When I first decided to do a post on my favorite places in the Multiverse, I started listing movies and book series — and almost immediately ran out of paper. I realized that I couldn’t really list individual threads; there is too much. So let me sum up — with a more general list:

Space
Star Trek. Star Wars. Babylon 5. Farscape. Firefly. Honor Harrington. The Heinleinverse. And a whole lot more. Space is a really big place, and science fiction is a huge genre. So if space travel is possible or the action happens on another planet, then it goes in this category. Amazing how much stuff that ties up, ain’t it?

School
Ferris Buehler. Ridgemont High. Pacific Tech. Van Wilder. The School of Rock. The Deltas. The Pitt. Heck, Sky High works, as does Hogwart’s (though to me they fit better in other categories).

ToonSpace
Warner Brothers. Tex Avery. Fleisher. Disney. You know, the classics. Pixar and Dreamworks have brought this corner of the Multiverse into 3D, which has been a very good thing; but 3D or 2D, I love animation!

ParodyVille
Mel Brooks and the Abrhams/Zucker/Zucker movies are the cornerstone of this category, but there are others out there, like Flesh Gordon or Last Action Hero. Heck, I could argue that with Enchanted, Disney made a parody of all their other movies — from a certain point of view.

SuperSecret
UNIT. Torchwood. The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Omega Sector. Mutant X. The Vatican Organization. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The Holy Order. A large number of agencies with no name at all. Not to mention TimeLords, Guardians of Time, and Time Guardians (yes, I’ve heard of both), and the “invisible societies:” Elves in California, Diagon Alley in the middle of London, and the World Below in New York all wind up here. So do the countless individuals who for one reason or another (some of them most interesting) are staying “off the grid.”

FantasyForest
Middle-earth. Florin and Gilder. Gwynedd. Valdemar. Narnia. The worlds where dragons fly, warriors quest and magic-workers enchant. This is one of my favorite places in the Multiverse.

HeroSpace
Superman. Spiderman. Batman. Condorman. The Greatest American Hero. The Avengers, the X-Men, and the Justice League. “Longjohns at six o’clock.” There are a lot of costumed do-gooders out there, and all of them are fun to watch. (Especially if they’re particularly good at it yet!)

Alternative History
What if this had never happened? What if this had happened like that? What if a piece of now got transported back to then? What if everybody used magic? “He’s historical — let’s grab him!” Playing with history has always been a rich vein for fiction. The Terminator is all about playing with history, as is the wonderful Grantville/1632 book series. It’s fun to play “What if!”

RubberMonsterLand
Since this is my list, I get to include one of my favorite places to waste my time. Godzilla is responsible for some of my favorite family memories, silly as that sounds. King Kong, Godzilla, Gamera, Gorgo, and all their friends and opponents are a great source of good, clean, wholesome destruction (Tokyo has a wonderful [and well-rehearsed] evacuation system) and lovely, wonderful carnage.

Um . . . Gee . . . Ooh . . . Ahh . . .
It seems my Top 10 list only has 9 entries on it! And I can’t decide on a final category. What do you think? Should it be “Awesome Tech?” “Fun with Mythology?” “Secret Missions?” “Fantastic Futures?” How about “Happy Endings as only celluloid can deliver,” or “MusicalLand?” (Or does the first include the second?) What have I forgotten? Please weigh in in the Comments section below!

Technorati Tags: Alternative History, Fantasy Forest, HeroSpace, Multiverse, ParodyVille, Rubber Monsters, School, Space, SuperSecret, ToonSpace

When you’ve been around the Multiverse (or my particular version of it) for a while, you start noticing things that are similar in all the worlds. Example: Have you ever noticed how many doors sound like they were stolen right off the Enterprise? (We were watching the first season of Buck Rogers last night; their doors have the same Star Trek sound, only slowed down! Sheesh!) Ever realize how many vehicles, when they fail, sound just like the Millenium Falcon with a wonky hyperdrive? And I can’t tell you how many times my wife has heard an engine and, without looking up, said, “That’s a landspeeder.”

My personal favorite in this category right now is the Interdimensional Sound of Annoyance (ISA). I’ve heard it from a Mallisterean in Coruscant traffic; I’ve heard it from an Uruk-Hai outside Helm’s Deep; I’ve heard it from the lips of countless humans, past and future, no matter what language they speak or what time/space period they’re from. The ISA? It’s “What’da . . . !”

Now I know someone is going to point out that this is actually a contraction of the English “What the . . ., ” where the last word of the phrase, usually not welcome in a family-friendly environment, is left to the imagination of the hearer. I have no idea whether these exclamations are translated in other versions; the Mallisterean might be, the Uruk-Hai is probably not. Someone else might argue that this is the ISA as translated by an English-speaking brain, and that we really don’t know what the ISA sounds like. That may be true, and we won’t know till we get there. But since I live in my own little world, and my own little Multiverse, I’m going to take my ISA as fact. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. 8-P

What fascinates me is not the sound of the ISA, but the fact that it exists at all. It’s pointing to the fact that all sentient beings seem to need an expression to use when something unexpected happens; and that when it does, what comes out of our vocal orifices is a little muddied. They aren’t quite words, but hey — if a Jedi suddenly flew by on a ‘bot and nearly kicked you in the eye-stalk, you’d be a little muddled, too! The phrase usually lasts as long as the confusion, as the event either passes by or becomes obvious. But it does seem to be one of those little things we all have in common.

So listen for the Interdimensional Sound of Annoyance — I’m sure you’ll hear it in the next 24 hours, from your own reality or one of the ones you like to hang out in (think TV, movies, books . . .). Where can you find it? Let me know!

Technorati Tags: Interdimensional Sound of Annoyance, Multiverse

So how do I define the Multiverse?

Have you ever cut a rope, to find that the rope is made of twisted cords, and those cords are made of smaller cords, and those cords are made of twisted threads — and you really should have tied or taped the thing together before you cut it?

Imagine that everything you’ve ever seen or read is real. Star Splat (for splat read wars or trek, whichever you’re into, or both), Middle Earth, Pern, Babylon 5 — they all exist out there somewhere in the Multiverse. Under this theory, Lucas and Roddenberry and Tolkien and MacCaffery and Straczynski didn’t make these ideas up, but somehow connected with these parallel places in the Multiverse, and wrote down what they saw. We watch or read about them, and then we’re connected to that particular thread in the rope as well. We quote characters, write fan fiction, and wish we were there too. (There are actual FaceBook groups titled, “I’d rather live in Middle-earth,” “I’d rather go to Hogwart’s, ” et cetera.) Some of us pick a thread and practically live there; others collect universes and try to live in as many of them as possible.

And although each thread is different, many of them address the same story or place. When I was regularly watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, especially at the beginning, a surfer Aphrodite or a historical inaccuracy (and there were a ton) would cause me to mutter to myself, “Three doors down, three doors down”, because I saw this as part of the same cord as all the other Hercules stories told through the millenia, but it was definitely a different thread. Some people have problems with stories not told as they expect them to be told (I have one friend who refuses to watch medieval or fantasy stories with a modern musical soundtrack — rock music ruins the whole thing for them); others of us are so indiscriminate that we’ll watch anything. It depends on your ability to suspend disbelief, I guess.

So, for me, the Multiverse is the aggregation of the “fictional” worlds a lot of us like to spend time in. I see them as a special type of Popular Delusion (maybe because I’m so involved in them); more than just the movies or books that led us to that particular place, these are shared worlds that lots of people like to hang out in and make their own. This sub-blog will take you on a journey to some of my favorites. Hope you enjoy the ride!

Technorati Tags: Multiverse