Thoughts on a Sub-Sub-Genre of Science Fiction

Hi; my name is Blaine McCants. If the reader is older than twenty nine or so, then he or she might remember me as the author of such economic, academic classics as “Projecting Soviet Energy Requirements Using a Vintage Capital Model.”

I spent decades writing in the Gubmint writing mines. “You split your infinitive, peasant; it’s twenty lashes for you and I expect you to be grateful.” But mostly for the Gubmint, I would, for example, write beautiful and insightful prose like, “At 0620 the Soviet Motorized Rifle Regiment rumbled through the narrow pass, the dust from its passing catching the morning rays of sunlight that rosy-fingered Dawn spread over the Caucasian landscape and reflecting them upward, revealing the buzzards that circled above, who were waiting for the trucks to clear and expose to the carrion crunchers their morning repast left over from the previous evening’s carnage.”

Then I would hear back something like, “Birds don’t have teeth, moron. They can’t crunch. Disapproved. Rewrite and resubmit for further disapproval.”

I finally retired and figured that fiction had to be easier.

What type of fiction? Well, as the cowpoke with the too-snug chaps once said, “Tis the rub of a tight situation.” For me, at least, that was easy.

I still have my volume of H. Beam Piper’s “Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen” ACE Paperback F-342 40-cent cover price. I bought it in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, in a neighborhood bookstore when it came out in 1965; I was twelve years old. I also have the SFBC version of Piper’s Paratime stories.

It was only when I put fingers to keyboard and start pounding out some stories of my own in the spirit of this genre that I realized how few of the many, many science fiction novels and short stories which I have read involve para-temporal travel in the classic science fiction sense. Oh, for sure there alternate earth travel stories like Larry Niven’s For a Foggy Night about a guy who walks out into a fog bank and wanders into another version of earth. And there was H. Beam Piper’s own much earlier He Walked Around the Horses about a minor diplomat who walked around his horses in 1809 and into another world where a Sir Arthur Wellesley had never heard of a dude named General Wellington. These are one-offs and the mechanism for getting from one earth to another is basically just the magician’s wave of the hand.

I would put Phillip Jose Farmer’s novel The Gate of Time in that category. That was basically alternate history. The Bearded Spock episode, “Mirror, Mirror” from TOS, and its occasional follow on episodes in subsequent series, do not really fit within the sub-genre, either. Simultaneous transporter beams during an ion storm, right? That’s along the same lines as “suddenly a miracle occurred” rather than even a cursory attempt at replicable technology. Also, the Mirror episodes are problematic because the bearded Spock alternate universe seems to be the only other alternate universe out there in the Star Trek universe. To me, that makes as much sense as Spock’s green blood. Anyhow, Jason Nesmith was the best starship captain ever. Fight me. Metaphorically.

The question of James P. Hogan’s Proteus Operation is slightly more complex, as it involves both time travel and alternate worlds. To prevent spoilers, I will just say that in Proteus you can’t just pop into your trans-temporal taxi and go popping off to an AD 2022 where dinosaurs still rule the earth.

Then there is Roger Zelazny’s Amber series and those like it. Yeah, there are multiple earths, but they are all sort of reflections of the one true earth and only certain folks can actually walk the paths among the earth. That makes it fantasy. Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series, which has a similar plot device to explain world-hopping, is also fantasy. Sarah Hoyt’s “Witchfinder” which uses explicit magic to move among earths, is again clearly fantasy. There is nothing wrong with fantasy, of course. It’s just not science fiction.

What I am referring to, though, is science fiction. I wrote the type of novels where going from one earth to another version of earth is like taking the metro into DC in the morning and then returning to the burbs in the evening. Nothing precludes the average Joe or Jane Blow from popping off to an alternate earth once he or she has acquired the technology. That takes a little more hand waving to “explain” but it always involves the science fiction equivalent of a commuter bus. That can lead to problems, as H. Beam Piper made very clear in some of his short stories in his Paratime series.

There are undoubtedly more such series out there than the ones I will list, but off the top of my head, besides the Paratime series, I came up with five other such series from way back when before the concept of the multiverse got overcrowded with superheroes and anime and wizards and magic. They are, alphabetically by author:

John Barnes, The Timeline Wars: Patton’s Spaceship, Washington’s Dirigible and Caesar’s Bicycle

Jack L. Chalker, G.O.D. Inc.: The Labyrinth of Dreams, The Shadow Dancer, The Maze in the Mirror.

Keith Laumer, “The Worlds of the Imperium Stories”

Richard C. Meredith, The Timeliner Trilogy: At the Narrow Passage, No Brother No Friend, Vestiges of Time.

Andre Norton, The Crossroads of Time and Quest Crosstime

Anyone who has other examples of multi-volume works from more or less the 90s or earlier, let me know and I will try to read them and add them to my list if I think they qualify. I know I didn’t read enough sci-fi as a kid.

I believe that these novels all tried to exhibit classic elements of potential societal and civilizational conflict. An earth which can move among other earths will almost certainly have technological advantages over those which cannot. It may be tempted to exploit those earths which it finds. It may introduce new technologies or even diseases to the places it visits or it might even carry them back home.

Heck, it might actually come up against its own technologically superior version of earth. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Anyhow, I decided to knock out this type of novel, “The Clash of Timelines.” I kept typing until I had three volumes: The Hands that Rock the Triggers, A Switch in Times, and The Scum Also Rises. 

Any other novels, you ask? Well, if you ever saw some of the corny and somewhat nonsensical British films of the 60s involving smoking hot, lady superspies, then add to the mix some Norse and early Greek Gods, bug-eyed-monsters, heartless sorcerers, demons, clunky robots, evil villains from outer space, obviously phony Russian nuns belonging to a non-existent secret order and maybe the Anime Goddess of inter-galactic fashion you are starting to grok the novel. Oh, I forgot to mention ladies’ pro wrassling. That’s very important to the story line.

I figure Superspy Dawn and the Extra-Galactic Shoggoth is so cheesy that the moment someone translates it into French, the French will kick the late comic genius Jerry Lewis out of their Academy of Arts, install me in his place and give me a plaque announcing that I am now the ultimate Grande Fromage.

I expect Dawn to return in Superspy Dawn and the Selenium Crown, describing her travails in her efforts to restore the three, formerly jeweled prongs of the shattered Selenium Crown. Those quests through time and space will include Our Lady in Irkutsk, The Adventure of the Ruritanian Chamberpot, and A Princess of Venus.