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- The Jackpot Trilogy
series2 books2014
similar byscience fictionmultiple pov+2 more
William Gibson's Jackpot sequence begins with The Peripheral (2014), a science-fiction thriller cross-cutting between a near-future American town and a devastated London seventy years on. Gibson continued the same world in Agency (2020), set slightly later in the near-future timeline.
- Roadmarks
Roger Zelaznystandalone novel1979
similar byscience fictiontime travel+1 more
Roadmarks is a science fantasy novel by American author Roger Zelazny, written during the late 1970s and published in 1979.
- City at the End of Time
Greg Bearstandalone novel2008
similar byparallel universescience fictiontime travelmultiple pov
City at the End of Time is a 2008 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. It was published in August 2008 by Del Rey in the United States, and Gollancz in the United Kingdom. The story follows three drifters in present-day Seattle who are tormented by strange dreams of the Kalpa, a city one hundred trillion years in the future. The Kalpa is attempting to ward off the Typhon, an inexplicable entity that has consumed the rest of the ancient universe and broken down the laws of physics.
- The Adjacent
Christopher Prieststandalone novel2013
similar byscience fictiontime travelmultiple pov+1 more
In the near future, Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled from Anatolia to Britain when his wife, an aid worker, is killed--annihilated by a terrifying weapon that reduces its target to a triangular patch of scorched earth. A century earlier, Tommy Trent, a stage magician, is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy. Present day: a theoretical physicist develops a new method of diverting matter, a discovery with devastating consequences that will resonate through time.
- The Crack in Space
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel1966
similar byparallel universescience fictiontime travel
The Crack in Space is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. In the United Kingdom, it has been published under the title of the original novella, Cantata 140, published in the July 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This original title refers to the short title in English, Sleepers Awake, of J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 140 and the novel's 'bibs', the millions sleeping in suspended animation. Both are based on the short story Prominent Author. The common elements are the Jiffi-scuttler transport device, the company, Terran Development, that manufactures it, and a summary of Prominent Author as an event of the past in chapter 2. The "crack in space" is a defect in Jiffi-scuttler operation that allows access to the Earth and to parallel Earths at various times and locations, beyond its intended use of providing near-instant transport between specific locations on the Earth in the present.
- Special Deliverance
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1982
similar byparallel universescience fiction+1 more
A professor finds himself teamed with men, women, and a robot from parallel versions of earth, transported to a planet and sent on a quest of which none of them know the purpose or the details.
- Quicksand
John Brunnerstandalone novel1967
similar byscience fiction+2 more
A British psychiatrist in a deadening job and a deadening marriage gets a mysterious patient; a petite young woman who speaks an unrecognizable language and is unfamiliar with the common objects, sights, and behaviors of normal life, yet who is able to quickly and easily cripple or kill a large man with her bare hands when she feels threatened. He feels more than professional concern for the woman, who he believes is not actually mentally ill but is in fact a more unusual case.
- Transition
Iain M. Banksstandalone novel2009
similar byparallel universescience fictionmultiple pov+1 more
A man with the ability to transfer between parallel worlds is employed as an assassin by a Council regulating those with the same ability, but becomes embroiled in a secret struggle between factions with clashing goals.
- His Dark Materials
series8 books1995
part of His Dark Materials Universe
similar byparallel universe+2 more
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.
- Last Year
Robert Charles Wilsonstandalone novel2016
similar byscience fictiontime travel+1 more
"Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant. It's the near future, and the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened. A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination. Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it"--
- Whileaway
series4 books1972
completed
similar byscience fiction+2 more
Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975) is a single feminist science fiction novel, not a multi-book series, built around four women from parallel timelines with very different gender arrangements. One of them, Janet, comes from Whileaway, an all-female utopian Earth ten centuries in the future where men died out in a plague; the other three come from realities closer to Russ's own, and their collisions are used to interrogate what womanhood and equality could mean under different social rules.
- The Long Earth
series7 books2012
similar byparallel universescience fiction
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's Long Earth series (five novels, 2012-2016) begins when a cheap, simple device called a Stepper lets people step sideways into a vast, possibly infinite chain of parallel Earths, none of which developed human civilization. The books follow a natural stepper and an AI that believes itself the reincarnation of a Tibetan repairman as they travel millions of steps out along the chain, encountering other hominid species and the dangers, ecological and social, of an endless open frontier.
- Paratime Police
series33 books1948
similar byscience fiction+1 more
The Paratime series written by H. Beam Piper and subsequently by John F. Carr consists of several short stories, one novella, and one novel, all but one of which were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction under the editorship of John W. Campbell. The series deals with an advanced civilization that is able to travel between parallel universes with alternate histories, and uses that ability to trade for goods and services that its own, exhausted Earth cannot provide. The protagonists of the stories are the Paratime Police, the organization that protects the secret of paratime travel.
- The Gods Themselves
Isaac Asimovstandalone novel1972
similar byparallel universescience fiction
The Gods Themselves is a 1972 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov, and his first original novel in fifteen years. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.
- Oxford Time Travel
series6 books1982
similar byscience fictiontime travel+1 more
Connie Willis's Oxford Time Travel novels are set at a near-future Oxford University where historians travel into the past as observers, constrained by a version of history that resists any change large enough to alter real events. Doomsday Book sends a medieval historian to what should be 1320 but turns out to be the Black Death year of 1348, intercut with a present-day epidemic at Oxford; To Say Nothing of the Dog returns to the same time-travel program for a lighter, Victorian-set story with different characters. The two novels share their setting and rules rather than a directly continuing plot.
- Brasyl
Ian McDonaldstandalone novel2007
similar byparallel universescience fictionmultiple pov
Brasyl is a 2007 novel by British author Ian McDonald. It was nominated for the 2008 Hugo Awards in the best novel category. In 2008 it was nominated for, and made the longlist of, the £50,000 Warwick Prize for Writing. It was also nominated for the Locus Award and John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel, and in 2009, it was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel. It won the British Science Fiction Award for best novel in 2008.
- The Merchant Princes
series14 books2004
similar byparallel universescience fiction
The Merchant Princes is a science fantasy and alternate history series of nine novels by British writer Charles Stross. In the series, there exist a number of parallel worlds, all of which are on the same geographical Earth but with different societies at different points of development. Members of a certain bloodline can travel between these worlds along with their immediate possessions. The series largely follows Miriam Beckstein, a technology journalist raised in a familiar "normal" Earth, who discovers she was born in a parallel world and is a member of this bloodline. She quickly becomes entangled in political maneuvering and assassination plots with her estranged family. Miriam uses modern technology and investigative journalism to attempt to stay a step ahead.
- His Dark Materials Universe
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
similar byparallel universe+1 more
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
