DO WE HAVE A PARALLEL WORLD?

From Wikipedia: The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.

Twenty nine (29) versions of stories based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice have appeared before my eyes. Each has taken some dialogue and characters from the original but that is as far as the similarity seems to go. One seemed to be the same book in someone else's words. Some describe the sex life of Elizabeth and Darcy, which modest, unmarried Jane Austen (writing in the early 1800s) would never have written. Others are a sequel about the next generation. Whatever they may be, most of them are interesting and vary in how compelling is the reading expedience they induce. Some are, as my musician friends would have called, B-flat, or in another metaphor, 'vanilla'.

The above paragraph, somewhat descriptive of content, does nothing to describe what happens to this reader after reading 29 of them, (after the original), and several versions of movies that have been made over the years. (There are many more books to read.) It seems that movies took great liberties with the original, many of them made in the 80, 90s and this decade. License was not only taken with costuming, script, events in the book, but have taken on the movie interest's license. what will sell at the box office (in the mind of someone who has little knowledge, usually, of what that means. The story, while entertaining, barely resembles the original. Those of us who have read the book before the movie, first find that all too often to be the case; Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings being exceptions.

Finally, in order to keep straight in my mind what this particular version is about, I have taken to reading each one straight through in a day. This has not been at all easy to arrange. I start late in the evening and read during the night when I am undisturbed and suffer only the lack of sleep the next day. However, I can keep the details straight for that book until I am through.

Multiples have been written by a single author and each takes a different route.
Some books make their focus interesting on a 'what if....'. For example, if Elizabeth and Darcy had not left Hunsfield but had stayed there longer, what might it have been like? Impulse and Initiative is about Darcy not allowing himself to be stopped by her refusal, but seeking her out at Longbourn and trying to win her love and respect. These are the books that challenge my 'parallel world' thinking. There should be more than one way to deal with anything, should there not? Maybe in each parallel world all these things have a different outcome. What joy it would be to know some of the possibilities. This is what some of these authors whom I have disparaged as plagiarists, (with my apologies for not seeing the further merit of their attempt in writing),offer.

With the indulgence of my readers, I may comment again after reading the three that are yet unread in my possession.