescue your little corner of a story.
I’m not saying what book ruined my morning, because usually this author is reliably entertaining.
To me, it is also time travel stories, for the same reasons.
You can save us some of our free time by telling us who the offender is?
On the topic of multiverses, I recently read Bridge by Lauren Beukes, and thought it was pretty interesting/horifying.
Basically involves a rare psychedelic that temporarily allows people to swap consciousness with alternate versions of themselves. And then there is some body horror and cosmic horror elements.
Thought it was pretty decent.
Not all that many people understand the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Even fewer are discerning enough to require their science fiction to be plausible or believable. A dear friend of mine who was a librarian and author observed that most people just want science fiction to be an escape from reality. Maybe they should stick to fantasy, instead.
PZ dislikes when an author tries, unsuccessfully, and needlessly, to create an entire ‘alternate’ world just to spice up their writing. I agree.
Those in our organizations are, mostly, rational, secular and want to read stories of appropriate scope without gimmicks of ‘FTL’ travel, time travel to an alternate past or fantasy, superstitious elements as a ‘deus ex machina’ to patch a poorly thought out plot when the author is lazy (or even to avoid writer’s block).
Thoughtful, intelligent writing is not prevalent. And, I saw a prime example of the result of our anti-intellectual war on education. A young person ahead of me at the post office didn’t know how or where to put the address on an envelope they wanted to mail.
@2 wrote lochaber: Basically involves a rare psychedelic that temporarily allows people to swap consciousness
I reply: Lauren Beukes has a fairly good reputation. And, If it was written to make the ‘chemical mechanism’ seem plausible, I wouldn’t mind that.
As PZ shows us, some create a multiverse as a writing gimmick. And, so many have grabbed the term multiverse, some trying to make it plausible.
The term “multiverse” was first coined in 1895 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James in his book “The Will to Believe”. James used the term to refer to a hypothetical realm beyond our own universe, containing an infinite number of other universes.
https://www.multiverse.io/en-US/about/
Multiverse combines work and learning to unlock economic opportunity for everyone. It delivers a new kind of apprenticeship by harnessing the best of human-centred coaching, technology and AI to train individuals in in-demand tech, software engineering and data skills.
Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-why-we-might-live-in-a-multiverse/
Here’s Why We Might Live in a Multiverse – Scientific American
I hope you’re not talking about Terry Pratchett’s Long Earth series, I really enjoyed them. I doubt it, because a multiverse is the whole point of the series. And you’d have mentioned potatoes.
Are you going to spill the beans?
FTL = time travel = violating 2nd law of Thermodynamics.
For entertainment purposes, best not to think too closely about the implications of the above.
Don’t waste your time with a bad book, PZ. You probably know that. Stop it right there and read something better! Here’s my suggestion. I’m 90% through the book “Going Postal” by Terry Pratchett, and of his 35 or so books I’ve read so far, I think it’s one of his best. You don’t even need to know anything about the rest of the Discworld series to appreciate it. Just a wonderful story.
Also, strangely, it’s divided in proper chapters (Pratchett doesn’t usually do that), and he even goes so far as to start each capter with a teaser “In which we find…” prologue.
Snarki @7: Dunno about that. FTL certainly implies violation of local causality; it says you can receive an answer to a question from a distant interlocutor before you ask it. But the second law (and the ‘arrow of time’) is a global statistical concept rather than a local one.
I agree. To me, it suggests a lack of imagination.
Isn’t that called also, “Deus ex machina?”
Yea, agreed. Multiverse plot hammers are lazy. A really well done multiverse plot is good and thought-provoking though.
My eldest kid recommended Steins;Gate. It’s an anime, so maybe not your cup of tea. It’s very worth the time, even though the protagonist is an annoying ass and the start is confusing. Probably the best use of a multiverse that I’ve read/watched.
I really don’t think multiverses are all that implausible. The universe is infinite, and there are only so many rearrangements of matter that are possible in a given volume of space. Some scientists have postulated that there are many, many earths identical to this one, far beyond the boundary of our knowable space. Physical travel between them isn’t plausible though, at least for now.
We really do know comparatively little about the universe (i.e., the Dark Matter/Dark Energy problem).
daulnay @12: I suspect the ‘multiverse’ PZ is talking about is the Many Worlds version (happy to be corrected). But physical ‘travel’ between those worlds is about as likely as that between universes separated by billions of light years.
I never start reading a book or watching a movie without thoroughly checking it out first.
