This series begins in the city of San Francisco, USA. Quinn Mallory is a Physics student specialized in the superstring theory (a theory that tries to explain the existence of particles and their interactions as vibrations of thin, supersymmetric strings), who, in an attempt to produce antigravity, manages to create a device capable of creating an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge (something that you may have heard of by its more common name, "wormhole"), which can connect two parallel dimensions by opening a hole in the space-time continuum. This hole has a limited duration, but the device has a timer that lets the user open the same wormhole after a certain period of time.
Using this device, and in company of his thesis professor Maximillian Arturo and his best friend Wade Wells, he decides to travel to another dimension (this is what gives the name to the series, as Quinn calls the ability of traveling between dimensions "sliding"). The vortex that opens also accidentally brings Rembrandt "Cryin' Man" Brown, a professional singer that was driving in front of Quinn's house when the device was activated. The vortex takes them to an Earth where the Ice Age has not finished, and the four of them have to get into Rembrandt's car to avoid freezing. However, when a horrible tornado threatens to kill them, Quinn decides to restart the timer, which allows them to escape the tornado, but at the same time they cannot return home: from there on, every time they appear in a new world, they must activate the time and hope that the vortex that opens will be the one that takes them back home.
Every chapter after then always has one or two new worlds that are a new alternative history. For example, the first world they visit (after the Ice Age one) is one where North Korea won in the KoreanWar, and the Soviet Union managed to win the Cold War, turning the entire world to Communism. In a later world, penicillin was never discovered, and Quinn's double ("local" person with the same identity as someone from another dimension) is Patient Zero of an epidemic that is ravaging California. And, in another episode, the Sliders appear in a world where the sexual stereotypes are inverted: women are the leaders of society, while men are restricted to office work, babysitting and modeling.
However, this is not the only problem the main characters have to face: the Kromaggs, a primate humanoid species that evolved in another Earth, also have sliding technology, but their violent and militaristic nature make them use sliding to travel to other Earths and conquer them with their advanced technology, to then kill or enslave all the local humans. Quinn also discovers at a later point that the Earth the main character come from (Earth Prime to them) is not the one he comes from: actually, he comes from the same world as the Kromaggs (Kromagg Prime), which was inhabited by humans and Kromaggs until a war started, and his parents decided to send him and his brother Colin to different worlds, using sliding technology, and promising to find them again when the war ended.
Sadly, this series only lasted from 1995 to 2000, leaving in the air the main characters' destiny: after sliding into a world where the Sliders' adventures are a wildly popular television program, Rembrandt Brown decides to inoculate himself with a biological weapon that only affects Kromaggs and use a timer that only lets one person through, with the hope of finding Earth Prime and defeat the Kromaggs that have invaded the planet, while the others are forced to remain behind and wait.
I hope you thought this was interesting, and that you will come back next Friday to read more about alternative history.
See you!
No comments:
Post a Comment