Parallel Worlds – How Science Fiction Failed Us

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Parallel Worlds – How Science Fiction Failed Us
June 9, 2010
By Phineas Delgado
Geek Shui Living

What if…?” It’s just two words, but they are powerful when joined together. There is an idea that persists within the scientific community that our Universe is only one of a nearly infinite number of possible alternate or parallel universes, where, like Quinn Mallory said at the opening of the TV Show Sliders, “… it’s the same year, and you’re the same person, but everything else is different.” We talked briefly about this concept when I addressed the concept of Time Travel. Each time a decision is made, it creates alternate timelines where other choices were picked instead of the one you picked, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. That’s right kids, this week we talk about Parallel Universes.

One of my favorite books of all time is a piece of historical fiction titled “How Few Remain” by Harry Turtledove. It presents a view of America in the 1880’s with a twist: the Union had lost the Civil War. You see, Mr. Turtledove did what so many other writers, me included, do before they start working on their story. He asked, “what if…?” In his case, he asked, “What if the Union had not intercepted the Confederate Battle Plan for Antietam and lost the battle?” The America he presented, one where Custer didn’t have a Last Stand, and where Washington DC sat on the border of a hostile nation, was so utterly different as to be enthralling. This isn’t exactly science fiction, but it isn’t far off.

Another nearly Sci-Fi example comes from our cousins in the Comic world. Marvel and DC both had forays into alternate universes (on multiple occasions with varying levels of success). In fact, DC’s timeline had become so convoluted that they had to reboot at least twice (Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour are the ones I know). Marvel doesn’t do things so dramatically, but the Age of Apocalypse story gave us a brief look at how the Marvel Universe would be without the passive influence of Professor X. My personal favorites, though, were the What If… series of comics by Marvel. In them, the writers could address often pondered fan questions like “What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?” (which he actually did later do), “What if Dr. Doom had become a hero?”, and “What if the Silver Surfer had not escaped Earth.” In the end, many of these stories were noted as actually haven taken place on alternate Earths in alternate timelines (which they designate with a number after the name Earth, like Earth-9140, where Wolverine is lord of the vampires… as if he weren’t awesome enough as he is). As a player of the Marvel Superheroes Role Playing Game, this opened up many, many doors for our GM (probably too many… I remember being on the edge of death a lot).

DC Comics did a similar thing with its Elseworlds series. There, writers get a chance to put favorite heroes in new circumstances or places (or times) and see how they deal with them. One of the most well-known is Batman: Gotham by Gaslight in which our hero pits himself against Jack the Ripper in 19th Century Gotham City. My favorites, though, are the truly alternate timeline stories, like JLA: The Nail, where Superman never makes it to Earth, or Superman: Red Son, an imagining of what would have happened had the Man of Steel landed in the Soviet Union rather than in America. Those are truly fascinating stories that make the reader ponder even more drastic changes.

But the franchise that really utilized this tool (I suppose it’s a tool) of storytelling the best, though, was Star Trek. All you have to do is say “Mirror, Mirror” in a room full of silent geeks, and the room will explode into conversation, mostly about Spock’s beard. That mirror universe was so closely connected to the standard universe that it matched it nearly exactly, excepting that everything was pretty much the opposite of how it should have been. Humans stole advanced warp technology from the Vulcans, Earth was the seat of an interstellar empire, and, well, Spock had a goatee. They visited this alternate version of reality at least 8 times (once in the Original Series, twice in Enterprise, and a whopping FIVE times during Deep Space 9 (they were struggling for good stories for a while). What I like about the mirror universe of Star Trek is that it presents a mirrored, yet still consistent version of events. I mean, I would like to think Picard would never have joined Starfleet in the mirror universe, but that Picard would have been a nasty mo-fo, and likely would have enjoyed any mayhem he would have created. OK… maybe I don’t like it so much…

Star Trek also presented the idea of Time Travel as a catalyst for creating alternate timelines. In Yesterday’s Enterprise, the Enterprise-C comes through a temporal anomaly creating an alternate version of their reality, one in which the Federation is at war with the Klingons (because the Enterprise-C didn’t end up being destroyed trying to save a Klingon outpost as it should have). That even changed the timeline of that show forever, though people don’t think of it that way (which is why predestination paradoxes suck); Since Tasha Yar went back with the Enterprise-C to a time before she was born, and was subsequently captured by the Romulans, she was able to give birth to Sela, who previously had not existed in the original timeline since Tasha Yar died before that event (Makes your brain hurt a little doesn’t it). That means that everything AFTER that episode occurred in a reality different than the one they started with (because if Picard had not allowed Yar to go, she would have simply ceased to exist… again).

My favorite take on this concept, though, at least as presented by Star Trek was in the episode Parallels. It was one of the few times they really explained in detail WHY there were parallels and how they interact. Worf had somehow become disconnected from his originating universe and began to jump between realities. The result was a gripping story in which we saw the different possibilities of the universe unfold. First Worf didn’t win his Bat’leth tournament, then he was instigating a conflict with the Cardassians, then he was married to Troi, then he was first officer and Data had blue eyes (and we got to see a preview of Geordi without the VISOR). That briefing was the first time they explained that every choice spawns a new reality. Imagine it, a world in which there is no American Idol because Simon lost his hearing in a tragic amplifier accident; world where BP didn’t create the worst ecological mistake since Styrofoam burger boxes; a world where John didn’t marry Yoko and the Beatles still tour.

Yes, that was a heavy sigh you just let out.

Now, before you get on my case for not covering Sliders let me explain why. Sliders was obviously about parallel worlds, but because they didn’t control the jumps, there was often no time to explore exactly what made that universe diverge from the original (i.e. theirs). Some of their jumps were utterly bizzare, and many times, the idea that it was a parallel Earth just didn’t jive. But it was a great show.

That said how did Science Fiction fail us with this? Honestly, by teasing us with thoughts of what might have been. I refer you back to the heavy sigh we all collectively let out when we thought about seeing the Beatles in concert (particularly those of us who weren’t born until after they split). Sometimes, we don’t need to think about those things. Really.

Besides, there’s a universe where Arnold Schwarzenegger is President. Do we really need that?