There’s a whole strand of science fiction built around simple “What If?” questions. The recipe: Start with something impossible according to our understanding of the universe, add it to a modern society, and extrapolate how the new information, plus personal and societal stresses, reveals the nature of humanity. First contact with aliens is a common what-if story seed, while the recent film Another Earth demonstrated a different form. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth fits within the model: Its plot revolves around the near-future discovery that people can “Step” into an apparently infinite number of parallel earths.
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