There Are Doors

Jeff Wilson · 21 May 2009, 21:35 · from 2009-May.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 16:35:47 -0500
Subject: (urth) There Are Doors
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Message-ID: <4A15C933.9010404 at io.com>

James Wynn wrote:
>>>>>> TAD is the only "parallel universe" story to offer a systemic 
>>>>>> justification the close similarities in parallel universes that 
>>>>>> have major variations in their histories: Nearby universes are 
>>>>>> influencing each other at a non-rational level.
>>>
>>>>> What's non-rational about people spreading artifacts, memes, and 
>>>>> genes back and forth?
>>>
>>>> That's not the explanation given. Green compares the universes to 
>>>> two adjacent guitar strings tuned to the same note. When you pluck 
>>>> one, the other resonates.
> 
>>> By the same token, men in our world wear black at their weddings. 
>>> There's no "reason" for it.  They wear black here, because they wear 
>>> black there. They wear black there for a rational reason: The man is 
>>> about to die.
>>
>> But there is *also* a vector of frequent physical travel that the 
>> author tales pains to display, so that resonance explanation need not 
>> be valid. It may just be another of Green's notions.
>> As for it being the only story with such a justification, I can think 
>> of at least three others: Lawrence Watt-Evans' _Out of This World_ and 
>> Christopher Stasheff's Greymarye series...John M. Ford's _Fugue State_
> 
> Okay. Then it is the only one I had read and one of the few. It also 
> predates two of the three you named. Ford's paradigm (he was also 
> published by Tor, I see) seems like such an obvious extrapolation on TAD 
> (I thought the same thing when reading it) that I wonder if he was 
> inspired by it.

In fact, I first read _Fugue State_ and _The Death of Doctor Island_ the 
same day because they were published as an Ace Double. :)

I doubt JMF took more from TAD than from Moorcock's Eternal Champion or 
a dozen other sources of heroic striving across the boundaries of 
continuity, intentional or otherwise.

> Physical travel is not rare, but there is little sign that it is common 
> or long term.  It's not the same as two adjacent neighborhoods. 

I think it may be exactly that! The Chinese man's shop in the Goddess' 
world has shelves of chattels from Green's world, and there's the 
intricate arrangement of utility wires strung through both 
neighborhoods, making dozens of possible doorways for people to weave 
through. Also, the asylum seems to house people over the long term, and 
enough of them are from Green's world that the handy man is so very 
tired of explaining why they can't have a color TV. And wozzname, the 
Nixonian guy who does the subversive plays, he seems to have been 
transplanted for good.

> I think 
> Green's explanation is the most likely. I'm sure his psychiatrist would 
> not find the other explanation particularly enticing.

I think the resonance theory as Green conceives it is incomplete. There 
should be evidence of many worlds' influence on his, as well as ours on 
theirs, as there should have been at the very least several pagan 
powers, even if they have been subsumed by Laura or the Elohim by now.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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