Mind you, it works for me because I don’t care about spoilers.
shermanj @3
What about a blend of science fiction and fantasy? Not everyone who wants some fantastical escapism necessarily want sword, sorcery, and dragons.
@14
Nonfiction books I’ll preview with a summary. I also read reviews and criticism while reading the book. With fiction I’ll try to get a good idea what the book is about without spoiling it, but if it’s hard for me to grasp when reading first time around I’ll read some secondary treatments and have another go at it.
It depends on the movie. I would rather not have twists or surprises spoiled. And movies are not much of a time investment compared to books, so if it wasted my time that’s only a few hours of my life I will never get back.
Walter Solomon @15
I had recently read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. I’d hate to say fantasy given the subject matter. Fantastical yes. Some of what people call magical realism, though that can be taken pejoratively. There’s a The Time Machine element in how the main character Cora is transported into oddly historical juxtapositions at each destination via the literal railroad. But also there’s a deliberate Gulliver’s Travels element in that each destination is its own separate milieu and acts as a way for Whitehead to critique aspects of white supremacy over time.
I also read summaries and literary criticism to get a better feel. Plus some books on relevant black history like uplift, eugenics, and respectability politics.
It was dark and intense, but well worth it for me.
@15 Walter Solomon wrote: What about a blend of science fiction and fantasy? Not everyone who wants some fantastical escapism necessarily want sword, sorcery, and dragons.
I reply: I agree with your thought. Even though I prefer ‘hard science fiction’ and sociological/cultural investigative works, I don’t mind when not everything in the work is, as PZ puts it, ‘rigid realism’. I’ve read some fantasy that was of a milder tone and not all ‘sword and sorcery’ and it was enjoyable and interesting.
You may like “The Space Between Worlds” by Micaiah Johnson. Her twist on the multiverse is you can only travel to Earths similar to your own and if there’s already another “you” on that world, you die. So the corp that developed multiversal travel hires poor people who are likely dead in those other worlds to travel there. Like all good sci-fi, this deals with social issues. I enjoyed it and met the author last month.
The treatment of multi-verses in Transition by Iain M. Banks was pretty well done.
Banks uses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics theory to imagine “infinitudes” of parallel realities, between which The Concern’s agents – known as Transitionaries – can “flit”, intervening in events to produce what The Concern sees as beneficial outcomes for that world. Transitioning, or flitting, is only possible for people with a predisposed talent for such movement, who may only flit after ingesting a mysterious drug called “septus”. When a Transitionary flits into another world, he or she temporarily takes control of the body of an existing inhabitant of that world, along with some of that body’s residual idiosyncrasies (such as personality disorders and sexual preferences).
One of the good treatments of the Everett type multiverses and reincarnation, is a recent novel by Dr. Gregory Benford.
The Goodreads review isn’t very accurate.
It is about reincarnation and people who reincarnate do by mostly waking up in their younger bodies and repeating their lives with knowledge of their old future.
It is at least scientifically plausible and well written. I was glad to get it and read it.
Benford’s real job is as a theoretical physicist.
Somewhere he has pointed out that most copies of him in most of the multiverses don’t believe in the many worlds Everett interpretation of quantum physics.
As a long time science fiction writer, he actually knew both Heinlein and Philip Dick.
The Multiverse is real.
And it is annoying.
The absolute lamest treatment of the whole “multiverse” idea comes from Christian philosophers/theologians, who spent a lot of time talking about “possible worlds” without ever specifying a range of different worlds they consider “possible,” or how they distinguish a “possible” world from a “non-possible” one.
I’m kinda waiting for some next-gen theosophist(s) to start trying to glom recent “multiverse” ideas from science and/or Dr. Strange movies onto their old “possible worlds” blithering to come up with a new brand of quantum/superstring theology (talk about “god of the gaps”)…
Done to death. However, I recently watched this series (have not read the book) and I really enjoyed it. “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch (Apple TV) – IMO the most interesting Multiverse (Many Worlds) treatment out there.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19231492/
What irritates me most about “multiverses” and “time travel” done without rigor (which means anything coming out of the den of iniquity called Hollywood, whether cinema or TV) it that it’s far, far too often an excuse for one or both of:
• Downplaying (or even ignoring entirely) the consequences of actions/decisions, and when acknowledging them at all playing “flapping of butterfly wings” levels of causality. The “kill baby Hitler” example is one of the most egregious — Hitler was just one (exceptionally egregious) of many bad actors on the world stage, and turning all of western Europe into a gulag for Stalin…
• Ignoring the Law of Unintended Consequences (there are only five laws applicable to every imaginable universe: Murphy’s Law, the Law of Unintended Consequences, and the three laws of thermodynamics; everything else can be plausibly excepted/explained)
Speaking as someone who has written multiverse* stories, I sort of agree. Few things will make me check out of a story faster than the “there’s and infinite number of universes just like ours except for one little difference, so we can reset the story whenever we feel like it!” trope. Same for time travel resets. If you don’t have the attention span to tell the bloody story you started, then I don’t have the attention span to sit through your rewrites, especially since I’ve yet to encounter such a story that had an adequate payoff for the wasted time.
