Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

So my understanding is if there is no magic, just science then it is science fiction - has anyone written about alternate dimensions using just science?

Stan C. Smith's Bridgers series:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/2531...

The Bridgers are the mercenaries that accompany "tourists" to alternate timelines.

Or the classic pulp series ... Jeffrey Lords' Richard Blade series:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/4239...

Richard Blade is an MI5 (?) agent type that they send to other dimensions. Pretty Cheesy though. :)

There are many where people are transported to other worlds, which could be science or magic (i.e. "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") . Most of these fall into the "Sword and Planet" genre, similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series, or Keith Bulmer's Dray Prescott series.

One of my more modern favorites is Kat Brewer's Chronicles of Erla (and other related series):

https://www.goodreads.com/series/1902...

The planet they portal to has some magic, but the question is whether the portals are magically created or whether they can be duplicated with Earth's science.

Oh, another good one is William R. Forstchen's Lost Regiment series:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/5657...

When Union Colonel Andrew Keane and his soldiers were swept through a space-time warp, they found themselves in an alternate world where their rifles were centuries advanced over swords, spears and crossbows. But they also found themselves up against creatures who considered humans mere cattle to sacrifice!

The planet they are transported to has humans abducted from different Earth cultures over the millennia, as well as race(s) from other planets. And they interact with each other. The Civil War regiment is the most technologically advanced Earth-based culture on the planet.

Two similar series come to mind, involving Roman legions that are transported elsewhere, but both have a lot of magic in play.

I'd say one on my favorites, The Gods Themselves, fit the bill. There's a parallel dimension with aliens.

Randy wrote: "Stan C. Smith's Bridgers series:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/2531...

The Bridgers are the mercenaries that accompany "tourists" to alternate timelines.

Or the classic pulp series ....."

Interesting .... I am asking to check on the books out there and what hasn't been done yet ... seems like a lot of them have magic. I was looking for some without magic. They don't seem to exist ??

Bryan wrote: "I'd say one on my favorites, The Gods Themselves, fit the bill. There's a parallel dimension with aliens."

I'll be checking them out ... would you read something that was science-based? no magic?

I have concluded that when a story has elements that don't have a solid basis in current scientific theory (e.g., time travel, teleportation, FTL, alternate dimensions) we classify it according to other story elements: e,g., if it has space ships, it's science fiction; if has dragons or wizards it's fantasy. Lacking either of those determinants, it's classified by mechanism: if someone mumbles pseudo-latin and flicks a magic wand, it's fantasy; if they mumble techno-babble and flip a switch, it's science fiction.

Blake Crouch's Dark Matter is of the latter category, a desperate-to-be-profound novel of alternate (mundane) life choices framed as the result of a science experiment.

Dexter Palmer's Version Control is similarly a novel of three possible (mundane) worlds spinning off from a single event, explored by a different science experiment.

I didn't care for either of those, BTW.

On a lighter note, Pratchett & Baxter co-wrote a series of novels, starting with The Long Earth, in which a scientific device allows travel among an infinite number of alternate worlds. Baxter continued the series after Pratchett's death,

I concur that Asimov's The Gods Themselves is a great example, since it doesn't use travel between the alternate worlds but just communications.

Also, a lot of time-travel stories end up with multiple dimensions using the pseudo-theory of time travel that changing the past creates a parallel world with the altered event ("branching timelines," as a way of explaining why the protagonist didn't disappear when they eliminated their ancestors.) Heinlein's The Number of the Beast exploits this idea.

In TV SF, several Star Trek episodes involve cross-overs with "mirror universes"; and it's the entire premise of the TV series Sliders and the more recent Counterpart.

Northworld Trilogy - while a take on Norse mythology, it does so in an SF way with a kind of parallel universe dimension thing

Another that comes to mind is Resonance

There are a lot of quantum time travel type stories like Timeline where depending on how the quantum aspect is treated, it is either time travel in our dimension (which is not what you're looking for) or you jump to an alternate timeline, the one where different universes get spawned due to differences in what happened in that timeline (e.g. a person turns right at an intersection in one universe, left in another)

I guess if you search for the word "parallel universe" rather than "alternate dimension" you'll find a lot more SF based tales. Different wording for similar thing.

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

I agree with G33z3r about the differences between the magic & SF takes on alternate dimensions. I'll only add that they're also used to connect two realities operating on one or the other regularly. For instance, in Split Infinity the hero lives in a high tech world & slips through a portal into a magical one.

Andrea's comparison of "parallel universe" & "alternate dimension" is right on too & those both meld with the "alternate timeline" scenarios G33z3r mentions. I can't count the number of books I've read that use some variation of them. It's a good chunk of the SF that is out there.

Two early SF alternate dimension books I read were The Forgotten Door which is a young YA novel about a kid who falls into our world from another through a dimensional portal. The Universe Between is an adult novel which is basically the same. Both had some age (1950s?) when I read them back around 1970, so it's not a new subject.

G33z3r wrote: "In TV SF, several Star Trek episodes involve cross-overs with "mirror universes"; and it's the entire premise of the TV series Sliders and the more recent Counterpart."

SG-1 also discovered a mirror that they could go through into an alternate universe. They warehoused it, claiming it to be too dangerous, which I thought was hypocritical since they had no issues going through the stargates.

The One was a movie where a rogue agent (Jet Li) goes through multiple dimensions, killing his copy in each dimension, on the premise that the life force is split between all of his copies, so he gets stronger for each copy of himself that he kills. But so do each of the remaining copies.

Awake was a TV show where a police detective gets into an auto accident in which his wife and son die. After that, each time he wakes up, he alternates between that reality and another reality where the wife and son are alive.

Barbara wrote: "I'll be checking them out ... would you read something that was science-based? no magic?"

Sure, I'd read it. This one is science-based without any magic (it's Asimov after all), the "gods" part comes from a quote.
Looking over your original post, it's unclear what exactly you're looking for (parallel worlds? alternate histories? what are your definitions of those?)
For example, anything related to time travel creating alternate realities did not fit your requirement as I originally understood them. If that's in fact what you're looking for, be prepared to have a lot of reading and watching to do :)
Depending on your definition, you could also add books like Dick's The Man in the High Castle, or any other that takes a historical event and changes it for its premise.

Stumbled across another - The Space Between Worlds