The Space Between Worlds


Evaluating this year's Hugo Award nominees has brought The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson, to my attention, and it didn't disappoint. (This is not to be confused with the RomCom film from 2019 directed by Ian Stewart Fowler.) It's an interesting universe where travel between parallel universes is possible. The catch? One cannot travel to a parallel world if one's "counterpart" in that world is still alive.

Cara, the main character of this story, is an anomaly in that most of her other-world selves have already died. Only a few remain. And that leads to one of the more interesting twists of the book: Cara is not really Cara. She is Camela, one of Cara's counterparts. When Cara travels to Camela's world, and Camela just happens to be standing nearby the arrival point, the shock to Cara's system kills her. And Camela, being the opportunistic survivor she is, picks up the communications devices off her dead doppelganger, assumes Cara's identity, and starts doing her job.

Naturally, it's more complicated than that. There is a dynamic at play which threatens to bring the entire cross-world traffic to a screeching halt. Worlds with revolutionaries hear about other worlds where their revolutions were successful and take heart. And there is a strange dynamic between Cara/Camella, and her domineering "boyfriend," who is a complete shit in most universes, except one. And in that universe, he is kind and understanding - something Cara/Camela is not at all prepared for. On top of that, her true sexual orientation is gay, and she sparks an intense yet troubled romance with her coworker, Dell.

The story progresses to a somewhat awkward climax, as well as a plot point I find somewhat odd. Cara parlays her way into a cooperative alliance with one of the parallel worlds' more brutal tyrants by offering him a gun. Guns are rare in this future, and a handgun is priceless. Yet I find this unrealistic. In any universe, gun technology will never regress as it apparently did in Johnson's world.

Still, the novel is highly enjoyable overall, strange ending notwithstanding.

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