Multiverse Fatigue

1st up, a duology from Stephen Baxter, whose series I have enjoyed over the years:

1. "World Engines: Destroyer", 2019, 523 pages, 142k words;
2. "World Engines: Creator", 2020, 500 pages, 136k words.

Set a few hundred years in a future, on a post-climate crisis world where humanity has decided that space exploration is a bad idea. Then, an artifact of a level 2 or 3 galactic civilization turns up, and it's pretty exciting from then on.

********************** SPOILER ALERT **********************

But then, stuff starts happening in multiple, parallel planes of the multiverse. In 1, Armstrong had a heart attack & died on the moon. In another, the British Empire didn't go away. Etc, etc, etc.

I think I 1st remember the multiverse being introduced in the Michael Moorcock Eternal Hero stories of the 1970's? It never caught on much.

But now that Marvel has gone that way, I suspect we'll be seeing more & more of it. My wife & I watched "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once". My wife actively didn't like it, I was like meh.

The thought that I have been entertaining is that, once you invoke the multiverse, science fiction becomes much more like fantasy - anything goes, internal consistency not required. I'm not sure this is a good thing.

Both books are well-written page turners, and worth reading.

********************** END SPOILER ALERT **********************

Next up, "Up Against It", Laura J. Mixon, 2011, 504 pages, 137k words. The main progagonist is an 18YO, so I guess this is a YA novel. A well-plotted tale of plucky youngsters helping to save their asteroid home. Lots of plot, good adult characters as well as our teenaged heros. I liked this enough that I purchased the 1st novel of a trilogy by Mixon.

Next up, "The John Varley Reader", subtitled "Thirty Years of Short Fiction", 2004, 899 pages, 244k words, 18 stories. I think this was a $1.99 special via BookBub. Varley has been 1 of my fav authors going back to his earliest stuff in the 1970s. These are some great stories, I had read most of them already. In addition to the stories, after having been reticent about discussing his work for years, Varley introduces each story with autobiographical info about when the story was written. A very pleasant read.

I was recommending Varlay to a young person who had just begun transitioning to being female. Not sure if that is good advice or not. Varley was writing about gender change from the beginning, late 1970s, but surely modern people know a lot more about it now.

Following those great words of wisdom from that emminent post-modern philosopher Bruce Ehrler - "wait a while" - I put off writing this long enough that I read a 5th book: "Wanderers", by Chuck Wendig, 2019, 975 pages, 265k words. Wow, was that book that long? It was definitely a page turner, I finished it at 1:30 am this morning. Published in 2019, a disease jumps from bats to ravage the human race? Seriously? If I had realized that was the plot, I might have skipped it. But, it was a very good read. Plus very spot on re white supremacist militias, christian nationalism, most of our modern political quarrels.

I will pick a couple of bones though.

********************** SPOILER ALERT **********************

Last line of the Interlude at the end of Part One:

And by then, it would be far too late for him — and for everyone else.

Middle of Chapter 15:

They had no idea how true that was.

Isn't this way heavy-handed foreshadowing? Or is this not foreshadowing, but some other blunt instrument? It reminds me of those true crime shows on cable, where they dole out the info in dribbles amidst dire insinuations of things to come. Pretty tacky.

********************** END SPOILER ALERT **********************

I have pre-ordered the sequel, which is due out in November.

Perfect timing, I'll switch over and clear the magazine stack. Momentarily tempted to ditch it, as I was tempted to blow off blogging these books. I may have a bit of process fatigue. But, I think that the older I get, the more important it is to keep my exocortex updated. So, brace up! Books blogged, #SongOfTheDay recorded, Music In processing proceeding, on to the magazine stack!