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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Fantasies between worlds
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
This is a bit of a homework question, as I have to write something about it, but there are so many intelligent fantasy fans here (shameless flattery, I know) that I thought it might be interesting to discuss anyway, so...
I'm collecting examples of fantasy novels where the characters move between worlds. So far I have:
Narnia books
Philip Pullman Northern Lights series
George MacDonald Phantastes
Alan Garner Elidor
That's all I can think of, though I'm sure there must be more.
There are lots of books where the 'other world' is the past - so Tom's Midnight Garden, Charlotte Sometimes, A Traveller in Time, The Time Machine. But that's not precisely what I am thinking about; it's going to another world, different from this one, that interests me.
Can anybody else think of any others?
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Cathscats
Shipmate
# 17827
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Posted
Have you come across Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" and it's sequels? The first one and at least one of the sequels has the characters travelling to another world, although she also has them travel in time in this world and in dimensions. Worth a look.
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
It's a standard fantasy trope. Here are some off the top of my head :
Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series
There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe
Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry
Grunts by Mary Gentle
Lewis Carroll's Alice stories
Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series
John Norman's Gor series (they're terrible, but this trope is central)
The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub
There are tons and tons more. Really.
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--Sr Theresa Koernke, IHM
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Bene Gesserit
Shipmate
# 14718
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Posted
The Long Earth? Sir Terry Pratchett
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Posts: 405 | From: Flatlands of the East | Registered: Apr 2009
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Don't forget the Witch World novels by Andre Norton (and some of her other novels as well).
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Bene Gesserit
Shipmate
# 14718
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Posted
Sir Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
[missed edit window...]
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Posts: 405 | From: Flatlands of the East | Registered: Apr 2009
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Eric, also by Pratchett is the most obvious of the Discworkd series, but there are others.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
A lot of Diana Wynne Jones. The homeward bounders is one of the more interesting.
Bridge to Terebithia
Lyndon Hardy's Secret of the sixth magic and (even more) Riddle of the seven realms.
Charles de Lint and Robert Holdstock have both done "moving into the Dreamworld" type fantasies.
Barbara Hambly quite often goes in for it: Darwath, Windrose, and Sun cross series particularly come to mind.
Joy Chant's [Red moon, black mountain[/I] and Robert Siegel's Alpha Centauri
Stephen Lawhead's The skin map et seq.
I can't off-hand think of anything that's used the nine worlds of Yggdrasil, which kind of surprises me...
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
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Athrawes
Ship's parrot
# 9594
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Posted
The Dark is Rising sequence, by Susan Cooper, incorporates this as well. Not in all 5 books, but in many of them. I am thinking of the one where Will and Bran go to the sunken lands before they were lost under the sea. (I can't remember which book it was in, sorry! I am sure someone else will, though!).
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Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, 19thC Vaudeville and the history of baseball. Michael Quinion.
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
Hm, that's interesting.
I've never read any Terry Pratchett ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) but now is a good time to start. Diana Wynne Jones is a favourite of mine, I hadn't realised she'd used that trope. The Alice books, of course! And I do know A Wrinkle in Time, but hadn't thought of it.
Plenty to get on with.
One of the things that I am pondering on is the means of getting between worlds. In Narnia it mostly happens through naturally - walking though the back of the wardrobe, whereas Pullman makes the passage between worlds an act of violence. The tesseract would be an interesting one to think about, as would going down the rabbit hole and through the mirror.
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Cenobite
Shipmate
# 14853
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Posted
I'd recommend you try the Stan Nicholls "Orcs - First Blood" Trilogy. Difficult to say much about it without some major spoilers, but I think it would definitely fit your criteria.
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Mrs Shrew
Ship's Mother
# 8635
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Posted
Un lun dun by China Mieville also had moving between worlds. Not sure if you would describe it as violent movement or not
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Was "mummyfrances".
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Kitten
Shipmate
# 1179
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Posted
The Landover series by Terry Brooks
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Lilith by George Macdonald.
Moo
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
Dave Duncan's Great game series has travel between worlds as natural but requiring work...
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
And what about escaping to the other world?
In Margaret Mahy's The Tricksters and in The Changeover she has characters who escape from Trauma -- not quite into other worlds, but into other places and times. Do people in fantasies escape from something intolerable into the other world? go on a quest in it? find it by accident? find it like a nightmare finds one, and then try to escape from it?
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http://www.theunequalstruggle.com/
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
It's a standard fantasy trope.
...
There are tons and tons more. Really.
