A brief history of the multiverse

The ‘alternate worlds’ interpretation of the Multiverse is actually pretty reductionist compared to what the British sf author Michael Moorcock created with his novel The Sundered Worlds (1962) – aka The Blood-Red Game. In Moorcock’s Multiverse his characters aren’t alternative versions (or variants) of each other, a la SpiderVerse or Loki, but are different incarnations of a more Platonic concept of Forms in the person of ‘the Eternal Champion’. In this way the characters from all his novels/trilogies/series aren’t variations of each other, per Dr Strange, but instead are unique characters connected by the uber-concept of the Eternal Champion. What I mean is Elric of Melniboné is distinct from Hawkmoon who is distinct from Corum who is distinct from Oswald Bastable who is distinct from Von Bek who is distinct from Jerry Cornelius who is distinct from Seaton Begg who is distinct from Dennis Dover who is distinct from Karl Glogauer, etc. but they all are incarnations of the E.C. who is the Cosmic Balance’s avatar in the eternal conflict between Chaos and Law. At the same time, there are characters such as Una Persson and Jhary-a-Conel who are able to travel between the separate series and so turn up in different novels that on the surface are separate from each other. This allowed Moorcock to create an ever-expanding fictional cosmology – or Multiverse – where everything was connected without being a xerox of itself. Because there is no linear reading order in Moorcock’s fiction – all series are occurring at the same time and in the same space in the Multiverse – readers create their own personal experience of Moorcock’s Multiverse depending on which books they read. (Full disclaimer: Moorcock got this concept of inter-connected characters from Honoré de Balzac’s ‘La Comédie humaine’ novel sequence, a multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories where major characters from one book might appear as minor characters in others, thus creating the sense of a ‘shared universe’, only in Moorcock’s hands it becomes a shared ‘multiverse’.) Moorcock’s influence on post-war fiction is frequently unappreciated and unacknowledged – as in this video – particularly by those who have been influenced by him and (especially) their readers, although there are exceptions like Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot, which is why his total absence from this examination’ of the Multiverse in (and on) popular culture is so disheartening.

What I find eternally fascinating is people who are important or famous enough to have Wikipedia entries, who are closely related to people also important or famous enough to have Wikipedia entries, but in entirely different fields. Not the nepo babies (talented or otherwise) who make up Hollywood dynasties, but guys like Hugh Everett III, quantum physicist, who is the father of Mark Everett, the hugely talented multi-instrumentalist behind the indie rock band Eels.

Jet Li's The One also has a multiverse.

There's little else as compelling as enigmatic, easily-fictionalized, scientifically-obscured hand-waving. It's a well well worth returning to.

You look like Gary Oldman.

when will Circle Glasses Phil return?

The multiverse seems to me like the worst addition to stories ever. No other device allows writers to be so damn lazy. It's the ultimate deus ex machina. I'm getting to the point where I won't watch or read stories that contain this twaddle anymore.

Many earths are also in belinda carlisle's heaven place on earth music video

The multiple Phils had me laughing out loud. Great video!

@Phil Edwards No mention of Doctor Who?? Racing through Space & Time since 1963…

I am totally convinced that there are Two Black Shirted "normal" Phils in this video. One that pronounces it mult-EEE-verse, while the other pronounces it mult-EYE-verse.

I thought the variant that controls them all was Paul Blart.

In my weird opinion, I think that the multiverse is real and that’s how God is able to know all outcomes! There is no choice there are just multiple realities under a single creator.

I really like your videos… but I am disappointed that you place the thrust of the cultural breakthrough of the concept of the multiverse on Marvel IP. DC started using this scientific concept in 1961 with Flash of Two Worlds story in Flash #123. In fact, Marvel resisted the idea of a multiverse by instead using the “What is” Masthead. Marvel didn’t really do a deep down multiverse until its Ultimates line. By that time, DC had expanded, collapsed and expanded again several multiverses.

So it wasn’t some stoned writer going “ wait, wait, wait! I read this book while stuck at my weird aunt’s house one summer.