Wardrobes and warriors

 One of the key themes in my YA book is the idea of alternate worlds, namely worlds that exist in parallel to our own. For a writer this is a perfect device, as it is remarkably versatile in the way it covers all magnitude of possibilities. For me, at least in the first book, it is alternate history and the hint of a world where mythical creatures and magic exist (as biological and physics variants).

The use of alternate worlds is so rife in literature, film and television that it has become overly familiar to us as readers. My son, who I am hot-housing into a comic-loving, fantasy-reading, wargame-playing geek (like his dad) glibly speaks of other dimensions and parallel universes, not least because of the innumerable reboots of superhero franchises.

I loved the idea of alternate worlds as a kid, and it was Dr Who and Star Trek that really introduced them to me. But the idea really grew in my brain through the fantasy books I loved as a child, and the idea of normal folk entering a magical world that existed ‘alongside our own.’

If I had to pick a few that have stayed with me the first would have to be Alan Garner’s book, Elidor. Garner grew up not far from where I live now, and set many of his tales in the Manchester and Cheshire areas. Elidor tells the tale of four teenagers from Manchester who pass through a portal in a ruined church and into the fantasy land of Elidor. There they acquire three magical items – a cauldron, a stone and a sword- for the besieged king. They then take these back to our world, where they become mundane items. The evil forces from Elidor pursue them across the portal and into our world.

It was a superb example of fantasy read by kids, but of the quality and maturity that you expect from adult fantasy fiction. The tension of the work was superb, built by the curious effect of the magical items on electrical technology in our world. I loved the concept of a magical world, accessible from our own, and so it was no surprise that I moved onto CS Lewis from there.

Lewis’s books never really grabbed me as a kid. It may be that I was changing and was after something that felt less dated, or more mature, but the fifties style just didn’t hold my interest. Nonetheless the iconic nature of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is unquestionable, and I can’t have been the only kid rooting around amongst my parent’s cupboards looking for a psychotic dwarf and some Turkish delight.

The parallel fantasy world is replete in children’s literature—Peter Pan’s Neverland, Alice’s Wonderland are famous classic examples—and the idea continues to pop up all over the place. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series develops the idea in The Subtle Knife, as one of the main characters literally cuts his way between worlds; Neil Gaiman’s awesome Coraline has the heroine crawling through a rather creepy tunnel into a sinister ‘mirror’ world, full of button eyes.

As my tastes matured into more adult work, I found the theme still popular in ‘grown up’ fantasy. I finally got around to reading Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant last year (tried when younger and just got bored), which is the most notable example of modern man in fantasy world, and similarly Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions which again has a modern protagonist thrown into an Arthurian fantasy world. Even my last huge-read, Zelazney’s Amber decology, uses the idea at least in part, although the main characters are residents of Amber living within our world.

The popularity of the modern man/teen/child thrown into an imaginary world continues. It’s an appealing concept—how any of us would employ our modern knowledge and concepts in a land of magic and mysticism. In almost every example of the books the fantasy world acts to show the main characters that knowledge will only take them so far, and that the virtues of courage and bravery are the ones that are required to win the day.

And with the modern world the way it is at the moment, who wouldn’t want a parallel fantasy world to go and visit?

 

Alternative Guide to Alternative Reality 3... Comics!

Read Part one of the blog at Life in the Realm of Fantasy

And hop over like an excited Bunny to part two at Fresh Pot of Tea

 

And now for part three.....

 

If I were a dishonest man (and the admission that my previous Movember moustache makes me look like the Village People indicates I am utterly honest) then I’d claim that some awesome seminal sci-fi story created my interest in alternate reality. The truth is far from that- it was a combination of the awesome old-school Star Trek, and Marvel comics that take the blame.

For those who follow my blog that’ll come as no surprise. I’ve rambled about the key influence of comics in my fantasy writing before, and its impact on my current book, The Infinity Bridge, is glaring. The whole plot begs for a graphic novel, and the pace, dialogue and action is very comic book style in places.

