(large segment of prior posting omitted)

: And although I tremble at the thought of possibly contradicting the Author Herself outright, I have to maintain that you can play "timeline" with any author's works if they contain common elements.

(another section omitted)

: Common elements create a common omniverse...

There's a reason I use the term omniverse rather than multiverse or universe. It has to do with the commonly-accepted picture of "parallel worlds" -- basically a two dimensional, highly-stylized tree structure, like a typical "family tree" diagram. This works fine for "serial-parallel" time travel, such as the foreward-and-back Time Gates of Operation Retrograde or the side-to-side conveyors conveyors of Vroom, but falls down when one tries to take it the next step and cross into the Witch World, the "Faerie" realm entered by Kilda c'Rhyn in Dread Companion, or the similar place in "The Long Night of Waiting."

The "road map" analogy works much better, especially if you make the mental leap of adding in changes in altitude (i.e., Seattle to the top of Mount Ranier). And if you can take it one step farther, and imagine that every intersection of two or more roads on the map has at least one more road going through it in a direction perpendicular to all of the ones shown... Each of those "roads" is one parallel, alternate or Successor universe in the omniverse.

Come to think of it, that sort of speculation is probably why my friends used to question my sanity. (Nowadays, they just laugh when someone among the innocenti suggest that I might have any.)

After all, Reality is a crutch for those incapable of dealing with Fantasy (or with Government -- much the same thing).

Respectfully,

Michael B. Caffrey
Stellae Nostrae Sunt!