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Sam Leith's top 10 alternative realities
From Lewis Carroll to Jeff Noon and Neil Gaiman, the novelist picks the best novels where reality 'gets just a little bit bendy'
Fiction going the extra mile ... the Little Angel Theatre's production of Alice in Wonderland
Sam Leith was, until recently, literary editor of the Daily Telegraph. He now writes for many leading publications including the Guardian and the Evening Standard. After two acclaimed non-fiction books, Dead Pets, and Sod's Law, he has just published his first novel, The Coincidence Engine.
"All novels are about imaginary worlds and alternative realities. But some works of fiction go the extra mile, including worlds within worlds and worlds alongside worlds. There are loopy time-travel shenanigans. There's the literary bastardisation of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics – where parallel universes and counterfactuals proliferate. There's Michael Moorcock's notion of a "multiverse" through which different avatars of an Eternal Champion might be threaded. And there are trips and dreams, stories-within-stories, and virtual realities – just the other side of those coats at the back of the wardrobe.
"Don't write them off as fantasy: think of them, rather, as more conscious, more plural engagements with reality. Why this story and not that one? Why this universe and not that one? Why this consciousness and not that one?
"In my own novel, The Coincidence Engine, I wanted to play with the idea that only in a multiverse where every possibility had been exhausted could anything as improbable as our reality exist. I loved the idea of the here-and-now being haunted by the ghosts of all the alternatives. So here are 10 outstanding stories in which reality gets just a little bit bendy."
Buy The Coincidence Engine at the Guardian bookshop
1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll's world, riddled with paradox and with the feel of hallucination (as Jefferson Airplane noticed), might be called the ground zero of alternative universe fiction. Everyone who has ever looked suspiciously at a mirror, or who wonders what's at the bottom of the rabbit-hole, owes Carroll a debt of gratitude.
2. The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish
Exploring alternative realities isn't just a game for boys. In 1666, Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, published a utopian fantasy of compelling strangeness. After being kidnapped by a seagoing ne'er-do-well, its Lady protagonist finds herself drifting through a passage at the North Pole into a wholly different world, with its own sun, moon and stars, and a population of bear-men, bird-men and fox-men who promptly make her Empress. Win!
3. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman's children's book is one that will entertain children and scare the willies out of their parents. After her family moves into a new house, Coraline discovers a locked door leading to an eerie mirror version of her home containing an Other Mother with button eyes and a greedy sort of love for the child. Would Coraline like to stay there forever? Lord, no. But the Other Mother doesn't take no for an answer.
4. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The opening of the second book in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy pulls off one of the great literary ta-dah moments. You've spent the whole first novel in what appeared to be a fantasy world of armoured bears and magic dust: a different universe altogether from what we recognise as reality. But the first few pages of the second make clear that the novel is taking place in a multiverse that includes our reality. Book one, in other words, was only part of a much much bigger picture. It's a spectacular coup de théatre.
5. Vurt by Jeff Noon
Vurt is a gripping piece of speculative fiction, in which swallowing a "vurt feather" sends you on something between a drug trip, a visit to virtual reality, and an experience altogether other. You may come back to find you've lost a friend but gained a Thing from Outer Space. With its dizzying trip-within-a-trip progression, this is detectably an – ahem – influence on Christopher Nolan's far less inventive and strange film Inception. It deserves to be far more famous.
6. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Danielewski's authentically disquieting first novel – the annotated transcript of a documentary that may or may not exist about a house whose interior dimensions seem to be alarmingly... unstable – is a mind-mangling metafictional horror story. That makes it sound up itself. It isn't: it's completely fascinating, and never has the domain of the chartered surveyor seemed quite so fraught with peril. This, contrary to Danielewski's dedication, is for you.
7. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
It's a toss-up, looking at SF novels that deal with cyberspace and virtual reality, whether you go for Snow Crash or William Gibson's Neuromancer. The answer, of course, is you go for both. The latter is, arguably, the more enduring production, but the former zings along like nobody's business, and what chutzpah to call your lead character Hiro Protagonist! His business card describes him as "last of the freelance hackers and greatest swordfighter in the world", and he delivers pizzas for a living. Who says science fiction is unrealistic?
