Last year on the podcast we interviewed Craig Lincoln & Cadwell Turnbull, two members of the multiverse SF writing collective published as “Darkly Lem,” which also includes Josh Eure, Ben Murphy, and M. Darusha Wehm. I this we discussed the first book of their Formation Saga series, Transmentation | Transcience, published by Blackstone Press. Our own Princejvstin also reviewed the novel for Nerds of a Feather. The Formation Saga stems from the Many Worlds, or The Simulacra anthology edited by Eure and Turnbull and featuring stories from the other members of Darkly Lem as well as other writers. Building a shared multiverse of “reality-bending stories” described as ranging “from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative,” the series rests on the foundational concept that societies of inter-dimensional travelers have developed across a primary universe through the ability of people to transfer consciousness between other universes, entering new bodies (known as proxies, or related terms depending on the society.) The bodies they leave behind in the primary universe continue existence, almost like automaton shells, while the state of the in-universe identities of the proxies their consciousness enters into become suppressed. Different societies have arisen through this power and ability of multiverse travel and expansion, with varying political and social characteristics across the spectrum. But as this has built up, the activities of the different societies find themselves interacting and in conflict more frequently at the level of individual travelers and society-wide machinations. Meanwhile, the nature of this ability to travel the multiverse, ‘gifted’ to humans via a mysterious entity known as the Simulacrum, itself remains enigmatic and ambiguous, raising core existential questions for the travelers. Do these abilities extend to life beyond humans? What is the nature of the body left left behind and its identity? Are the lives and rights of individuals in other universes equivalent to those in the primary universe? Are any from other universes entering the primary? Transmentation | Transgression: Or, a Spark on the Eve of the Five Hundred Year Burn continues the Formation Saga immediately following the events of the first book that climaxed with a clandestine assassination. The second novel continues to delve into a large cast of characters across the societies of travelers and through this also explore more into the nature and effects of traveling, particularly the confusion it can cause for self-identity.
