I did it first!
Or maybe not? A new movie considers “Everything, Everywhere, All the Time” (that’s the title!), and the article “Workings of the Multiverse (Latest Version)” by Dennis Overbye in the “Science Times” section of the NY Times (Tuesday, April 26) is essentially a movie review. I might be wrong, but that movie sounds like my sci-fi rom-com A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse.
My novel began as a just-for-fun short story I wrote (that essentially became the first two chapters of the novel, if memory serves), but both hark back to my academic career. (For that reason, I sent a copy of the novel to the fellow I sold an A/C unit to years ago when we were both grad students—he’s now chancellor at an important university. I hope he had fun reading the novel and remembering our shared experiences in a quantum mechanics class!)
Note that both that Times reporter and I used the term “multiverse,” not “metaverse.” Lord knows why Zuckerberg chose the latter as his new trademark. “Meta” is short for the latter that conjures up metaphysics, ESP, and all that, while “multiverse” appropriately conjures up “The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics,” a consistent interpretation of the foundations of the theory created by Hugh Everett III about the same time Richard Feynman invented quantum electrodynamics (both were students of John Wheeler at Princeton). (If it conjures up Dr. Strange’s new movie, you’re too much in the Marvel Universe, which is pure fantasy!)
One of my motivations for my short story and novel was to avoid the paradoxes of time travel (that might be a motivation for the reviewed movie as well?). My two time travelers jump from universe to universe within the multiverse, but some universes have events similar to our own past while others have ones that could be a peek into our own future.
And why is the novel a rom-com? The “com” part is easy: The story doesn’t take itself too seriously (a lot more serious than Dr. Strange’s, though), puts the principal characters in humorous albeit dangerous situations, and pokes fun at our past, present, and possible futures. The “rom”? None of that schmaltzy crap like in The Time Traveler’s Wife! There’s romance brewing between the two protagonists, although it’s a bit bawdy at times (a la Benny Hill, if you’re not too young to remember that British import, i.e. funny and bawdy, with some pokes at spy thrillers because protagonist Gail is not only a genius but also a female James Bond). Sci-fi and be both romantic and comedic, although my more serious works usually don’t emphasize either one. (You can think of the novel as a sci-fi version of Skinny Dipping.)
I experimented with the novel more than the short story. I wanted to see if I could carry tongue-in-cheek humor throughout the run of the novelistic marathon. I also wanted to give the two main characters equal parts—Gail, the sexy scientist, and Jeff, her more serious Black techie. (Of course, that latter is an experiment itself. Most literature, even comedy, is misogynistic, so I purposely reversed the roles!) To help accomplish that, I alternate between first-person Gail and first-person Jeff. (That might be as confusing as those jumps between universes, I suppose, but, in the spirit of Gail’s “time machine,” the novel was a literary experiment.)
I had a lot of fun writing the novel. I hope you have as much fun reading it. (I don’t know about the movie.)
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A Time Traveler’s Guide Through the Multiverse. Enrico Fermi wasn’t the last physicist who was both an experimental and theoretical genius, but Professor Gail Hoff will never receive the Nobel Prize. She goes time-traveling through several universes of the multiverse, never to return to her little lab outside Philly. Jeff Langley, her jack-of-all-trades electronics wizard, accompanies her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous, make this sci-fi rom-com a far-out road-trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounter, robots and androids—all that and more await the reader who rides along.
At PubProgressive.com tomorrow: “Do we trust Elon Musk?”
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
