Rabbit holes, dreams, mirrors, train stations, chiffarobes…all have been ways to get protagonists into other worlds.
I don’t think we can gather a complete listing, but what are some other interesting portals to other worlds in literature or film? What hasn’t been tried that you’d write about or like to read about?
John Carter got to Mars by staring at the red planet from outside a cave.
Sunnydale had the Hellmouth, of course, and there were the various portals to Pylea that the FangGang kept opening.
The Darktower series had Roland use doors as a means, though such transport was not limited by doors alone.
In the Serpent War Saga, the Magician Pug, found a hallway of sorts that traversed not only worlds, but times.
In the Amber series by Roger Zelazny, not only could members of the Royal family traverse shadow by walking and thinking of changing minute details, after initiation on a power source called the Pattern, they could walk the pattern, and at the center will themselves anywhere. They also had magical cards that allowed them to contact others, have the contacted person pull them through, or the cards contained a picture of a place that they could contact and step through, these cards were aptly named Trump cards.
The Family Trade series by Charles Stross introduces characters that can travel from one world to another by use of a locket or design (such as a tatoo). The locket can only travel between two worlds, and to travel to others, you have to have a specially designed locket.
The mind is a common portal in Lit.
“I have achieved the theory and using Hypnosis I shall travel the multiverse”
I have the mental power to travel to a different place.
In first Ed. D&D Probability Travel and some Magic Spells.
Gay Deceiver was a very special Car from Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein.
Sci-Fi: Common theme is going through a Black Hole.
There are many more of course.
Jim
Oops, remembered another important one. In the Myth Inc books, Skeeve and Aahz travel the worlds with a stick- you twist parts of the stick to “dial” up different worlds , though you gotta know the coordinates, and it transports you there.
Of course the wardrobe in the Narnia series.
Fire opens gateways in the Master of the Five Magics series.
Plenty of dimension travelling in the MYTH series by Asprin.
Series that have a “gate” beteen our real and a another one:
The Wizardy cursed series by Rick(?) Cook
Magical Kingdom of Landover series by Brooks
Brian
BIG OOPs - my computer did something weird & I accidentally posted this thread twice. Sorry. I am getting some very interesting responses - Thanks.
No one’s mentioned a telephone call booth yet…
In the Incompleat Enchanter stories by DeCamp and Pratt symbolic logic allows access to fictional worlds.
People are transported to Ur-universes that embody ancient myths in Pyramid Scheme by an alien probe/pyramid.
The Siege Perilous in Witch World opens gates to worlds that fit your inner needs/desires.
Conjuration circles in the Doc Sidhe books transport things to/from the grim world and the fair world.
Rings in Spaceling can be seen by certain people, who can step inside and be transported to a variety of worlds, usually complete with a non human body designed to survive there.
The Phantom Tollbooth.
“Windows” in the air in His Dark Materials.
For the A Wizard in Rhyme series, it’s by reading a poem.
There’s also a well, for a certain Japanese anime which name eludes me.
Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein, used teleportation on an interstellar level.
Alternaties by Michael Kube-McDowell has portals to alternative worlds.
“And He Built a Crooked House” by Robert Heinlein seems to involve something like a portal, though no one goes through it.
“Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly uses portals to transport to other planets.
Lawrence Watt-Evans’s “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” involves a portal to alien worlds.
Stargate and Sliders involved portals.
A major event in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and its sequels was the sudden shutdown of the portals joining the many worlds of human civuilization together, isolating them without warning (Some buildings had even been built with rooms in several different worlds). Interesting idea.
MAR Barker’s world of Tekumel and its whole solar system become detached from the rest of the normal cosmos and end up elsewhere.
In the “Slave Warrior Maya” operation of the Cool Devices hentai, the titular character is transported from Earth to another world when she looks into an innocuous-looking crystal ball at a carnival show.
In “Gor” and “Outlaw of Gor” (the movies) Tarl Cabot is transported to Gor by a magical crystal called a “home stone.” In the books, the home stones were just regular stones, transport was accomplished via spaceship.
John DeChancie’s Castle Perilous books involve a castle with 144,000 doors, each leading to another world.
Now that is weird, when I used the idea it was from the “Yellow Submarine” movie. According to Amazon: December of 1999 for the paperback of Castle Perilous
Jim
Apart from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the Narnia series also uses magical rings, ponds, paintings and of course death (and others that I can’t recall) to get folks to and from other worlds.
Inuyasha ?
The Castle Perilous books include a gigantic castle with 144,000 gates into other worlds, as well as independent magic gates and a hybrid magic/technological dimensional traveller called Sideways Voyager.
Roadmarks had a road that led to an enormous number of alternate futures/pasts/presents.
The Starrigger trilogy features a road that allows intert=stellar travel by driving; You drive ( carefully ! ) between two spinning hypermassive cylinders and are transported to an alien world.