From the Internet emerging from binary code, to the extratemporal dimension between the virtual and the real, to Dark Matter generated between the Matter and Antimatter of the Big Bang, to a bizarre cosmic consciousness arising out of gravity's mesh with space-time - the Millennial idea that our dualist Cartesian reality, split between mind and matter, can form a third, post-Cartesian reality is everywhere. See below the jump for Brian Greene's recent discussion on Nova's The Fabric of the Cosmos: Universe or Multiverse. While the Multiverse is not yet generally accepted among physicists, since 2010, the idea that there were and are many Big Bangs, generating many universes, has been gaining ground among quantum physicists, string theorists, and theoretical physicists studying cosmic inflation. Their critics argue vehemently that accepting an unprovable theory like this could undermine the very foundations of science. What is perhaps more important than the challenging theory is the overall pattern - a fundamental sea-change in outlook - these Millennial Configurations of a Third, everywhere we look (see my earlier post on tripartite aspects of Millennial thought, here and here).
In the American TV show, Fringe, there are prime and parallel universes. The parallel universe Manhattan is spelt with one 't.' Image Source: Fox via Wiki.
If the Multiverse is our reality and we don't know it, what would it be like to live there if we did know it? According to Signs of the Times: "The trouble is that in an infinite multiverse, everything that can happen will happen - an infinite number of times. In such a set-up, probability loses all meaning. 'How do you compare infinities?' asks Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California." Multiverses have been consistently popular fictional narrative devices that address Linde's question. Multiverses are constants in fantasy and sci-fi works, most recently in the American FOX television show, Fringe, and of course, Scenes from a Multiverse. But the only place where the cultural and social implications of a real Multiverse have been systematically and continually explored is in comic books. Since the early 1960s, Marvel has produced stories about a bunch of alternate realities, pocket universes and multiple dimensions. Marvel tends to have a single narrative represent a single reality: their main narrative continuity is Earth-616. Their Ultimate imprint has presented popular alternate universe stories since the year 2000. TVTropes sees Marvel's Multiverse affected by a hierarchy of positive and negative realities: English writer "Warren Ellis' run on X-Man utilized another conception of the multiverse, where in addition to Parallel Universes, there's a 'spiral of realities' stretching above and below, with the universes 'downspiral' being significantly more chaotic and difficult for li[f]e to develop/survive in than the the relatively advanced and idyllic universes located 'upspiral.'" Marvel also has an omniverse, a collection of all possible universes and realities, inhabited by characters from other fictions and pulp houses, including its rival, DC.
Infinite Crisis #5 (April 2006).
DC Comics' assessment is even more complex, with frayed narratives and equally divided fictional realities; its Multiverses collide and break apart, causing total chaos, infinite crises, and a constant reevaluation of its characters and degrees of heroism. Since Wonder Woman #59 (1953), writers at DC have symbolically considered what living in a real, tangible Multiverse would do to our mentalities, lives and consciousness. Since 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, when DC attempted to crunch the whole Multiverse into one single fictional universe, America's oldest comics publisher has allowed events on the Multiversal level to dominate its main narrative storyline with increasing frequency and intensity. DC soon uncrunched their single universe and brought the Multiverse back. DC's writers have reevaluated our understanding of death, of time, of narrative sequence and continuity, and of morality (see also: here); and all of this arises when the unseeable and unmeasurable beyond our perception collides theoretically with tangible reality and coughs up a third synthetic unknown.
In short, alternate realities and parallel dimensions have of course appeared in many modern works of literature and drama, some great, some popular; but only DC has been consistently speculating on what a collective Multiversal reality would be like, month in, month out, over almost sixty years. DC's Multiverse has evolved over that time, with its most radical stories ever published this fall. The editors and writers at DC are saying the fabric of time and space could tear, turn itself inside out, and we could all find ourselves, the same but different, living in new realities, haunted by memories of our other existences.
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Very interesting rundown of the various interpretations and consequences of the multiverse in fiction! You're right about comics taking what other media have mostly toyed with, and diving right in with both feet. I remember the 'What If-!?' series, where bizarre alternate realities were contemplated wherein some jumping off point in comic book history was imagined to have gone differently, so that the good guy gave into temptation and turned evil, or so that the villain won, etc. Not even a contentualising narrative: just a pure, what-if, for its own sake. I believe many, many more for-their-own-sake multiversal narratives lie in our future(s).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Paul. What strikes me is IF you consider that what the theoretical physicists are saying is correct, namely, that the unseeable and unprovable nonetheless exists in the way they think it may, then our entire world view must change. It is a suggestion with profound cultural implications. It would change how we understand everything, including death, memory, consciousness, good, evil, etc. It would be as big a change in perception as Copernicus speculating on the heliocentric universe. Interestingly, heliocentrism was proposed earlier, in the 3rd century BC but was rejected. So there are times when these ideas are too upsetting, too dangerous because they would oblige too great a transformation. I think you're right - if we actually live in a multiverse, then there is no baseline, because every conceivable possibility is, has been, and will be played out.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the multiverse is indeed fascinating and inspiring. Especially for writers.
ReplyDeleteHow DC has handled it, well....that's another question.
What's the deal with Earth 2 anyway? All I know is that Huntress and some mutant form of the JSA are over there. -J