One of the fundamental aspects of the book is the idea of alternate reality, that history/evolution/physical laws of the world could have diverged at some stage from our own. It’s a wonderful plot device—the possibilities are endless, and range from the divergences of individuals (think It’s a Wondeful Life and Sliding Doors) to entire worlds and their structure (think Wizard of Oz and Narnia in more extreme examples). So it is no surprise that the theme is a massive one in the world of comics.

The first mainstream use of alternate worlds was over in DC-world, back in the Wonder Woman and Flash comics. Wonder Woman kicked it off with our hot pants heroine falling through a dimensional rift and meeting a double called Tara Teruna (two Wonder Women... and so the fantasy begins...). But the Flash story, Flash of Two Worlds, was the seminal moment where we have a true ‘alternate.’ It used the great idea that the Golden Age Flash, a comic book character in our Flash’s world as well as ours, existed in a parallel world (called Earth-2 in later series). DC expanded this idea again and again, using the tool to resurrect Golden Age incarnations of their characters, and ones acquired from other publishers over the years.

It all got a little bonkers in the end, and DC started to wrap it all up with the series Crisis on Infinite Earths... and then rebooted and rebooted and wrote Infinite Crisis and 52 and... bleh...

But I’ve never been a DC boy (although my moustache again may infer otherwise), I’m Marvel through and through. For me the series ‘What If’, which was serialised in UK comics was my first exposure. It was a series where the light-bulb headed Watcher told a yarn about a reality that had diverged at a significant historical moment in the Marvel Universe. There were so many good ones, the memorable ones for me (probably because his was the most popular comic at the time) being the Spiderman ones: what if Aunt May had been popped instead of Uncle Ben?; What if someone else had been bitten by that radioactive spider?; What if Spidey joined the Fantastic Four?; What if the Spider clone lived? (it did, much to the groans of multitudes of Spider fans).

Yet those tales were only ever short spin-off ideas. The parallel worlds and alternate history as actual plot lines in Marvel comics really took off with the X-men. My era of the X-men was the classic Claremont-Byrne run, reprinted in the UK in wonderful monochrome which made some parts rather tricky to follow. Towards the end of their run together, the pair did a story Days of Futures Past, in which characters from an alternate future travel to the mainstream world of the X-men to try and avert a key event that created their divergent reality. It was massively and deservedly popular (not least because you got to see Wolverine toasted by a Sentinel...bub) and Claremont returned again and again to that alternate, often bringing characters and villains across (Rachel Summers Phoenix; Nimrod; Forge etc).

The idea grew and grew over the years, and there’s an awesome geek out list on the web with all the alternates numbered (from a 2005 summary I think). I found myself reading like a sad-o through it and nodding at the ones I recognised....

You can see the appeal as a writer, especially if you write a series. Alternate realities allow the writer to screw around with characters, about what we know or think we know about them, without upsetting the mainstream ones. It also allows the rather tired concept of evil versions of characters to be used (none may live up to the glory of evil-Kirk and his guy-liner).

It would be difficult to write anything on comics and how they influenced me without doffing the cap to Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Watchmen runs with the concept of how history would be altered if superheroes existed in our world—so how would the presence of a superhuman impact upon the Vietnam War, or international relations/politics, or day-to-day living, or technology. The influence of the Watchmen comic on the genre is vast, and it deservedly maintains its status in comic book history. If you are not a particular comic fan and wanted to see what could be done differently with the genre then this is a great place to start (the subtleties to the plot-lines are marvellous).

 

So that wraps up my ranting on alternate worlds, taking it back to where it all began for me. I haven’t broken any new ground in my book, using the alternate history model as an excuse for Steampunk fun. Oh, and its meant I could have an ogre pop up in some woods near York. In the sequels to the book I’m planning a few weirder ideas... and, yes, at some point I’ll need an evil version of a character. Its just got to be done...

 

The Infinity Bridge is up on t'Amazon, both in print and in Kindle. If you want a peek then click on the links...

 

Amazon UK

Amazon everywhere else, like the USA and Oz