The idea at the heart of every multiverse story — mine included — comes from real physics. Here's the plain-English version.
In 1957, a physicist named Hugh Everett III looked at quantum mechanics and asked an uncomfortable question. The math of quantum physics says particles exist in multiple states at once until they're observed — the famous "superposition." The standard answer was that observation somehow collapses all those possibilities into one reality.
Everett's answer was simpler and stranger: nothing collapses. Every possible outcome actually happens — each in its own branching universe.
That's the many-worlds interpretation. Every quantum event splits reality. Every choice you didn't make, someone — some you — made it, in a universe that branched off at that moment.
Is it true? Physicists still argue about it. Some consider it the most elegant reading of the equations. Others say it's untestable philosophy dressed as physics. What matters for storytellers is that it's a serious scientific idea, not just a plot device we invented.
When I think about the many-worlds idea, I find myself returning to a dream I had in 1979. I can't say it was a glimpse into another reality, but I'm drawn to the possibility it suggests. What if the world we know is only one version of what could exist? What if somewhere, another life is unfolding just beyond our reach?
That dream became a starting point for my imagination. Years later, writing Quantum Step Payton's Awakening gave me a way to explore the questions it left behind. Through Payton, I could follow that sense of mystery further than waking life allowed. I could let him take the step I could only imagine, and discover what waited on the other side.
So when you read Quantum Step Payton's Awakening and Payton starts glimpsing other worlds, know this: the wonder you're feeling has a real address in physics. The nightmares-aren't-just-nightmares part? That's where the fiction takes over. Gladly.
Want the deeper cut? Sean Carroll's Something Deeply Hidden is the best popular-science tour of many-worlds I've found. Read it, then come back and tell me the universe doesn't feel bigger.
— JD
Curious what fiction does with real physics? Read the first chapter of Quantum Step Payton's Awakening free — https://johnkaess.com/book-description/