8. The Coma by Alex Garland
"I woke up – and it had all been a dream..." is how you get told not to end stories at primary school. But there are exceptions. Alex Garland's novella, illustrated by woodcuts by his father, the cartoonist Nicholas Garland, is a haunting little book about the victim of an accident who wakes up from a coma and goes about his life – only to become sneakingly aware that he hasn't actually woken up.
9. "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's short stories are a thing no bookshelf should be without. "A Sound of Thunder" is one whose central idea has been so imitated it practically constitutes its own genre. The story's protagonist travels back on a time-safari, to shoot a T.rex. To avoid disastrously changing history (the T.rex was on the point of death anyway), his guides explain, he must on no account step off the path. Of course he does, and returns to find the future subtly but alarmingly different. On his boot, he finds a squashed butterfly.
10. Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and various artists
Probably the most enthusiastic embrace of the whole parallel universes notion has been in superhero comics – where alternative realities are accepted grist to the narrative mill and a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for continuity problems. Brit headcase Grant Morrison's epic Final Crisis – in which Batman dies and the DC multiverse is threatened with complete collapse – served comics readers a heaping portion of WTF with extra fries.
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User Comments
adumbblonde
11 May 2011 5:59PM
The most recent alternative reality book I have read is Sam Leith's brilliant The Coincidence Engine. Anyone who likes a book that makes them laugh whilst it is also making them think. will enjoy it as much as I did (which was a lot, for the avoidance of doubt!)
MiddleClassHero
11 May 2011 6:12PM
I'd also include The Dark Tower volumes 6 and 7. Also, i'm not sure whether the characters in Book 3 of Yeats' The Wanderings of Oisin actually step into another world, but it certainly seems like it - and the final stanza of that is brilliant.
Pummeluffpapa
11 May 2011 10:44PM
"Timescape" by Gregory Benford has an interesting take on the many worlds interpretation.
Siouxfire
11 May 2011 11:53PM
Haruki Murakami's work not on the list? Or Kafka? Or Borges? What the?! And as far as comics are concerned "Planetary" is the end all and be all of alternate universes.
msmlee
12 May 2011 3:43AM
Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" is the most "bendy" of his works, but not as successfully created as "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", but I'm awaiting the English translation of his latest 1Q84 with bated breath.
For fans of both SF and Chinese literature (and apropos of the World Tour on Chinese literature on another thread), you guys really need to read S.K. Chang's books. He is a Taiwanese author who happens also to be a professor in engineering (can't remember whether electronic or civil) in the States, but he's most renowned for his sci-fi books, "Five Jade Plates" and "The Galactic Symphony" being the best loved. Don't know if these are translated into English, and maybe I would attempt a stab at it for fun, but these books literally expanded my puny young mind growing up, I didn't know that fiction could be like that, where the author invented a new written language (based on pictograms that are easily interpretable and linked to Taoist signs) as part of the alternate universe, and where plot twists are based on intellectual mind-games and you literally wouldn't understand the ending until you solved the same puzzle that the characters were compelled to resolve on pain of death. The best thing about reading of alternative universes, of course, is the kind of light that they throw on our own, and S. K. Chang certainly succeeded in that objective and then some.
Sunburst
12 May 2011 5:07AM
msmlee
but I'm awaiting the English translation of his latest 1Q84 with bated breath.
Oh God, me too.
The Murakami novel that I`d recommend as the most surreal and enjoyable is Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It`s somehow more compact than the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and for some reason I can`t explain I want to re-read it every year. And so I do.
