 In T. Kingfisher's latest novel from Titan Books, The Hollow Places, the protagonist "Carrot" stumbles across a portal to a nightmare world. To mark it's publication today T. Kingfisher drops in to tell us about the alternative dimensions that she would most love to visit and the ones that she really wouldn't want to stumble into. Alternate realities are always a blast, and the question is usually “Do you want to come home again afterwards?” That’s always the problem with portal fantasies, isn’t it? Everybody wants to go home, and the reader is left yelling “Why!? You should stay there! It’s great there! Nobody likes you at home!” As for which one I’d want to live in, though…hmm. Assuming I limit myself to universes where humans from my reality can canonically wander in, so no Middle Earth or Star Wars, what have I got to work with? I love Talking Beasts probably more than the next person, but Narnia had some very weird stuff going on and it’s really going to depend on the historical era. Nobody wants to live under the White Witch, and the Telmarines didn’t do a great job either…and let’s just say that I have my doubts about Aslan being all that open-minded about gay friends of mine. To say nothing of the racial coding in Calormene. No, the Talking Beasts don’t make up for that. Diana Wynne Jones’s Chrestomanci books, where there’s a vast number of alternate worlds and people live multiple lives across each one—that might work out. Her Dark Lord of Derkholm books even have some delightful gryphons obsessed with space travel, and I’m pretty sure they had magic to handle the plumbing, which is very important. Honestly, most alternate fantasy worlds suffer from a real lack of things like antibiotics and general anesthetic and indoor plumbing. Gordon R. Dickenson’s The Dragon and the George books went into great detail on how to live in your medieval alternate reality when you have a working knowledge of germ theory, which was enough to turn me off the whole idea, even though I loved the movie Flight of Dragons as a child with a deep and burning passion. One bout of appendicitis and you’re done. (Heck, even if I could visit Middle-Earth, I’m female so about the only way I’d get a speaking part is to be an elf, and I haven’t got the cheekbones for it. Presumably elves have really amazing composting toilets, though. And probably their appendixes resonate to the music of the spheres and never get inflamed.) If I could pick any alternate universe—the Federation in Star Trek seems like the best of the bunch all around. Sure, it’s got its problems, but almost everybody’s pulling together and the Vulcan credo is “Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations.” High-tech socialized medicine, poverty is wiped out on earth, and most people seem to be trying very hard to make the world a better place. And now and again somebody time travels and a random person from my era shows up on the Enterprise, and they seem to do okay. Plus they have sonic showers and toilets that presumably turn your waste products into dilithium. Honorable Mention on this one goes to Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books, which also have a lot of people working very hard to fix things, as well as our current standards of plumbing. I could definitely work with that. As for the alternate reality I’d most like to avoid…hoo boy. There’s so many! I would stay the hell outta my own books, for one thing. Bad stuff goes down there. The dog or the cat always lives, which is nice, but you come back with PTSD and the knowledge that something is lurking just on the other side of reality, and who needs that? Anything cosmic horror themed is going to be a bad vacation spot. You couldn’t pay me enough to live in Stross’s Laundry Files or Khaw’s Hammers on Bone. Pretty much any reality where there is an excellent chance of a tentacled horror devouring your mind and then using your corpse as a finger puppet is Right Out. However, I gotta say, the number one alternate reality I would avoid being transported to like the goddamn plague? John Norman’s Gor. The issue, one might say, is also one of plumbing, namely mine. No, thank you.  T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections. This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups. When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.  Carrot has moved into the Wonder Museum - an eclectic collection of taxidermy, shrunken heads, and Mystery Junk owned by her Uncle Earl. For Carrot, it’s not creepy at all: she grew up with it. What’s creepy is the corridor behind one of the museum walls. There’s just no space for a corridor there – or the concrete bunker, or the strange islands beyond the bunker’s doors, or the unseen things in the willow trees. Carrot has stumbled into a horrifying world, and They are watching her. Strewn among the islands are the remains of Their meals – and Their experiments. And even if she manages to make it home, she can’t stop calling Them after her…   Comments are closed.
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