It’s more than that, though. I find the concept almost… offensive, I guess, would be the right word. Offensive in the same sense as the smell of rotting fish heads is offensive, I mean. I’ve got a million regrets in this life, and it’s occasionally an effort not to ruminate on them, wondering what my life would have been like had I done this or not done that. But doing that is just about the most useless waste of time I can imagine, because life doesn’t work that. The moving finger done writ, and all that. Thus, I find stories based around the concept of “what if you could go back” thoroughly distasteful.
It’s fine for other people to feel differently. Just know that, should you ever try to tell me about such a story, I’m probably ranking my favorite slasher movies or something while you’re talking. I’m not even a big fan of slashers, but I’ll take Wes Craven’s New Nightmare over just about any multiverse/time travel reset story. It’s not even my favorite slasher movie.
*I’m fine with there being multiple universes if they’re, you know, their own thing, rather than slightly different variations on our own. If I step through a doorway into another universe and I ain’t traumatized by the unspeakable alien horror I find there, then I want my money back.
FWIW Stephen Baxter writes both very good (in my view anyhow) hard SF and some good alternative universe series eg and including his NASA trilogy esp the first novel Voyage :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_(novel)
In addition to his Time Odyssey series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_Odyssey
Which I also recommend.
Then there’s got multiple different universes through not exactly alternative ones (orthagonal?) in his Manifold series too :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold_Trilogy
with the same characters but slightly different universes and very different plots and situations.
I do like some alternative history things from the historical What If perspectives imagining how things might have gone differently and what worlds might have resulted when done well.
I also kinda keep getting the feeling we ourselves are living in a very wrong alternative timeline where the proper ones have things like Kamala Harris and HRC winning their elections officially and being POTUS rather than Trump.. but that’s a whole other story.
vucodlak: I think “Everything Everywhere All At Once” was a good treatment of the “what if I’d done things differently?” multiverse story. But the point of that story (IMO) was that flashing back to all those alternate realities enabled the protagonist to see aspects of herself that were real in her ‘verse but that she had forgotten or never yet found. Sort of like “Yes, you might have done this differently and made it work, because of this power or ability that’s inside you in this ‘verse as well as all the others, which you can still incorporate in your character here and now.”
I was pleasantly suprised to see the comments section didn’t immediately fill up with “oh but this novel about the multiverse is really worth it”. I wish you better luck with your next book choice.
If I can be one more person making a recommendation, how about Anathem by Neal Stephenson? I found this to be a very thoughtful exploration of the Many Worlds formulation of the multiverse (among many other things).
I will say that I think good multiverse stories are hard to pull off. Still, one of my favourite book series of all time is Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” which is multiversed to the max…there are about 5 different universes therein that the protagonists spend a lot of time in, plus quite a few others briefly visited or observed, so I would count this as a true multiverse story, and not a fantasy epic that happens to take place in more than one world.
I confess I have not had the patients for much reading for the last few years, too much shit happening. The last fiction I read was “Known to Evil” by Walter Mosley Detective stories are a kind of fantasy fiction.
I watched most of Dark Matter until someone told me it was cancelled. no spoilers but really discouraging. Like the stupid ending of star trek Enterprise.
Some times time travel works when it is more confined. I never read any multiverse but the online comic of that name is really pretty good much of the time.
Last Sci-Fy I read was William Gibson trouble with that is it looks like we are trying to make it happen in real time dark and dangerous and twisted.
FTL and the reality of it is seldom ever used or makes much sense. It was used to solve a problem on The Orville that was rather clever.