Salman Rushdie`s The Enchantress of Florence, aside from being one of the most pleasant surprises I`ve ever encountered (I couldn`t finish Midnight`s Children, but this novel I adored - Rushdie finally stopped showing off and calmed down to write a beautiful, subtle story) could also be classified as a sort-of-alternative-history tale. It`s as if it fills in the various gaps in the history books (why did the Ottoman Empire defeat Persia in the late 15th century, how come the Mughals came down from Samarkand to India) with an explanation of its own. It could all be due to having more soldiers and making good decisions on the battlefield, or it could all be because of a Mughal princess who chose not to return home one day and went all the way to Florence. And she could be a devilish enchantress or just a beautiful woman who had a great knack for manipulating men. And the whole narrative could be the novel`s official true history, or just a fanciful story told by the young Italian traveller to the emperor Akbar in order to amuse him.
It`s the idea of the richness of imagination versus the dull reality that Yann Martel so boringly tried and failed to explore in The Life of Pi. I`m glad someone finally took the idea and got it right.
Gordonbnt
12 May 2011 8:21AM
After being kidnapped by a seagoing ne'er-do-well, its Lady protagonist finds herself drifting through a passage at the North Pole into a wholly different world, with its own sun, moon and stars, and a population of bear-men, bird-men and fox-men who promptly make her Empress. Win!
You said "Win!" in a literary column. For adults.
Could you please justify this? ( In less than 100 words )
R042
12 May 2011 9:31AM
@Gordonbnt - Seeing as I've received no justification for "a heaping portion of WTF with extra fries" I think we can simply rationalise it as Mr. Leith picked up the posting guide for any gaming forum rather than the Guardian's style guide.
sangrail
12 May 2011 10:44AM
There's Kim Newman's 'Anno Dracula' in which Count Dracula, having seen off van Helsing and his fearless vampire hunters, is now married to Queen Victoria and the upper classes are rushing to become literal bloodsuckers. Historical figures rub shoulders with literary characters: Inspector Abberline is working with Inspector Lestrade and Lord Ruthven is Victoria's vampiric prime minister.
GeorgeHicks
12 May 2011 10:55AM
Glad to see Jeff Noon getting a nod. Vurt is amazing.
Michael Marshall Smith's - "Only Forward" is a great novel that flips between this reality and that of dreams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Forward
Sunburst
12 May 2011 11:14AM
You said "Win!" in a literary column. For adults.
It`s the dawn of an exciting new age for literary journalism!
For example.
"In his sixth novel, David Mitchell yet again employs the playful technique of postmodernist pastiche, however this time he combines it with a naturalist style and a realist structure."
Fail."
R042
12 May 2011 11:27AM
@Sunburst
Soon to be applied to news journalism!
"David Cameron's coalition met with epic fail recently as the population didn't lol @ his latest policies. A statement from the head of UK Uncut said "we are not your private army" and suggested he "gb2/unelected/", while the response from a Labour Party spokesman said "what is this i dont eve""
trunkofunk
12 May 2011 11:42AM
I agree with BobbyPeru: The Third Policeman
Also, that description of the Alex Garland Coma makes it sound awfully like an old Philip K Dick story - I think it was called "I hope I shall arrive soon" about a man on his way to a new planet, in some kind of suspended animation, who keeps dreaming that he has arrived.
cutta
12 May 2011 11:43AM
Another vote for Murakami, especially Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and also The Bridge by Iain Banks. These novels are similar in so many ways, yet The Bridge was published after Hard-Boiled's Japanese release, but years before it made it into English, so it's very unlikely that either one was influenced by the other.
Possibly the were just both influenced by Alasdair Gray's brilliant Lanark - I know Banks is a fan so The Bridge almost certainly was.
Also, The Man In The High Castle by Phillip K Dick - though it would be a lazy, easy option just to list 10 Dick books in this category.
trunkofunk
12 May 2011 11:45AM
and talking of Philip K Dick and bendy realities - how about "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge"?
MsRedScharlach
12 May 2011 12:03PM
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin is a deliciously mindbendy one.
R042
11 May 2011 4:46PM
"Comics readers"? I didn't know it took a plural form ala "courts martial"
As to "a heaping portion of WTF with extra fries," I am normally the last person to oppose the use of colloquialism but that's an awkward phrase and ultimately I neither LOL'D nor ROFL'D at it.