Heiny.Henr@PARC-MAXC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/16/83)
From: Chris Heiny <Heiny.Henr@PARC-MAXC.ARPA> It would appear that the alternate universe stuff can be divided into three categories: "alternate history", where some event that is significant in our universe occurred differently or not at all, and the inhabitants cannot communicate with, or are unaware of, other universes (such as Garrett's Lord Darcy series); "alternate universe", where there are many accessible universes, differing to varying degrees (such as Laumer's Imperium); and "altered history", where someone is somehow moved back in time and changes or tries to change the future (like deCamp's "Lest Darkness Fall"). These distinctions tend to blur at times, though. Since there seem to be a number of people interested in this (especially me), I'd like to compile a list of books/stories along these lines. If all you folks out there in SF-land would send me a quick list of stories/books that you know about that fall into these categories, I'd merge them together into one list and make it available for general consumption. What I'd like to know is the title, author, whether it's a book by itself or a short/novella/etc (and where it can be found if it's not a book), type of story (from classifications above), rating (from 1 to 10, 10 being best), and a few quick lines describing it. For example: "Lest Darkness Fall", L. Sprague deCamp, altered history novel, 8. 20th century man suddenly finds himself in 5th century Italy and tries to avert the Dark Ages. Fast moving, believable actions. You can omit the last 2 items (rating & description) if you want, but PLEASE tell me where the shorts can be found. I dislike searching all over for piece y by author x, only to discover that it's in the July 1957 issue of Stupendous Stories of Pseudo-Science, and hasn't ben reprinted since. Chris <Heiny.Henr@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>