Dr. Who is consistent, if you can make something that is that much bigger on the inside and can go to anyplace in space or time clearly has an advanced unified field theory and an understanding of space and time and multi-verse
I hope things can settle down for me to enjoy reading again
socrates: With Stephenson’s books, the operative phrase is “among many other things.” I knew there was a multiverse in “Anathem” (as in, alternate Earths and human histories), but there was a lot of other ideas and subplots that kinda distracted from the Many Worlds bit. I may have to reread that one…
I agree. It was integral to the plot, and not used to fudge over plot holes. I’m going to disagree with PZ on this one. The problem isn’t the introduction of any particular concept, but what you do with it. It may just be overdone at this point. I have a similar gripe with nanotechnology. Once you introduce something that moots ordinary considerations, you had better come up with a story that’s good enough to justify it.
Weird synchronicity – I just gave up on “Silo” on with episode 3 because of my own personal bugbear: stupidity for dramatic effect. I could cope with the characters being stupid (having been bred for docility and ignorance) but an entire episode devoted to fixing a generator designed by Elon Musk killed it for me.
Same thing happened with the X-files: Mulder and Scully, thickest investigators ever.
I’ve lost count of the number of series/movies that were killed for me by this, not just SF/Fantasy.
(I better not get started on IT insanity in TV/films that actually caused me professional problems – mainly trying to explain to a company director that I couldn’t write a program or fix a problem by “pushing a few buttons”)
The other biggie for me is alien invasions. One or other party is going to get curb stomped, although the 3 Body Problem books actually handled this pretty well so get a pass!
Back to multi-verses – there was a time-travel series I watched a few years back where the protagonists found out that going back in time created multiple possible futures. The bad guys gave up trying to change the future because “it was pointless” which dealt with it pretty well. I think maybe the series was cancelled, but it was an amusing and satisfying conclusion.
A good multiverse story is The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. The basic plot is a connection between our universe and a parallel universe which solves both universes energy problems via a transfer mechanism, the Electron pump. Unfortunately the no free lunch rule applies and the resultant energy imbalance not only threatens earth’s sun bit the other universe as well. There are the usual disaster deniers in both universes who want the system to keep running as well as the heroes whose warnings are ignored. An added bonus to get up MAGA noses is that the other universe has 3 genders.
https://newbookrecommendation.com/summary-of-the-gods-themselves-by-isaac-asimov-a-detailed-synopsis/
Was is “Dark State” by Charles Stross? Usually I like Stross’s novels but I thought this one was stupid.
Charles Stross is an author many here will be familiar with. His Merchant Princes series handles the multiverse in an interesting way. He has clans from an alternate Earth using the transition back and forth to smuggle goods and people for centuries, until the “Earth Prime” people realize they exist and begin an interplanetary war with… Earth.
“Dark State” is the 8th in a series of 9 novels (The Merchant Princes series), so if you started there I’m not surprised you thought it was stupid.
It’s an interesting series in that it starts as a fantasy that morphs into SF. Like most of Stross’ other work it leans heavily into the logical consequences of a particular “what if?”, so if you didn’t read the premises and chain of logic set up in the preceding novels it looks mad. It is bonkers, but it’s internally consistent bonkers.
My fave time travel story of all time is the Netflix Series “Travellers” that comes with a massive program to try and change the present from people in a bad future, but that future keeps being changed by unintended consequences, buggering up the grand plan.
Artor @38: On the surface at least, sounds a lot like Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber.
I don’t see that the problem is with multiverses, alternate earths, or the Everett Many Worlds version of quantum physics.
Most of us have read books with more than one earth or various types of multiverses and liked them. I remember Asimov’s The Gods Themselves about importing changes in fundamental physics constants to generate energy and eventually blow up our sun.
Also Gregory Benford’s book about reincarnation back to alternate earth’s, Rewrite.
As long as it is integral to the story and not a Deus ex Machina to fix a plot that has bogged down.
What makes a story work are how the characters are developed and how well the plotting works.
The alternate earths are useful because they provide earths that are different from the one we live in but are connected to the one we live in so we can relate to them.
Funny, I was going to mention The Gods Themselves in my previous comment but I had doubts over whether it qualified as a “multiverse” story. If I recall correctly (it’s been a while), the other universes are entirely alien with their own physics. So it’s not like a “Spock’s beard” scenario where everything is the same except for a few changes. This situation is impossible (or of negligible probability) because small changes are likely to amplify over time and not produce the same cast of characters with different circumstances and personalities.
I was just watching Across the Spider-Verse and I thought that was totally fine, acknowledging how ridiculous it is and playing it for comedy. There are still probably just way too many multiverse plots at this point, and it is lazy.
