I’ve been thinking about alternative timelines.
What if the election of 2000 had gone differently?
What if I hadn’t asked to live with my mom?
What if I had reacted differently in a bad situation?
What if Archduke Ferdinand hadn’t been assassinated?
What if I had ignored that near panic attack and gone dancing that New Year’s Eve instead of staying home?
The what-ifs are all over the map.
But what if each of these things happened in another timeline?
Have you read or watched any parallel universe stories? Have a favorite? A least favorite?
Sometimes I wish I could see what’s going on in another timeline. Most of the time I’m glad I don’t know.
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Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
Multiverse is indeed a fascinating concept to think about, parallel and slightly divergent timelines, I do think about it, infinite realities, in some I have everything I now aspire, in some the exact opposite. Its a fun concept, and it plays some role in the Rick and Morty TV series and in movies like Source Code, Pre-Destination, and back to the future. Its been thoroughly shown now in the new series called Dark, which also I found quite fascinating.
Dark has been recommended to me several times, so eventually I’ll watch it. I’m a Doctor Who fan, and that show has done the parallel universes thing too. It definitely is a fun concept.
I was a big fan of “Sliders” when that was on TV.
Marvel’s classic “What If?” series was pretty hit-or miss, with about a 50/50 split, in my opinion.
I’ve heard of “Sliders” but never watched it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Marvel’s “What if?” series though.
I love alternate timeline stories. I see Dark mentioned above — that is gonna be a long-lived classic, I think. (I still haven’t finished watching it myself… have been streeeeetching it out to sustain the pleasure and mystery, and have three episodes to go.)
The Watchmen graphic novel presents a particularly wild alternative history. If you can find a copy somewhere, get it! (It’s available in Kindle format, but really requires a larger screen — tablet/computer/iPad — to appreciate. Looks very dumb on a black-and-white Kindle, haha.) If I had access to my book-books, I’d happily send my hardcopy to you but, of course, they’re all in storage. (At the back of the storage unit, no less.)
(Interesting thing about Watchmen: the one-season TV adaptation is — hold on — an alternative-history universe of the book’s own alternative history… a very clever meta-alternative history.)
Just finished reading a very good nonfiction book called The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), by a young woman astrophysicist named Katie Mack. She specializes in considering theories of how the universe will end; among them covered in the book, she discusses multiverses, a “bouncing” scenario (in which the universe alternately big-bangs and big-crushes), and so on. It does open one’s mind to some surprising scenarios. No one can say yet which is “the most likely,” because which one quote-unquote wins will depend on the exact values which certain variables (like the current rate of expansion, and the rate at which THAT rate is accelerating, and the amount of dark matter and dark energy in the universe — and, for that matter, just what the hell dark energy + matter actually ARE) turn out to have…
I could rattle on forever about this stuff, as, apparently, I am about to do right now. So I’ll stop. 😉
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, by Ursula K. LeGuin is a favorite, including any film adaptations, which are usually more or less just “based on”. All good. And I love Terry Pratchett’s description of parallel timelines: going down another leg of the trousers of Time. I had forgotten Sliders, but I did enjoy that. Oh, and YESTERDAY, the film about a singer/songwriter waking up in a world that has never heard of The Beatles; I didn’t expect to like it, but I LOVED IT! ❤