SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Can just be 1 earth setting like Fatherland or multiple earths like Sliders tv show.

Well, before Fatherland, there was Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle. One of his best, I think.

Isn't Fatherland Alternate History rather than Parallel Earth?

The distinction being that Alternate History posits a change somewhere in the past which alters our present. The Confederacy wins with US Civil War, the Axis win WWII, etc, but it's still our world. Parallel Earth has our Earth as it is today but that we can visit one or more Earths which are slightly-to-radically different.

That said, I did enjoy a book in the past decade that was similar to the TV series Sliders, and I've just spent the last 20 minutes searching for it. I recall the cover was a painting looking down on a teenage boy running through puddles. Maybe it'll come to me.

Anyway, the Stephen Gould book Wildside does the Parallel Earth thing, but I honestly can't recall anything about it.

I have enjoyed most of the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson. It's kind of a mash-up between the Kirk Douglas movie The Final Countdown and The Land That Time Forgot. It's about an out-dated WWI Destroyer that's caught fighting a state-of-the-art Japanese battleship during WWII when they're caught in this weird storm that sends all of them to a parallel Earth where the dinosaurs never went extinct and humans never evolved.

Dinosaurs (probably raptors) have evolved into intelligent bipeds and have a rigidly stratified society with smart leaders and dumb workers, and they seek to destroy anything that isn't them. On Madagascar, intelligent lemurs evolved away from these super-predators. The American Destroyermen find themselves allied with the Lemurians (as one wag calls them) while the Japanese admiral strikes a devil's bargain with the dinosaur Grik.

It starts out simply enough and the world is good versus evil, but not all the Japanese are happy with being with the Grik and not all the Americans are pleased with their allies the "monkeycats". Then there's the development that the Destroyermen are just the latest people to find themselves on this version of Earth. There are representatives of the East India Company, Spanish Conquistadors, and more.

It gets pretty crazy after a while.

The writing is decent and a couple of the books are a bit slow, but overall it's some widescreen epic action on the sea and the land as they become mired in an even bigger and decidedly odd version of another World War.

Trike wrote: "...Dinosaurs (probably raptors) have evolved into intelligent bipeds..."

Ah... Now that reminds me of Harry Harrison's West of Eden. That's alternate history again, though.

I haven't read The Family Trade by Charles Stross but I heard it's good.

Charles Stross has a whole series, called the Merchant Princes, about a clan of people who use their more-or-less natural ability to move from one parallel Earth to another to do all sorts of bad things for more-or-less good reasons.
Look up H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories, which culminated in a wonderful novel called Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen. Piper died in the 60s but his Kalvan series was continued by some friends, look up hostigos.com.
Another excellent novel of this sort is The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan. (The linking mechanism seems to be broken.) Multiple alternate Earths influencing each other with a WW2 setting. One of his best.

parallel earth i cant help you with but Alternate History i can:

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/a...

Off the top of my head here are a few parallel earths:
Cowboy Angels
Century Rain
Broken Universe
Transition

Broken Universe is probably the closest to a Sliders type plot.

Crosstime Traffic is one of my favorite books. All related short stories on the parallel earth genre.

The opening story, "Why I left Harry's All-night Hamburger Stand" is the nucleus of this terrific book.

Beezlebug (Rob) wrote: "Off the top of my head here are a few parallel earths:
Cowboy Angels
Century Rain
Broken Universe
Transition

Broken Universe is probably the closest to a Sliders type plot."

Ooh... I did like Century Rain. My favourite Alastair Reynolds to date. I loved the plot device regarding the 'other' Earth.

Steph wrote: "Beezlebug (Rob) wrote: "Off the top of my head here are a few parallel earths:
Cowboy Angels
Century Rain
Broken Universe
Transition
..."
Very lightweight, and a bit of an acquired taste, but how about the Svetz stories from Larry Niven?
And Heinlein wrote something that involved jumping across time tracks including short episodes acknowledging other masters of this genre by dropping into their universes . . I remember he visited Doc Smith's Lensman universe, and Gordon Dickinson's Dorsai

Beezlebug (Rob) wrote: "Broken Universe is probably the closest to a Sliders type plot."

So glad you posted that! The Melko book was the one I was thinking of earlier!

The Walls of the Universe -- Definitely similar to Sliders. I didn't know he'd written a sequel.

Also happy/sad that my brain half worked:

Trike wrote: "That said, I did enjoy a book in the past decade that was similar to the TV series Sliders, and I've just spent the last 20 minutes searching for it. I recall the cover was a painting looking down on a teenage boy running through puddles. Maybe it'll come to me."

Alan wrote: "...And Heinlein wrote something that involved jumping across time tracks including short episodes acknowledging other masters of this genre by dropping into their universes..."

Yes! I'd forgotten that one. It's The Number of the Beast.

Pure parallel worlds from the old school with Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak. Might seem a bit dated and pastoral now but still a fine piece of work.

Alternate history with a hint of parallel worlds is the brilliant Pavane by Keith Roberts. Appears in David Pringle's 100 best SF novels and one of my favourites too.

Pavane is really brilliant.
I also propose Lest Darkness Fall and The Difference Engine

Trike wrote: "Beezlebug (Rob) wrote: "Broken Universe is probably the closest to a Sliders type plot."

So glad you posted that! The Melko book was the one I was thinking of earlier!

The Walls of the Universe -..."

You're welcome and thanks for clarifying that I'd listed the 2nd book. The sequel held to the same themes as the 1st one so if you liked Walls you'll like Broken.

One other additional alt-Earth book for everyone:

The Long Earth & The Long War

The Lord Darcy books, by Randall Garrett. A different earth with a different set of physics, but otherwise perfectly consistent and like ours.

I believe that most of the early work by British sci-fi author Stephen Baxter could be considered alternate history, specifically the trilogy "NASA Series: Voyage, Moonseed, Titan" and more recently "Time's Tapesty series: Emperor, Conqueror, Navigator, and Weaver." His recent trilogy co-authored with the late sci-fi iconic master, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "A Time Odyssey: Time's Eye, Sunstorm. Firstborn" has parallel earth overtones if you consider time periods of Earth acting as a single planet a parallel earth. His fascination with alternate histories also yielded his award winning "The Time Ships," a direct sequel to the classic sci-fi time travel novel, "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells.

Replay, by Grimwood, dated back to 1986, but worth reading.

I hate to toot my own horn but those looking for an Alternate Reality novel should check out my debut novel, THE LEOPARD VANGUARD. It takes place during 1st century Rome and features fantastical elements and an original spell system.

Philip K. Dick comes to mind first of all, though I would not suggest Man in the High Castle. That's alternative history, which really doesn't tickle my fancy. He had stranger ones including:

Now Wait for Last Year
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

If you want a good laugh, similar to but preceeding Douglas Adams, then try Robert Scheckley's Dimension of Miracles, which includes some dimension slipping (though that really comes in at the end)...or Job: A Comedy of Justice by Heinlein.

Or, if you like a spot of Noir detective in your SF/alternate/parallel world, try The City and the City by China Miéville.

Or for a non-detectie multiverse look at time and its ultimate collapse (dark and brooding, strange and unsettling), then Greg Bear's City at the End of Time.