Fascinated by the multiverse and alternate realities? Here’s a handy guide to some good stuff

loved “All everywhere at once?” I can not get enough of it “The Lightning” And “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” this month? Then this list is for you. We’ve put together a non-exhaustive selection of alternate universe and multiverse fiction – from movies to TV and comics to books. It’s a great starter kit if your media tastes are wondering what if?

MOVIES:

— “It’s a beautiful life” (1946): In this Christmas classic, family man George Bailey grows increasingly frustrated at missing out on opportunities, and it takes an angel-in-training – on Christmas Eve – to take him to a universe he never existed and show him how it goes is important to his life.

— “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022): After years of hints and fragments, including an emerging story arc in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Marvel moves into the multiverse in this exploration of how realities can collide and merge.

— “Sliding Doors” (1998): Gwyneth Paltrow misses a train – and doesn’t do it. The two shard realities unfold very differently, producing versions of her character that need to be reconciled.

— “Yesterday” (2019): Jack Malik, aspiring musician, finds himself in a nearly identical universe to which no one has ever heard of The Beatles (or Coca-Cola). He starts singing the songs as if he wrote them. Jokes and great feelings ensue.

— “The Butterfly Effect” (2004): Ashton Kutcher plays a college student who discovers that he can reconsider his past and change things, and each time he does so, a different reality emerges.

– “The Family Man” (2000): After an encounter in a supermarket, arrogant Manhattan financier Jack Campbell wakes up in a very different – and less affluent – life in suburban New Jersey and is married to him and becomes from him to his father’s old girlfriend, from whom he broke up years ago. As he comes to terms with his new life and the choices he may or may not have made to get there, a more complex picture emerges.

And for the kids…

– “Shrek Forever After” (2010): Shrek finds himself in an alternate, darker reality where he never met Fiona.

TV:

– “Star Trek” (1967 and after): A “mirror universe” reveals a darker, more evil version of the United Federation of the series’ planets – the Terran Empire, punctuated by cruelty and murder. This universe was revisited in several “Trek” sequels in the 1990s and 2010s.

— “Russian Doll” (2019-Present): In the first season, Nadia keeps dying at a party and keeps waking up in slightly different universes, although each awakening always ends in her death.

— “Reversed” (2019-2022): In this stunning blend of live action and animation, a young woman’s relationship with her long-dead father after a car accident takes an unexpected turn when he appears in a vision and tells her that other realities are possible – including one in which he was alive and present for her upbringing.

– “Fringe” (2008-2013): Science fiction meets family drama and law enforcement as a father enters a parallel universe to rescue – and steal – another version of his son and deals with the world-changing consequences.

— “The Man in the High Castle” (2015-2019): It’s the 1960s, the Nazis and Japan have won the Second World War and the world is developing very differently – in sometimes unexpected ways.

– “For All Mankind” (since 2019): The Soviets won the space race and were the first to reach the moon. This is how the story played out afterwards.

COMICS:

– “Flashpoint” (2011): The DC Comics series that informed The Flash Movie, It’s about the damage caused by main character Barry Allen as he travels back in time to save his mother.

– “What if?” (1970s onwards): This speculative series, which began in the comics and switched to streaming TV in 2021, takes various corners of Marvel’s “prime universe” and reshuffles events and characters.

– “House of M” (2005): The Scarlet Witch recreates reality and changes the lives of some of Marvel’s top heroes in profound and chaotic ways, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Captain America. This series was one of the ingredients of 2020 Marvel TV show WandaVision.

BOOKS:

– “The Mirage” (2013): This novel by Matt Ruff, author of “Lovecraft Country”, posits a mirror world in which American Christian fundamentalists were the perpetrators of 9/11 and attacked the Twin Towers in Baghdad, based in the United Arab States. Characters include remixes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

— “Einstein’s Dreams” (1992): Dreamlike fiction by Alan Lightman chronicling explorations of various permutations of time and alternate universes that Albert Einstein may have dreamed of when developing the theory of relativity in 1905.

— ‘The Space Between Worlds’ (2020): a novel by Micaiah Johnson that chronicles a time when travel across the multiverse has become commonplace – leading to clear security concerns for some travelers.