Very true - it is pretty much a cliche.
Mark Chadbourn's "Age of Misrule" series deals with the old gods returning to modern-day Britain and the problems that causes. The (human) heroes sometimes find themselves in the Courts of the Danaan, Otherworld, etc.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
Roger Zelazny's Amber books center on the idea of travel between worlds, all of which are images of the original world at the center of everything.
If you're interested how characters get from one world to the next, Corwin's travels between the worlds are really exciting. (I can't write much about the second series - I was worn out by that time.)
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Fr Weber
Shipmate
# 13472
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Posted
The second series is not nearly as good. But those first five books, wow!
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
I was about to suggest Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, but I see someone's beaten me too it. The Lives of Christopher Chant is another example. Charmed Life indirectly.
I think there's two versions:
Version A: where the story consists of a character from our world entering a fantasy world, which is then where the adventures happen;
Version B: where the story takes place in a multiplicity of worlds and the multiplicity is part of the story.
Then there's the ones that are a bit of both, and sub-versions of each...
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, is one A version.
The Incomplete Enchanter Series by L Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt is either a series of Version As, each in a different world, or a Version B, depending on how you look at it.
Narnia is a Version A, with hints of Version B in The Magician's Nephew.
Philip Pullman is Version B.
Phantastes is, IIRC, Version A.
Elidor is, IIRC, a sub-version of Version A where some of the adventure spills back into our world.
The Thomas Covenant series are version A. The Fionavar Tapestry series is version A, with hints of version B.
Alice in Wonderland is version A; as is Through the Looking Glass.
The Barbara Hambly that I've read have been largely Version A.
I've just read The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (which I recommend), which despite taking place almost entirely on one world, is a Version B.
Michael Scott Rohan's Spiral Series is either a Version A or a Version B, depending on how you look at it.
Raymond E Feist's Magician is a Version B. (I'm not saying it's any good.)
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
There are many SF and Fantasy versions of this. Keith Laumer wrote two series, Worlds of the Imperium and the comic Lafayette O'Leary series.
Avram Davidson wrote Masters of the Maze.
I'd agree the early Amber series by Roger Zelazny is among the best.
And of course.... Narnia.
[ 23. March 2015, 21:01: Message edited by: Palimpsest ]
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
The mechanism also affects how the work is categorized. If you get to that other world or reality by mechanical means (a transporter, a time machine, a space ship) then it is science fiction. If you do it with magic (Narnia) then it is fantasy. If you do it with hand waving and authorial sleight of hand, then it depends -- there is a large gray area.
Some modes -- time travel and faster-than-light travel -- are arbitrarily designated as SF, even though they are impossible (per Einsteinian physics). In many works the actual mechanism is so unimportant it is practically ignored. THE WORM OUROBOUROS comes to mind, and GOR (everyone is right, they are terrible).
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
This is incredibly helpful -- especially Dafyd's taxonomy. It's interesting to think of the passage between the worlds often not being the thing of interest.
A chance to re-read Howl's Moving Castle: excellent!
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Lives of the Saints: songs by The Unequal Struggle
http://www.theunequalstruggle.com/
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
Michael Ende's The Neverending Story is a mixture of Dafyd's Version A and Version B. In one sense, Bastian travels from "our" world to the fantasy world in the book, but that doesn't happen until fairly far into the book. Prior to that, we bounce between our world and the fantasy world, and Bastian begins to influence events there even before he travels there.
I really need to read it again. I love that book.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Though quite often the method of passage is unimportant, there's a taxonomy of ideas there as well.
You can have something like Thomas Covenant where the passage happens leaving the body in an unconscious state in the original world - which allows the ambiguity in Thomas Covenant of whether the Land is real or a dream.
In something like Feist's Riftwar books (Magician being the first) the passage is in a fixed location at each end and people pass bodily through from one place to another.
A variation is something like Mordant's Need (Donaldson) where the portals are mirrors, most mirrors are fixed taking you to another location (with the skill in making the mirror determining where you go), but the heroine of the story can change the mirrors to go anywhere.
I find the restrictions on how people pass from one place to another can be an interesting and vital part of the story. Can be, not necessarily is, getting the mechanism right so that it adds to the story and is consistent is vital. I do find that a scenario where characters, with the appropriate skill or device, can move from anyplace to anyplace requires much more work to make the story engaging and interesting - without the need to navigate to specific places to find a portal, for example, you need to justify why your character doesn't just pop into where they need to be and get what needs doing done. Like, why didn't the eagles just carry Frodo to the mountain to destroy the Ring? Why did the Fellowship need to take so long and face so many dangers to get there?
