parallel universe n.
a universe conceived of as existing alongside our own, having many similarities to it but usually differing from it in some significant way (as having a different history or different physical laws)
SF Encyclopedia
Dimensions
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1923
H. G. Wells
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We accept your main proposition unreservedly; namely, that we conceive ourselves to be living in a parallel universe to yours, on a planet the very brother of your own, indeed quite amazingly like yours, having regard to all the possible contrasts we might have found here.
Men Like Gods v. 51
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1949
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Murray Leinster
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The ship is drawn to the one spot the tractor-beam is focussed on, although it moves in a parallel universe and isn’t in our cosmos at all.
Black Galaxy in Startling Stories Mar. 20/1 -
1950
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P. Schuyler Miller
[Reviewing Fredric Brown’s What Mad Universe:] The editor of a 1954 science-fiction pulp is kicked into a parallel universe where his magazine is a straight adventure book.
Book Reviews in Astounding Science-Fiction Dec. 98/1 -
1958
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Philip E. High
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I could be getting the answer to a million guesses. I could say it’s the future, a parallel universe, another dimension, even something from another life form in another universe.
Shift Case in Nebula Science Fiction Mar. 26 -
1968
Keith Laumer
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From that beginning grew the Imperium—the government claiming sovereignty over the entire Net of alternate worlds. Your world—which is known to us as Blight Insular Three—is but one of the uncountable parallel universes, each differing only infinitesimally from its neighbor.
Assignment in Nowhere 51
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1982
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Ron Goulart
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‘Is that where Lulu is going to be tonight?’ ‘Possibly. Or she may have decided to hop over to a parallel universe.’
Blockbuster in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction June 148/1 -
1992
Peter David
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It’s something that has been considered…that parallel universes are, in fact, alternative time tracks.
Imzadi iii. 25
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1994
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Molly Brown
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Don’t tell me you don’t get it! Look, I'm an alternate you from a parallel universe, capeche?
Women on the Brink of a Cataclysm in Interzone Jan. 10/2
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2001 Sci Fi June 36/1
Imagine that there were countless parallel universes, one after the other, with no end. Imagine that in a different universe than the one you inhabit, a different you devised a plan to murder each universe’s version of yourself.
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2013
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Robert Silverberg
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The ostensible setting of his fiction might be the eightieth century, or a parallel universe, or a strange world of some other galaxy.
Rereading Simak in Asimov’s Science Fiction Aug. 5/2
Research requirements
antedating 1923
Earliest cite
H.G Wells, Men Like Gods
Research History
Brian Ameringen submitted a cite from 1960.Ralf Brown located and Fred Galvin submitted a cite from an undated reprint of H.G. Wells' "Men Like Gods"; Tim Boyer verified the cite in an American edition from January 1923, probably the first US printing.
Last modified 2022-09-07 00:58:57
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
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