My novel, The Sentinel in the Hollow Reed, deals with the subject of parallel realities. Specifically, it contains ruminations (oh so cleverly hidden amidst all the escapist fiction) on what is called the MWI or "many worlds interpretation" of quantum physics. To filch from Wikipedia (I'll clean up the verbiage a bit), the MWI "is a philosophical position detailing how the mathematics utilized in quantum mechanics relates to physical reality. It asserts that the universal wave function is objectively real and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some 'world' or universe."
In other words, if something can happen, there is a reality in which it does happen. In my book, it is possible, though exceedingly rare, for a person to make mental/spiritual contact with all the other versions of himself/herself/themself existing throughout the multiverse. Usually such contact leads to insanity; more rarely to a sort of chaotic omniscience. At other times, for fleeting moments, an individual may tap into the "awareness" of another version of themselves on another plane of reality and thereby gain prescience (because not all realities are happening at the same time; there are some in which what has yet to happen, what will happen in our future, has already happened in another plane of existence).
Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean that the events I chronicle in my book, in some reality out there, actually happened. The characters I write about are real people. I use this in my fiction just for funsies. But I'm not altogether being facetious. Because it often does feel like I'm not so much making stuff up as I am taking dictation. That I have tapped into this story and it is telling itself through me. I'm a radio, and I've tuned into a certain signal, which I'm broadcasting. At times, this sensation can feel scarily real.
Do other writers feel this way? Does it feel like your stories come from "somewhere else", somewhere outside your own mind?
WJR Miller