Of course, a device/skill that can get you anywhere from anywhere but is unreliable is a staple for a bit of humour in a story.
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
Stephen King's The Dark Tower series does this. The first book, The Gunslinger, is rather good but it rather tails away.
At the point the main character enters our world and meets a fantasy writer called Stephen King, you know it's all gotten a bit silly.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Thomas Covenant has been mentioned multiple times, but mention should also be made of the "Mordant's Need" books, also by Stephen Donaldson. The individual books are The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through.
Moving things between worlds via mirrors is a fairly fundamental part of the plot.
Also... are we sticking purely with novels? Because Myst and its sequels are a notable example in computer games. And there may well be others, but (a) it was the highest selling game of all time for a fair while and (b) I love the series!
[ 24. March 2015, 05:30: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
There's also the alternate history genre which sometimes overlaps the alternate worlds. Sometimes it's only implicit as the known real world is left unstated. Other times the characters translate as in Ward Moore's "Bring The Jubilee" or Philip Dick's "The man in the high castle"
There are also a large number of time travel stories where changes in the past modify the current world to an alternate form.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Thomas Covenant has been mentioned multiple times, but mention should also be made of the "Mordant's Need" books, also by Stephen Donaldson. The individual books are The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through.
Moving things between worlds via mirrors is a fairly fundamental part of the plot.
Ahem. about the middle of this post
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Stephen King's The Dark Tower series does this. The first book, The Gunslinger, is rather good but it rather tails away.
I've not got to the end of the series, but you know King is having a bit of a laugh by the time the characters enter the worlds of some of his earlier novels.
Another variation might be the Otherland series (Tad Williams) where the characters travel through different worlds within a very sophisticated virtual reality network.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
--Heinlein's Number Of The Beast. Several different worlds. I read it, long ago, to see what he did with the title idea. IMPORTANT NOTE: there is an incident of *consensual* adult incest.
--Re Never-ending Story: Good book. If you happen to watch the movies, only watch the first two.
--The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet series, by Eleanor Cameron. This is technically flight to another planet, *but* it's a very, very strange world, hidden in our solar system. And it all starts when Mr. Theo places a newspaper ad for two boys to build a spaceship...
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
--The City Under the Back Steps, by Evelyn Sibley Lampman. Children are made small, and go to live in an ant hill.
--Outrageous Fortune, by Tim Scott. If I say anything, I'll ruin it. Shhhh!
PS I loved Tom's Midnight Garden.
[ 24. March 2015, 06:42: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
I enjoyed the first of Mary Hooper's Stravaganza series 'City of Masks'. It's one of those where you leave your body behind here when you go to the other world, in this case an alternative medieval Venice. Lucien is terminally ill in this world, but fine in the alternative one. I've read the rest of the series, but don't think they are quite as good. It's aimed at 12 plus.
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Niminypiminy
Shipmate
# 15489
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Posted
I've just remembered another book I need to re-read, The Weathermonger by Peter Dickinson, in which the world in which the book is set is dreamed by Merlin in a trance induced by heroin addiction.
Sarasa, that reminds me of that very strange book, Marianne Dreams. Another one I must re-read.
[ 24. March 2015, 07:38: Message edited by: Niminypiminy ]
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series.
[Link fix]
[ 24. March 2015, 11:03: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
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Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Athrawes
Ship's parrot
# 9594
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Posted
The Squire's Tales by Gerrald Morris have movement between this world (King Arthur) anf The Otherworld of the Fair Folk. Time is different between worlds. The first one, Squire Terrence and the Maiden's Knight is a great start.
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Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, 19thC Vaudeville and the history of baseball. Michael Quinion.
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Also... are we sticking purely with novels?
Yes, sorry. Also avoiding timeslip novels, of which there are thousands...
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Another time shift book, but The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier has the hero take a drug to transition.
Wasn't there a Philip K Dick version? And what about Douglas Adams and Dirk Gently? That one uses a room.
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Robin
Shipmate
# 71
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Posted
Lev Grossman's Magicians series features a fantasy land that has clear similarities to Narnia. It also expands on the "Wood between the worlds" idea that appears in (C.S Lewis') The Magician's Nephew.
However, before Narnia fans get all excited, you should be aware that reactions to the series are mixed, to say the least. I recommend you read some of the reviews on Amazon before going out and ordering any.
