Anyone know what the first true multiverse story was, that did not conflate the concept with time travel?
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Oh yeah I was going to mention but blanking on the name.
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Replying to @vgr
I’m pretty sure it’s not the first, but I feel like “Sliders” was pretty seminal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliders
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Well Star Trek definitely invented goatee duoverse
Futurama had a pretty clever one, though it was only 1 episode
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This is the multiverse-as-version-control origin theory. There’s also the quantum mechanics origin story. I suspect game trees, choose your own adventures, also played a role. I’d tag Groundhog Day as a transitional story (1 step backtrack time travel was quite clever)
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Replying to @vgr
i wonder if its a result of the comic book format where there is a ton of incentive to have reboots of popular characters. Then you have multiple versions of spider man or whatever, one dude decides to have a crossover episode, and then suddenly you've got a new convention
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🤔 didn’t realize that was that old
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Replying to @vgr
Maybe The garden of f**king paths, written back in 1941. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garde
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I saw one article arguing that Wizard of Oz should be considered a multiverse but I think that’s just 2 distinct universes with vague rhyming. Not a counterfactuals tree.
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An emerging source metaphor for the multiverse is machine learning. A model trained on samples actually learns a multiverse tree consistent with that sample. I call it superhistory.
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Distinct advantages over quantum mechanics or version control source metaphors. To some extent EEAAO utilizes an ML type mental model since characters can learn across timelines. But I think it’s not deliberate. Haven’t seen a proper ML-multiverse yet. Explore latent space etc.
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Another potential source metaphor is Wolfram’s idea of the Ruliad. Shorn of the trademark grandiose woo-with-equations, it’s basically a kind of all-state-histories algorithmic rollup object. Like an infinity stone. writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-co
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Surprisingly, the blockchain isn’t that fertile a metaphor for multiverses. But it’s an excellent metaphor for the liminal adjacent possible (a sort of epsilon-delta perturbation-deviation band of pseudo-realities that didn’t happen, like near misses band)
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This is my own main interest, and I wrote 1 short story I’m trying to develop into a longer thing. The adjacent possible is kinda distinct from both the multiverse and time travel, with some elements of both.



