Another brick in my yellow brick road:

Parellel Universes Exist

I suppose it'll surprise very few people who've caught on to my fantasy and sf-related reading suggestions that the Everett-Wheeler-Graham multi-worlds model of quantum theory is kind of where both my literary and physics head is at. I grokked the multiworld thing from when I first read The Narnia Chronicles by nightlight when I was seven, my covers tented and my door closed so that my parents didn't know I was up way past my bed time. I dug it when I read Alice in Wonderland, and ventured into Oz. I was all about it when I had the girls from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women as my invisible (Imaginary--but if I explained them to grown-ups--invisible) friends, and when I finally read Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger Cat Trilogy and Robert Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls (books I bought at the exact same interval, at fifteen, from the Carrefour which is now the Walmart I live two blocks away from this very day--From which I also obtained Tom Robbin's Jitterbug Perfume, and Norman Spinrad's Child of Fortune. I think there are no coincidences. )

My reading just lets me think...damn, the universe is more than my universe--it is a multiverse. Me, and Dorothy, and Bob Shaftoe, and Lazarus Long, are all equally plausible--sometimes.

But when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw--

So let me review Ruled Brittannia, an alternate universe piece from an alternate universe writer--

Harry Turtledove has quite possibly his best dialog in this novel. I can say this unreservedly, as some lines are derived from the Bard himself. Nonetheless, I recognize his own language-loving humour, especially in the Malapropriate-tongued Constable Strawberry, and the wordplay of Kit Marlowe,Will Kemp, and Dick Burbage with th'Immortal Bard himself, is rendered such as made me do what I always do with good dialog--visualize a movie and populate a cast. I'll leave my players unknown, however, and ask you to read this good novel yourself. You'll make up your own cast, and like it all the same, I warrant. It was that good.

And as for the Multiverse--think of your favorite writer--or favorite yarn--or a better sorry scheme of things entire--

and mold them nearer your heart's desire (Rubiyat!!! of Omar Khayyam!! Loved it so much I bought the company!---Um,sorry,made that last bit up.)