Robin
Posts: 263 | From: Aberdeen | Registered: May 2001
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
Alister McGrath - PhD biologist, leading theologian and, um, differently good author of children's fantasy - has written The Aedyn Chronicles, which takes the elegant subtlety of C.S. Lewis and beats it to death with a shovel.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Wasn't there a Philip K Dick version?
Are you thinking of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch?
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robin:
Lev Grossman's Magicians series features a fantasy land that has clear similarities to Narnia. It also expands on the "Wood between the worlds" idea that appears in (C.S Lewis') The Magician's Nephew.
However, before Narnia fans get all excited, you should be aware that reactions to the series are mixed, to say the least. I recommend you read some of the reviews on Amazon before going out and ordering any.
Robin
The Magicians series is great as long as you're not too sentimental about either Narnia or Harry Potter.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
--Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz series--and there are lots of them! Plus other people's fan fic and such, like Wicked.
--A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain. Technically, it's time travel, but I couldn't resist including it. Great fun. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
--The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norman Juster. What do you do when a tollbooth shows up in your bedroom?
--The Forgotten Door, by Alexander Key. Door between Earth and another world.
--The Golden Key by George MacDonald. Travel through wondrous realms. The short story--sometimes published as a book--from whence my Ship name is taken. Full text at that link.
--Peter Pan (and series), by J.M. Barrie.
--Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder. Philosophy and levels of reality. (Better than it sounds!)
[ 24. March 2015, 09:09: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Tubbs
Miss Congeniality
# 440
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Garasu:
A lot of Diana Wynne Jones. The homeward bounders is one of the more interesting.
...
Deep Secret and the Merlin Conspiracy are enjoyable and make more of the multi-universe. Others touch on it, but don't always use it as a plot device in the same way.
Tubbs
[ 24. March 2015, 10:07: Message edited by: Tubbs ]
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Posts: 12701 | From: Someplace strange | Registered: Jun 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
From a different era, there's a story the name of which I can't remember, but I'm fairly sure it's by H. G. Wells, where someone, I think a schoolmaster, is fiddling with some chemicals which blow up. He is blasted into a dark shadowy parallel world inhabited by shadowy people, who are probably the dead, and whose life is reduced to watching the living. He's stuck there for several days and I can't remember how he gets back again.
I think there may be another one about people who could see into another world through a crystal or something.
There's also James Hilton's Lost Horizon, which was made into a well known and classic black and white film.
From even more different eras would Erewhon, Gulliver's Travels or Spencer's Faerie Queen count?
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Lost Horizon is awesome.
Oh, Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are definitely fits!
[ 24. March 2015, 12:27: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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beatmenace
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# 16955
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Posted
If we are counting Multiverses - then the vast bulk of Mr Michael Moorcock's literary output is predicated on that basic idea. And pretty weird stuff it is at times, too.
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"I'm the village idiot , aspiring to great things." (The Icicle Works)
Posts: 297 | From: Whitley Bay | Registered: Feb 2012
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Ikkyu
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# 15207
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Posted
Another vote in favor of the Magicians. I loved all three books.
I'm surprised no one mentioned Transition by Iain M. Banks a very good example.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Yes, there's an entire subset of works in which the Other World is somehow near, or on, the current Earth. Most of H. Rider Haggard, for instance, or works like Land Under England (entire underground realm under, yes, England) or Neverwhere (entire underground realm under London). There is Pellucidar (inside the earth, the portal's at the north pole) and even Dante (Mount Purgatory is at the exact opposite side of the globe from Jerusalem; get there either by going round, as Ulysses did, or through, down to Hell and back up).
Another subset is like Outlander , wherein you travel through time to an earlier (or later) earth.
A great subdivision of this genre is when you get to that other realm through books. The Unrwritten delves into this -- it's a graphic novel series -- as do the Tuesday Next books. The first one, The Eyre Affair, is very nearly a perfect example of this subgenre.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Enoch, are you thinking of 'The Plattner Story?' I think that's what it's called, anyway. I have never read it myself, but it was referenced in a Dorothy L Sayers short story and the plot sounds familiar.
I also nominate 'The Invisible Library' by Genevieve Cogman. Basically urban steampunk, very well-written, with the Library functioning a bit like the Wood between the Worlds.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Sparrow
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# 2458
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Posted
John Wyndham wrote several short stories on this theme - one, Random Quest (filmed as Quest for Love) concerned a man who woke up after an accident in a parallel world. There was another where a woman woke up in a future where all the men had died!
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Posts: 3149 | From: Bottom right hand corner of the UK | Registered: Mar 2002
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