I’ve also read The Gods Themselves. Good read, and sure to put any conservative’s hackles up not only due to the three-sexed aliens but because the whole thing is a blatant allegory about climate change, and by extension is calling every climate change denier and fossil fuel baron/apologist stupid right there on the cover.
I quite enjoyed The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett. In that one, the multiverse exists, but all of the universes are lined up next to each other, so to get to very different Earths, they have to step across a lot of different universes to get there. They run into problems, like universes where the Earth doesn’t exist, so they have to find ways to step across those without dying.
raven @ # 21 cites Benford’s Timescape sequel as … about reincarnation and people who reincarnate do by mostly waking up in their younger bodies and repeating their lives with knowledge of their old future.
In other words, yet another imitation of Ken Grimwood’s Replay (1987).
Also note that the original Timescape perfectly exemplifies the cheap multiverse plot twist our esteemed host decries.
William Gibson is doing alternative timelines right.
I highly recommend his The Peripheral and Agency. They are part of the Jackpot trilogy, where disease and climate change led to a climax of “disaster capitalism” along with a substantial reduction of the human population.
Direlobo @ 24
Blake Crouch is interesting.
PZ: ” I can suspend disbelief, no problem, as long as I can see consequences playing out and conflicts resolved within the frame of the premises.”
And that is why you should read William Gibson’s take on the subject. It is not a coincidence he has remained relevant for four decades.
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In regard to Charles Stross, I agree that enjoying the series is contingent on reading all the books in the sequence.
A fun graphic novel series: “Wormwood” a relatively decent demon who inhabits various used human bodies after their former owners no longer need them.
He occasionally travels to other dimensions. And every dimension has a version of Elvis. The Elvis living in the world of redneck fairies ( he was locally known as “Goatfucker”) was pretty gross.
birgerjohansson @ # 50: … “Wormwood” a relatively decent demon …
Note that this graphic novel derives from The Screwtape Letters, a fiction by Anglican theologian C.S. Lewis comprised of notes from a demon to his nephew Wormwood (blandly funny in a 1930s-40s way, first published in an Anglican newsletter).
Well, it’s a matter of taste. I haven’t read many multiverse stories, but those I have read, I’ve enjoyed. Notably, recently, Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes series, already mentioned – while I tired of his “Laundry” series, which relies on magic – the real “anything goes” plot device, which in my view has been grossly over-done in recent decades. It can be done well, but the plot and world-building usually fall apart as soon as you think about them. Moreover, I’d contend that multiverses are more plausible than FTL travel or information transmission – we have good reason to think the latter is really impossible (and moreover, as a plot device it undermines the point that space is really, staggeringly fucking big), while multiverses are just “could be, but we’ve no idea how”.
KG @52:
Agreed, but multiverse SF scenarios rely on communication, or travel, between universes. We have good reason to think that is impossible!
Genuine enquiry – what good reason? Given that the mechanism by which they might come to exist is completely unknown (I’m not assuming they would derive from the “Many Worlds” interpretation of QM), might they not be incompletely separated, providing “portals” for inter-universe travel (in wardrobes, for example, or opened using extremely sharp knives ;-p)? And a favourite speculation of mine is that “dark matter” is just matter in nearby universes (“nearby” in one of the extra dimensions string theorists like), which is gravitationally attracted to matter in our own (and of course, vice versa), with the consequent possibility of communication via gravitational waves.
KG: All of those things can also be said of FTL travel or communication.
KG @54: Wardrobes and subtle knives* are just hand-waving at the speed of light. I could do similar hand-waving for FTL travel or communication.
Causality violation for FTL involves a minimum velocity difference between initial and final frames of reference. All I have to do is require that a receiver of an FTL communication has to be at rest, or nearly at rest, relative to the source. If it is not, the message is simply lost. Of course, how the transmitters/receivers work is a complete mystery. Like the inter-universe portals.
*I love Pullman’s books. An acceptable suspension of disbelief!
PS I also love Ursula K. Le Guin’s books, despite the ‘ansible’.
Rob Grigjanis@56,
That’s interesting – I hadn’t known about that loophole in the no-FTL-communication rule, if I may so describe it. Which SF author will be the first to use it?
PS I agree about Le Guin. A bigger problem I have with her than the ansible is the notion that interstellar human travellers from Hain – the real home world of humanity – interbred with Earth-autochthones. As Carl Sagan said, less likely than successful interbreeding between a man and a petunia.