Fiction Reviews
Echo of Worlds
(2024) M. R. Carey, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, 487pp, ISBN 978-0-356-51805-3
This is the second part of the diptych that follows last year's (2023) Infinity Gate. That novel was a master class in world building, or perhaps that should be multi-world building as it involved an infinity of parallel, alternate Earths.
Now, multiverses with loads of alternative Earths is not a new concept: indeed, it is a well worn SF trope. The term 'alternate reality' dates from 1950 and J. D. MacDonald's story 'Shadow on Sand' but that was a latecomer compared to the phrase 'alternative reality' whose use can be traced at least to Alfred Bester's 'Probable Man' in 1941. The term 'alternate world' appeared even earlier in Fritz Leiber's 1944 story 'Business of Killing'. The use of 'parallel world' goers back earlier still at least to 1931 with Brian Herbert's 'World Within', and, of course, the term 'parallel universe' was used by H. G. Wells in Men Like Gods way back in 1923. So the notions of parallel/alternate Earths or worlds has a lengthy pedigree. But then you knew all that from your copy of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction… (What, you have not got a copy! You are excused if you do not consider yourself an SF aficionado, otherwise stop what you are doing and order one now from OUP.)
This multi-parallel Earths concept is not only longstanding but its employment in the genre has been more or less continual: it is almost as fundamental an SF trope as 'space travel' or 'aliens'. More recent usage has numerous examples including Charles Stross' 'Clan Corporate' or even the Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's 'Long Earth' series of novels. Indeed, in comics both Marvel and DC have multiverses and alternate Earths. But just as Paul McAuley's Cowboy Angels or Gary Gibson's Extinction Game gave a fresh look at this multiverse trope, so M. R. Cary's duology Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds has a life of its own, it being a rollicking read, jam-packed with SF tropes, indeed so much so that readers might for a while think they were reading a wide-screen (interstellar) space opera as alternate Earth's may as well be other worlds as the dominant species on these worlds is not universally human: indeed, more often than not they are not human…
If you have not yet read Infinity Gate then I suggest you leave this review now (check out its own review at the link) as here be spoilers…
What we got with Infinity Gate was a researcher in the near-future, with resource depletion sparking war and global collapse, discovering an alternate/parallel Earth. In exploring the multiverse (that term itself goes back at least to Michael Moorcock in 1963 – if you've not, you really do need to get Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction) the researcher discovers a world whose civilisation itself spans very many parallel 'continua' (G. O. Smith, 1946) and which has very many different intelligent species. Part of this multi-civilisation cohesion is maintained by a particularly vicious military whose defence operation also spills over into parallel world exploration and bringing appropriate new alternate Earth's within its fold.
And then there are the parallel Earths that are left alone as they – like our researcher's own Earth – have little to offer such as being resource-depleted, and/or war ravaged or whatever. Finally, there are the scour Earths that once spawned an advance civilisation but seemingly were destroyed, almost at a stroke, leaving them lifeless.
In the course of Infinity Gate we not only get brilliant world(s) building but also an introduction to half a dozen principal protagonists who find themselves caught up with a discovery of another, advanced multi-Earth civilisation but not one of biological beings but a purely machine empire. These two tremendous forces are on course to collide…
And so we come to Echo of Worlds. No spoilers, but while Infinity Gate was scene-setting and character introducing, Echo of Worlds gets to play with these toys, and it is intelligent play too: I was wrong-footed early on with what I thought was a get-out-of-jail free card but the novel took a different turn two-thirds in. I really do not want to spoil it for you but suffice to say that Echo of Worlds more than successfully builds on Infinity Gate's sense of wonder and demonstrates that M. R. Carey continues to be a major force in British science fiction.
Jonathan Cowie
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