The Concept

"They call this entity the Simulacrum and its collection of worlds the Simulacra. The Simulacrum doesn’t just copy the world, it adjusts it, adds things to the world, deletes other things. But its most terrifying power is its ability to alter meaning: to change what people care about or find interesting or the very relationships people have to things, to other people, to themselves."

 

Story Types

stableWorlds.jpg

STABLE WORLDS

“I knew she wanted to see the other side of the sky even more than me. But she had already been part of Society, back before she was diagnosed as Koinos. From her accounts, Society was a beautiful labyrinth of ideas, collaboration, instant feedback, and shared experiences. But April often found herself lost in their web, unable to grasp their rebuttals to her fanciful and often abstract views of the world. Eventually, she was cut off.”

unstableWorlds.jpg

UNSTABLE WORLDS

“I went to sleep. I had a nightmare. And when I woke up, I was in the wrong place. It was the wrong year, the wrong city, the wrong house, the wrong bedroom. I came back to the wrong body. And now I am trapped here with you, answering your questions, watching you scribble in your pad. I am here, wondering what combination of words would make a sane man believe me. And I am here, knowing, that even if you did, even if you abandoned your sanity and believed every single word, you still couldn’t help me get back.”

travelers.jpg

TRAVELERS

“Something has to give. This careening is too much. I am forced to flit between worlds and lives and my memories of them transform into deja vu or worse, black spots with their own friction, agitating my awareness in any given moment to near panic—at least I think. I think.”

Many Worlds Content

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED MANY WORLDS STORIES

  • “Shock of Birth” by Cadwell Turnbull (originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, reprinted by Lightspeed, and featured on LeVar Burton Reads)

  • “All the Hidden Places” by Cadwell Turnbull (originally published in Nightmare Magazine)

  • “When the Rains Come Back” by Cadwell Turnbull (originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, reprinted in We Will Remember Freedom)

  • “Jump” by Cadwell Turnbull (originally published in Lightspeed, featured on LeVar Burton Reads and reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019)

  • “All I Know” by Josh Eure (originally published in James Gunn’s Ad Astra)