Full record for alternative reality n.

Definition	= alternate world
OED requirements	antedating 1941
Earliest cite	Alfred Bester, 'The Probable Man'
Comment	Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1981 cite from Robert Anton Wilson's "Schrödinger's Cat II: The Trick Top Hat". Enoch Forrester submitted a 1980 cite from a letter by Tom Holsinger in The Dragon. Mike Christie submitted a 1941 cite from Alfred Bester's "The Probable Man". Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1995 cite from a reprint of Poul Anderson's 1995 "The Stars Are Also Fire". Douglas Winston submitted a 2001 cite from L. Neil Smith's "The American Zone". Douglas Winston submitted a 1992 cite from S. M. Stirling's "Snowbrother".
Last modified	6 July, 2008

Citations for alternative reality n.

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1990 Thrust Winter 7/3	Bishop‥dares to introduce sick unicorns from an alternative reality into our contemporary world of AIDS.
1992 S. M. Stirling Snowbrother xi. 208	He moved in a peculiar and wholly nonphysical way that left the Essence of the scene closer to his sight. His own Symbol stood clear: that of the girl, a human destroyed; the network of the spell binding them together. The alternative reality he had constructed was there, potential, but still vanishingly unlikely. Still, anything was possible; knowing that was one of the keys of this art. Perception could alter probability.
2001 L. N. Smith Amer. Zone x. 122	‘But, after all,’ she said, ‘we were the first to poke our noses into worlds of probability, and we are making an attempt to keep an orderly record of the more than eleven thousand alternative realities that have been discovered here and by other investigators so far.’